My custom is to play a few songs from the discography of an artist when they pass, and to learn random trivia about them. This year has kept me busy.
The late Nickolas Ashford penned the tune “I’m Every Woman”, sung by both Whitney Houston and Chaka Khan. Steve “the Colonel” Cropper penned the tune, “(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman”, sung by Aretha Franklin.
The buzz around my office was, “Ewwww…How do you, as a man, write a song about being a woman?”
So my singer/songwriter/pundit Dopers, how do you do it?
And, which female songwriters have done the same (pen a song about being a man)?
From the anecdote I heard from Valerie Simpson, it wasn’t easy for Nick to write I’m Every Woman. She said she composed it and had a very strong feeling about what the song was about. But she’s not a lyricist. She said getting him to write it was like pulling teeth. He kept whining “But I’m NOT every woman!”
I can think of a good number of women who have written songs from the point of view of a man, but not necessarily about being a man. PJ Harvey wrote a song called “Man-Size,” but it’s pretty tongue-in-cheek.
It’s more making fun of machismo than it is a song to be played straight (so to speak).
It’s not like the author of “I’m a Little Teapot” had to have been a teapot, either.
If the man who wrote “I’m Every Woman” complained, it was probably because of the criticism he knew he’d receive.*
*In fact, I was unfamiliar with the song, so I looked up the lyrics. Replace the word woman with “may-yun” or some such, and what real difference is made?
If people could only write lyrics from their personal genders point of view, most musical theatre would be sorely lacking. Most of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lyricists were men. Song & Dance, a one-woman show, was penned by Don Black. Evita by Tim Rice. Sunset Boulevard by Black and Christopher Hampton…I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Not a songwriter (I can’t rhyme to save my life), but I’ve written stories with male characters and played “cross-dresser” in table RPG games - my RPG male characters stem from a concept which, given the game’s setting, would not work as a woman.
I’ve got more of a problem picturing a woman who really, truly believes herself or any other woman incapable of achieving anything without a man’s help (not a specific man’s, just the help of anybody with a penis), than I have picturing a young male mage who, upon reaching a new location, will present himself as the servant / apprentice / squire of one of the dudes in plate.
I’m currently having a very hard time finding a female singer to record the session on a song of mine called ‘I Have Magnificent Breasts’. Seems they don’t see the feminist reclaiming of ones body from the gawps of men that I (a man) wrote.
Rufus Wainwright’s ‘The Art Teacher’ is my favourite example of this cross gender writing.
I have written first-person male almost exclusively ever since I began writing fiction. It takes much more imagination for me to write women, even though I am one. I love men and inhabiting their skin is so much fun.
Stephen King is exceptionally talented at writing women.
To answer the OP, Alanis Morissette has a song, A Man, told from the perspective of a good man tired of getting crucified for the sins of his predecessors. It’s pretty thought-provoking.
