Entertainment For Lively Minds
Genders in cover versions.
La Roux is doing a quite brilliant stripped-down version of
Under My Thumb on her current UK tour and you can make of that in itself what you will but here's the thing. She doesn't change the the 'girl' line to 'boy' nor the 'she's to 'he's.
I like that a lot and it seems to be the way with things, cover version-wise since some time late in the last decade. My admiration for Alex Turner sky-rocketed when, before a Glastonbury Main Stage crowd that numbered in the hundreds of thousands at the Arctic Monkeys' peak back in 2007, he pointedly kept the all the lines as they were written, in a cover of Dimaonds Are Forever, so that you had things like "Unlike men, the diamonds linger/ Men are mere mortals who are not worth going to your grave for" intact. It just seemed like a fun, cool thing to do.
Now when i were a lad (in the 1980s and 90s) that never happened. Certainly Oasis and their ilk would never have done a cover where Liam sings about men for example, and all the hit covers of the day switched the genders around when required so it fitted the traditional heterosexual set-up accordingly.
Today it seems, if you cover the song you keep the lyrics as they are, but i wonder why there's been a sudden change? I think it's much more fun that way any case! The most extreme example of it i can think of is Amy Winehouse's cover of Valerie, clearly written by a man about a woman he's obsessed with, but now it's coming from a female point of view.
Can we think of any hit covers from the 70's/80s/90s that did the same? What do we make of all of this?
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Nobody knows where my Johnny has gone
... hardly a hit, but Bryan Ferry's cover of 'It's my Party' on his first solo album left the genders unchanged, hence the above line, which prompted ribbing from the NME, I seem to remember, due to the unwitting prophylactic reference.
Sometimes it's hard to be a woman
As with Jamiroquai
La Roux is the name of the band, not the frontperson. I'm fairly sure Elly Jackson (for it is she) is gay anyway, so no need to change the gender in this case.
Just for interest
there was a nicely subversive (imo) cover of Under my Thumb by Anakelly on the first Bossa n' Stones album:
"She's So Cold" is the highlight of that album.
You've reminded
me to buy the second album-thanks
Gene
did a cover of "Say a little prayer" at Glastonbury in around 1995-6. No direct mention of gender in the song, but Rozzer singing about putting on his make up and choosing which dress to wear worked quite nicely.
There was some hoo-ha about
There was some hoo-ha about Janet Jackson's cover of Tonight's The Night on the Velvet Rope album. Not changing gender seems to be a bit of a statement in pop/rock, but is pretty standard in folk.
Even contemporary Irish singers such as Mary Black have sang songs written about same-gender love interests without anyone battling an eyelid. It's as though the singer is being respectful of the song as it was written.
When I do...
...acoustic nights or open mics or whatever, I always do "Nothing Compares 2U", and always keep the gender references female, even though a version exists where Prince sings it the "boy" way.
I say keep it the way it was on the definitive version. I just think it's a bit pathetic when blokes change songs so as to avoid "looking, like, all gay and stuff."
This was originally a male song.
It was on an album by The Family who were signed to Paisley Park.
Sinead O'Connor covered it 4 years later.
However, I agree. Hers is the definitive version.
Mm you're right
indeed it does. But then Sinead changed it as it WAS boy at first so the original is the Prince one, or *in actual fact* 'The Family' one as it was first. Although yeah 99% of people haven't heard that version.
Definitive, rather than original...
...is, I think, the watchword here. The Family version is overwrought bobbins, IMO.
Rod
If it avoids anything as painful as Rod Stewart's 'You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Man' - it doesn't scan! - then I'm all for keeping the original lyric. Funnily enough I was listening to Linda Thompson covering the Tom Waits song 'Day After Tomorrow' earlier: a letter home from the front clearly in the first person voice of a soldier, but still enormously affecting sung by La Thompson. Mind, she could sing a shopping list and move me to tears.
'You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Man' ?!
Oh god i must hear that.
Mickey by Toni Basil
Was originally written for a male performer (might have been for Racey) and was called Kitty. And works much better. ("Hey Kitty / You're so pretty / Can't you understand / You take me by the heart / When you take me by the hand")
And what about Denis by Blondie?
My Guy's mad at me...
As sung by Tracey Ullman.
I think Bad Manners did "My Girl Lollipop", to underline Buster Bloodvessel's hetrosexuality, which must have been a relief to the gay community.
Gay pop singers pretending to be hetro to avoid fuss/controversy presumably doesn't happen anymore. Well done Jimmy Somerville for breaking that taboo.
Are there are gay men in the world of R&B and Gangsta rap? Statistically, there must be...
Interesting you mention Jimmy Somerville
because i was thinking of him earlier regarding all this. I think he really was the first out gay popstar who made no bones about singing about men. Why doesn't he get more credit i wonder? He's really been written out of history i think.
Tom Robinson might disagree..
"Sing If You're Glad To Be Gay"
Although I don't think Jimmy Somerville has now got married to a woman and had kids so, although he's a johnny-come-lately, he can maintain the moral high-ground.
Mmm but i mean in a pop sense
first person to get into the proper charts with that sorta stuff.
That's an interesting one
Tom Robinson's single was an EP (with I think four songs) and the straightforward, non-controversial Don't Take No For An Answer was the song played on radio and performed by the band on TOTP. Glad to be Gay was one of the other tracks on that EP - but was generally deemed to be the "real" hit song that got it into the charts.
Only a few years later, I guess society had changed to such a degree that Jimmy Somerville and Bronski Beat sung directly and specifically about gay issues on TOTP and had hits - so with pop music, I think they were the first.
Born A Woman
Covered by Nick Lowe but not on either YouTube or Spotify. It was on the Bowi EP and is on the expanded Jesus Of Cool re issue.
Message To Michael by Dionne Warwick -
- was originally "Message To Martha" - Jerry Butler and then Adam Faith had a crack at the charts before Dionne swapped it round.
Let's take it down a notch.......
Old Tiff, also switched the genders in "I Think We're Alone Now" from The Shondells orginal.
I'm sorry - coat on.
I've never liked it when they change the gender
I've never liked it when they change the gender, have you heard Joss Stone murdering The White Stripes on "Fell In Love With A Boy"? It doesn't even rhyme!