cover of the shangri las
ps this song is awesome

Though I did see a band with a female singer* playing a cover of Gloria and changing the lyrics to 'Melvin'. Which was mildly amusing.

*Lesley Rankine as it happens.

In most cases. Although there are a few times when it's been a little jarring to hear the wrong pronoun, mostly when it's not a well known cover. If it's an older or very obscure song, I think it's ok to change the pronouns but if it's something that's really well know, I would say stick with the original lyrics.

Like some otherwise hopeless male singer/songwriter doing a cover of Natural Woman, in a pub, somewhere in my memory.

don't like the gays i bet.

my friend and i used to do a cover of BRMC's "love burns" back in the day (i.e., when we didn't live halfway across the country from each other) and we changed the lyrics to "now he's gone, love burns inside me, etc." i feel that if we had kept the "she" pronoun, it wouldn't have meant as much to either of us.

Just sing the damn song, don't change the words.

White Stripes - Jolene
The Raincoats - Lola

Amazing.

Joss Stone - Fell in Love With A Boy

Arse gravy. If she hadn't changed it, I'd have hated it a little bit less.

Kim Gordon sings 'she knows how to make love to me'. I always imagined that Thurston Moore wrote the lyrics and then got Kim to sing them, which maybe means Kim has ended up singing about herself.

This may not be in anyway true, but I like to think it is.

but I think it depends what you're trying to do with the song. Obviously doing different things produces different results and neither's better or worse.

of not doing this was ARCTIC MONKEYS' doing Diamonds Are Forever at Glastonbury 07 and Alex not changing any words. Considering that the song goes on about 'men' all the way through i thought this was a pretty charming thing to do in front of 50,000 people. He rather went up in my estimation.

It was truly terrible but peaked when he changed 'women' to 'gentleman'. It's hard to imagine but true.

is better for remaining as it was - it adds a really cool air of sexual androgony which Jack White pulls off really well.

I like Kirsty MacColl's cover of Billy Bragg's 'A New England' (although I think he helped rewrite it for her)

I disagree. I wanted to do a cover of Cat Power's 'Good Woman', and I couldn't really sing "I want to be a good woman", but then, I couldn't really sing "I want to be a good man" either, so I just left it.

I think had Lennon sung "since I've heard from that boyfriend of mine" in Please Mr Postman, it might not be as good.

But I do generally agree with you.

turning 'Then He Kissed Me' by The Crystals into 'Then I Kissed Her' is great

is amazing for not changing the pronouns.

Will Sheff also goes on to describe why he prefers not to change the lyrics and, although not directly relevant to the topic, I quite like his explanation:

"I love any excuse to pretend I’m a girl when I’m singing. Not to _ sing_ like a girl, but to be a girl, within the space of the song. I think what’s so wonderful about songwriting and performance is you can try on all these personalities. You can be a girl, you can be your ideal version of you, you can fully inhabit someone you hate, you can let yourself believe things you know are bullshit. There’s such a potential for ambiguity, for emotions that utterly clash, for lies that seem real and truths you’re not allowed to say."

then you'll barely notice if the pronoun is changed or not.

Eg Jeff Buckley's cover of Be My Husband by Nina Simone.