An odd phenomenon:

Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex by CSS
Last Night by Over the Rhine
Who Will Guard The Door by Over the Rhine
Top Of The World by Patty Griffin
A Man by Alanis Morrisette
Nobody Knows Me At All by The Weepies
Life is Sweet by Maria McKee

...all have female singers singing in the male pronoun. None of these songs are covers as far as I know. Maybe they were written by a man, but why did the vocalist not change the lyric to make more logical sense? Just been kinda wonderin' about this, especially since I rarely if ever see it the other way around.

Know of any others?

Maybe they are trying to be gender ambiguous? I've actually just been kind of curious about the reverse of this phenomenon (too strong of a word?). It started with the song "Your woman" by White Town (I could never be your woman), and there's also the Black Kids' "I'm not gonna teach your Boyfriend how to dance with you" (you are the girl, that I've been dreaming of, ever since I was a little girl). And I vaguely remember Morrisey doing this and being interviewed on it.

Interesting questions... I've given this some thought as a performing songwriter. I've heard both examples at various open mic shows over the years. Mostly, as has been pointed out, when covers are being sung.

Having said that, I could see myself writing a song for one of my female singer friends and then singing it myself at one of my shows.

I don't think I would feel compelled to change the gender either. The context of the lyrics may make it difficult if not impossible without damaging the song.

To me, if it's truly a good song it doesn't really make any difference if the singer is male or female. There are genres or specific examples where this may not work I supppose.

Anyway, interesting thread. Thanks for posting it.
J

edit: because I can't spell when on my phone! alskdjf;

Check out the Cowboy Junkies. Margo sings in the male pronoun most of the time. Of course, her brother writes the songs; she sings them as written, but with her own twist.

to john's point, and while cher is also correct, much of cowboy junkies music is also sung from the female perspective or point of view while written (almost exclusively) by a male, michael timmins.

Interesting... Never been a big CBJ fan, but I'd like to check out the lyrics a bit more after reading this. Seems quite a challeng, to me, to write from the opposite gender first person voice. I've got a song that I wrote recently that is told from the males perspective in the first verse and then the female's in the second. The song is narrative (he/she)|, though, and not from the first person.

Sounds like a songwriting challenge to me! Where's Guiles???

cj bob (the ultimate junkies fan) has a great page, you can check out all (and i mean all) of their lyrics there... http://www.junkiesfan.com/lyrics_main.htm

I see your point, in that a good song is a good song, period, which I completely agree with, in the sense of it's not about the image, but the music. However, I'd have to disagree when it comes to the song having lyrical meaning. The example that comes to mind is Will You Love Me Tomorrow? by The Shirelles/Carole King. The song is so tied to a female point of view in the early 1960's, that if a man sang it, and I heard it for the first time, it would lose most of its power. Maybe I'm gender stereotyping too much, but it just wouldn't make any sense, lyrically, if a guy sang it, yet it truly is a masterpiece of songwriting.

Last year's grammy winning album, Raising Sands (Plant & Kraus) has a great example of such a cover. Through the Morning, Through the Night, by Gene Clark - sung with Allison Kraus' haunting voice, is about a man who is devestated by the loss of his woman to another man. Gorgeous song, and made even moreso by the gender switch. I listen to it and imagine it's the woman reading a letter left by her ex.

On a sort of related note, there's a lot of Queen songs that were (intentionally) left as gender-neutral as possible. It's kind of interesting in that there were 4 songwriters in the band but the voice of the band was a gay man, leading to (IMO) and abundance of songs with direct pronouns in the lyrics ("You Take My Breath Away," "One Year Of Love") or songs in which Mercury never touches on anything that might imply characteristics/gender of the person who is the object of attention in the song ("Somebody To Love"). I'm not much of a lyrics guy, but I actually think it's one of the more interesting facets of the band...there's so many songs where lesser writers may have taken the easy way out and gone into typical women-related rock song fodder, especially on overtly sexual songs like "Get Down, Make Love" or "Body Language." In a subtle, somewhat subconscious way, I think maybe this partly contributed to the band's universal appeal...they dropped off the US radar for awhile in the 80's, but worldwide, other than maybe someone like U2, I really think Queen may be the world's most loved band, at least during the time they were active.

Just thought it was kind of an interesting sidenote to this discussion about gender in songs.

There's also "What Tom Said About Girls" by the Blow, which would be grossly misogynist if it weren't ironic (and sung by a female).