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Sex Change? (In song lyrics 😁)


steve mac

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If singing a song famous for being performed by a member of the opposite sex, do you routinely changer it to fit your gender? i.e. He to she or woman to man etc.?

or do you stick faithfully to the original? I am currently learning a Suzy Quatro song and changing some lines in it to fit me being a bloke just isnt working for example king to queen.

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Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Sometimes, I make serious changes.

 

for example, in "Little Things Mean A Lot":

 

What would I want with diamonds and pearls, 'cause honestly, honey, they just cost money

 

which is fine for a woman to sing, but sounds pretty cheap if you just change the "I" to "she." So I changed the second half of the line completely.

 

What would she want with diamonds and pearls, when far above, she wants your love

 

The only time I ran into trouble was at a jam when I *didn't* change the gender of this song. My rendition, alas, was met with drop-jawed silence.

 

[video=youtube;68gCwBy4ElA]

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Depends on the song. Sometimes a gender change, sometimes third person, sometimes 'as is'.

 

And sometimes it works better. Take "Build Me Up Buttercup" by The Foundations, it is really a female song. What guy from the 1970s sits at home waiting for the girl to call him? So when Leilani sings that one it works better.

 

Notes

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If you want the crowd to sing along, either stick to the words, or do some shtick.

 

When on the Cruise Ships in the late 1980s we did John Denver's "Country Roads".

 

We'd sing "Almost Heaven, West Virginia" and stop. Then we'd ask if anyone there was from West Virginia. Nobody ever raised their hands (thankfully) so I'd follow it with "That's because nobody told them they could leave."

 

Always got a laugh.

 

Then we'd ask the people to sing along but instead of saying West Virginia, substitute the place you are living in now.

 

The gag never failed.

 

We don't do sing-alongs anymore. They didn't work as well on land for us.

 

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My crowds are usually "pie-eyed" I find that their drunkenness is directly proportional to my perceived skill level and their perception of their own vocal abilities.

ps I was in West Virginia this January singing Beatle songs up a snow covered mountain and to be fair that crowd was singing along too 😅

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My sister-in-law lives in West Virginia, and I've met a lot of nice people there.

 

They just didn't do cruise ships much back then, which made the shtick work.

 

And parts of West Virginia are "Almost Heaven" - at least in the late spring or summer :) (I'm a warm weather guy).

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