Musing on song lyrics and gender

[HalcyonDaze]

Listening to a cover version the other day and had some thoughts.

It was Amy Shark covering Dean Lewis's Be Alright.

Section of the lyrics here:


And my friend said
"I know you love her, but it's over, mate
It doesn't matter, put the phone away
It's never easy to walk away, let her go
It'll be alright"

So I still look back at all the messages you'd sent
And I know it wasn't right, but it was fucking with my head
And everything deleted like the past, it was gone
And when I touched your face, I could tell you're moving on
But it's not the fact that you kissed him yesterday
It's the feeling of betrayal, that I just can't seem to shake
And everything I know tells me that I should walk away
But I just want to stay


Thoughts were around that fact that 30+ years ago there would have most likely been some awkward rephrasing of the song to make the genders fit -so a girl wouldn't always song about loving another girl. Or if there wasn't there would be all this fuss about the song, a sort of stupid 'oh ah' reaction.

And it was so nice just to hear someone do a decent cover version without all that fuss. And then there was the other thought that the betrayal in the lyrics possibly had even more meaning when you consider it was someone who had been in a same-sex relationship was now kissing a bloke.

Anyway, wanted to share.

Any things you have noticed in lyrics you can share as well!

[Liiisa]

That is great; well observed.

The only lyrical thing that I can think of is that last night we were listening to Shana Cleveland and the Sandcastles, and there's this song "Golden Days" that is mainly about generalities but then there's this one line "across the street to lunch we go" and it just hit me - how something so banal could be important, could be zeroed in on like that.

But otherwise nothing else; I've been listening to Radiohead a lot again (ok, as usual) so half the time I have no idea what the hell he's saying.

[riverhorse]

Reading this made me think about the fuss about Michael Bublé

medium.com/@caseynugent/lets-talk-about-michael-buble-s-terrible-no-homo-cover-of-santa-baby-9fbbe4df0049

[HalcyonDaze]

Thankfully I have never heard Michael Bublé's Santa Baby version.

[Liiisa]

Jan 19, 2019 15:38:08 GMT -5 HalcyonDaze said:

Thankfully I have never heard Michael Bublé's Santa Baby version.

Ugh, me neither. I've always assumed he would make the kind of music that I hate, but can't say I've ever heard anything by him.

[tzarine]

I would also hate the buble

I'll take Thom Yorke anyday

Hal

a fascinating topic. love when men sing women penned song. the gender swaps are fascinating. i'm not wracking my brain for examples.

[sophie]

We get some buble here. He is local talent. Smooth voice. I find him inoffensive, but wouldn’t buy a ticket to one of his concerts.

[Liiisa]

HalcyonDaze I actually just thought of an example of what you're talking about above - Patti Smith's cover of Van Morrison's "Gloria." Which is such a hot (and wonderful) version that I can't abide listening to the original (or any other cover, for that matter). And that's from what, 1976, so that was pretty amazing for that long ago.

[HalcyonDaze]

Watching Paul Kelly and just thought of another song that is interesting.

He has a song called "Sweet Guy" which is basically about domestic violence. He has song it for years, and it is a good song. But now his amazing back up singer (Vika Bull) sings it, and it makes it even more powerful and sad.

[tzarine]

london grammar on chris isaak's wicked game

male:

female:

i'm thinking of a johnny cash song that totally transforms the meaning

[tzarine]

walk on by dionne warwick
then aretha
& this by the stranglers

[shilgia]

Missed this thread on the first go-round. This is very common in Israeli songs. I used to find it a bit jarring when I was a kid, but I guess I'm used to it now. In Hebrew, verbs have different male and female forms, and so "I know," "you love" etc. would all be different depending on whether "I" and "you" are male or female. The word "you" itself would be different, too. And it is, of course, quite common for a singer to sing songs written by a different song writer. But it's sort of a convention to just leave it the way the songwriter wrote it. So if a songwriter is male and wrote "I love you" in the form that a man would say to a woman, a female singer will just keep it that way - as if she's a man singing to a woman.

[HalcyonDaze]

That reminds me, heard a song by an Israeli singer or band a few weeks back that was good and meant to follow up on it. Now of course it will take days of searching the radio playlist to find exactly who it was!

And the verb form stuff is cool.

[Liiisa]

The verb form stuff is very cool! Hindi also has that (the gendered verb form stuff), which I thought was crazy when I learned it. I never looked into whether other languages did that too.

Is there anything going on with Hebrew because of nonbinary folks? What I'm thinking of is how on Twitter there are lots of people who refer to themselves as "Latinx" instead of "Latino/a"... it would be so much more complicated to be nonbinary if you had to choose a verb form too!

[shilgia]

It's not easy to be nonbinary in Hebrew! I have to say I've had limited exposure to this community, but I'm aware of three ways that people try to get around it:

1. Apparently quite common is to mix male forms and female forms. "I* am going (male) to the bar. I am meeting (female) my friend there. I haven't seen (male) my friend in months! I hope (female) he's doing well." Etc.

2. Some people try to avoid using the verbs and pronouns that require a choice. So for example, instead of saying "I'd like some hummus," someone might say "hummus appeals to me" and avoid the issue. This gets very complicated and I don't know how common it is. It would take a lot of practice to do - like trying to speak English avoiding all words that contain the letter "a" or something.

3. There has been an effort to develop a grammar to solve the issue. A third verb form, if you will. For example, instead of saying "hoo" (he) or "hee" (she), the pronoun would be "heh." Instead of holchim (they go, male) or holchot (they go, female), the verb would be holchimot. As far as I'm aware, this is really quite recent and far from being universally adopted or even known. Again, though, I'm not really plugged in to the relevant community, so I could be wrong about that.

*Note: first-person pronouns (I, me, my, we, our, ours) are the only ones that don't have male and female forms. So for that one at least you can use the same word regardless of your gender. For you/your/yours, he/him/his/she/her/hers, you-plural, they/them/theirs, you have to pick. For most first-person verb forms you have to pick as well.

[Liiisa]

Thank you shilgia! We really are at an interesting moment in history.

[shilgia]

I agree. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Do you know how Hindi is dealing with it? Arabic will have the same issues as well.

By the way, on Latinx - it find it pretty amusing is to see people use it in places where it makes no sense. I think some people have picked up that it's the culturally correct way to speak and will just use it whenever. As in "Maria is a pregnant, Latinx woman from Honduras."

[Liiisa]

I have no idea! But then India has so many issues, gender wise, that maybe it'll take a while to get there.

Yes, that is an interesting example. Can you be nonbinary and pregnant? But wait, of course you can; that's sort of analogous to being a nonsurgical trans man who's still buying tampons. Sex being biological and gender social, etc.

[shilgia]

I mean, yes, it may be possible. But still it seems weird to use "Latinx" in a context that's just a story about a pregnant woman, with no indication or implication that she's trans or nonbinary. I get the sense that some people have seen the rise of the term Latinx (which is perfectly useful to refer to mixed-gender groups as well as nonbinary people) and have concluded that there must be something sexist or racist or just-plain-wrong-ist about Latino and Latina, even when applied to cis men and women.

[Liiisa]

Yep, I can see that too! We're all trying to be our wokest self.

[tzarine]

such an interesting conversation. growing up in cali, the word i learned to use w chicano/a. so i asked some of my mexican friends about latinx. the nonacademics among them continue to use the a/o construction, whereas those 2 unis have switched to latinx

as to songs. suzanne by nina simone:

& cohen

[sprite]

in peru, our spanish teacher said some people were using @ in such places. so they would type, "chic@" or "chic@s" but... that's probably problematic on twitter, and doesn't help with pronunciation.

[lillielangtry]

Feb 11, 2019 13:11:19 GMT -5 sprite said:

in peru, our spanish teacher said some people were using @ in such places. so they would type, "chic@" or "chic@s" but... that's probably problematic on twitter, and doesn't help with pronunciation.

Yeah you do see that on Twitter as well though.

German has a few versions of this, I think it remains to be seen which one, if any, will become really widespread. One is the "binnen I", which involves capitalising the i in the middle of the word for things like FreundInnen (male and female friends). Another is basically the same but with asterisks.

One disadvantage of some of these from a diversity point of view is that text readers for the blind have a hard time with them.

[Webs]

Linda Ronstadt did a cover of Elvis Costello's "Allison" without changing a single lyric. It's perfect.

People change the lyrics to "Hallelujah" to make it seem like a song of loss instead of one of a dysfunctional relationship. I hate that.

[Webs]

"Latinx" = how is this pronounced?

[HalcyonDaze]

I always say it as Latin x in my head when reading it.

That is probably totally wrong.,

More like La tin x maybe?

[Webs]

But "X" in Spanish has 3 different pronunciations.

[Liiisa]

I read on Twitter someone saying that it should be "e" like "Latin-ay"?

But I've never heard anyone actually saying it.

[shilgia]

I think in speech it becomes “Latino or Latina.” (Often, anyway. My guess is people try to avoid it in speech, because it’s strange no matter how you pronounce it.)