I thought the lead singer of Sigur Rós was female for quite awhile. I was actually rather disappointed to learn that the ethereally voiced singer wasn’t a hot Viking blonde. 
Okay, in my mind, I still pretend the singer is anyhow…
What he sounds exactly like, to me at least, is Geddy Lee. Oh, wait. 
The first 500 times I heard Nazareth’s “Love Hurts,” I thought it was Heart.
Jermaine Stewart - We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off
Even after seeing the video, I couldn’t believe it was a guy singing this.
Cool! I get to be the first one who misidentified numerous Cher songs as being sung by a man, until I discovered who sang it.
In the classic To Have And Have Not Lauren Bacall, in her first movie role, played a cabaret singer opposite Humphrey Bogart. Her singing voice was dubbed by an as yet unknown (and very young) Andy Williams.
I tried to find a clip of it on YouTube, but without success.
One wishes the poor fellow had taken his own advice. 
I always thought Smokey Robinson was expressing some pretty girly sentiments in a very girly voice in “I Second That Emotion”:
Maybe you want to give me kisses sweet
But only for one night with no repeat
And maybe you’ll go away and never call
And a taste of honey’s worse than none at all
I swear that song had to have been written for a female singer.
I was listening to Terry Gross yesterday and she played a clip from the cast recording of the 1954(?) show Three Penny Opera, and I will be damned if Bea Arthur didn’t sound like a woman.
When I was 13 or so, a friend of mine came up to me at school with a tale to tell. He was watching Top of the Pops (a UK music show) the previous night and there was a beuatiful young lady singing a song. She was so sexy he just had to do what all 13yo boys do is such situations :eek:
that night marked the first TV appearence of Culture Club
:smack: :smack: :smack:
I always thought The Stylistics’ “You Make Me Feel Brand New” was one of the moving duets to ever feature a male and a female vocalist singing to each other and proclaiming their love for each other.
Ooops.
I don’t remember what Wayne Newton sounds like, but I remember people joking about his high voice!
Now, about Frankie Valli – he hits some pretty high notes, but I don’t think he sounds like a woman! Same with Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees – great falsetto voice, but he does not sound like a girl! I can’t really explain why, but to me, they just sound like guys singing high!
Robert John, of “Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “Sad Eyes” fame, on the other hand, has a softer tone to his falsetto, and I can understand people mistaking his voice for a woman’s! Same situation with the “Stylistics” falsetto singer – “Stone in Love with You”, “Betcha By Golly Wow”, “You Make Me Feel Brand New”, and “You are Everything” were their big hits!
One song sprang immediately to mind – and for once no one else posted it first, woohoo!
Jackie Blue, by Ozark Mountain Daredevils (Oooh-ooh-ooh, Jackie Blue . . .)/ Sung by drummer Larry Lee, who I’m going to guess, based on the name “Larry,” is a guy.
I always thought Supertramp’s lead singer was female, which is why “Breakfast in America” confused me with the opening line, “Take a look at my girlfriend” (the notion of a female being a lesbian and thus having a girlfriend did not enter my innocent nine-year-old mind at the time).
The first few times I heard “I’d Like To Get To Know You” by Spanky & Our Gang I thought a woman was singing in the middle of the song. A distinctly male voice appears at the beginning of the song but when he switches to a higher vocal register it sounds more feminine.
Ewww…you liked Air Supply 
When I heard “You’re Beautiful” on the radio, I thought that a woman was singing it. Given the subject matter of the song (the singer loves a woman, but she left the singer for another man) I thought it was an odd choice for a female singer, but I figured that maybe this was a cover of an older song. Or maybe the singer is a lesbian. Or both.
Then I found out that the singer is James Blunt.
Quagmire had that same problem on an episode of Family Guy
I always thought that Linda Ronstadt did the background vocals on Warren Zevon’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” (since she did a very successful version of it before WZ released his own), but it turns out it was Phil Everley. And Lindsay Buckingham sings back-up on another of Zevon’s songs, and I swear he songs like a woman.
Not just the voice, but the lyrical content too.
Years ago, I picked up the Tanita Tikaram album Eleven Kinds of Loneliness for two bucks on a whim in a thrift store. Her picture was right there on the cover. Thought it was a guy. Listened to the album. Thought it was a guy.
Only after looking her up on the internet did I discover she was a woman. And not a bad looking one at that.
We’re on the second page and still no one has mentioned “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash? I was nearly 30 before I found out it was not a woman singing that song. Even worse, my father found out at the same time and was just as shocked – and he could remember when the song first came out! At least I had the excuse of not having been born yet.
I gotta go with Lauren Wood in Fallen. I assumed for over 15 years it was a guy singing that.