If You Were Gay...

[tahnan]

Having been thinking about this post, which is about changing the lyrics when covering songs by someone not of your gender so that you're singing to/about someone of the appropriately opposite gender, I've been wondering about the following.

What songs are there that involve same-sex relationships? Restricting the list to songs that actually charted on the Billboard 100, because, yeah, I know y'all can come up with any number of songs by Girlyman/Coyote Grace/whatever other indie bands are out there. Indeed, let's say any Billboard chart, given that the "Alt 100" isn't necessarily all that indie.

Only songs that are explicitly same-sex, so not counting songs with possible undertones ("Losing My Religion"—got me, look it up) or songs with no gender mentioned but which are presumably same-sex given that the singer is ("Your Song" or, really, anything else by Elton John, or Melissa Etheridge's music, etc.). Edit to clarify: "explicitly same-sex" means, in this case, given the gender of the singer; that is, only the gender of the other person involved needs to be explicitly textual. So for instance, if the singer is male, and is singing about "how much I miss the touch of his lips" or what have you, that counts.

All we could really think of and/or scrounge up from the Internet were

• "Lola", the Kinks
• "I Kissed a Girl", Katy Perry
• "I Kissed a Girl", Jill Sobule (it did hit #67 on the Billboard 100 in 1995)

And that pretty much covers it, unless you count "Macho Man" and "YMCA" as having text as opposed to subtext. Or "Walk on the Wild Side", but there's not really any relationship going on in there, and it's certainly not about the singer's own relationship. There's 10,000 Maniac's "Stockton Gala Days", which is at least by a band that charted, though that song didn't.

From the comments:

• "All The Things She Said", tAtU (2002, #20 US)
• "How To Be Dead", Snow Patrol (2004; didn't chart in the US, but #39 in the UK
• "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover", Sophie B. Hawkins (1992, #5 US)—most of the song is just sung to "you", but there's a line that says "I lay by the ocean making love to her", so, yes

So what do you think; did we miss any?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I was going to say "All The Things She Said" by tAtU and "How To Be Dead" by Snow Patrol, but then saw the part about it having to be explicitly same-sex. I don't really think that's entirely fair--how many opposite-sex relationship songs bother to verify the gender of the singer?

-Hooligan

[tahnan]

Edited the post for clarity. "All The Things She Said" does qualify; "How To Be Dead" almost misses on the technicality that it didn't chart in the US, but it did chart in England, but sure, that can count.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, okay.

The Killers' "Andy, You're A Star" didn't chart, I don't think. Can't think of any others.

-Hooligan

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

"I Wish I Was Your Lover", Sophie B. Hawkins
"And I Moved", Pete Townshend
Just about anything by Jimmy Somerville/Bronski Beat/Communards, particularly "Forbidden Love"
--Marc

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

Actually I think only the Sophie B. song passes all the constraints

[tahnan]

Yeah, the Townshend didn't chart, and I think the others fall pretty much under the "indie" rubric. The Sophie B. Hawkins song does indeed mention "making love to her"—it looks like the "you" in the song isn't specified, but still, it's there.

[tahnan]

Actually, looking into it further, Bronski Beat seems to have charted in the 80s after all...I'll try to do more research on this and track down what qualifies.

[(Anonymous)]

I was going to say Communards (after my little tribute to them in the MIT '10 Hunt), but did they chart?

Mark/ZB

[colorwheel]

i am so proud to have started something interesting with a michael ball post. SO PROUD.

[devjoe.livejournal.com]

Well, there is "Funky Cold Medina" by Tone Loc, but when his date turned out to be a man, he threw him out.

[tahnan]

Interestingly, though, it's not 100% clear how mutual and happy the relationship in "Lola" is. Which is one of those things about a lot of these songs: the homosexuality is used for humor or the like, rather than...well, not being "played straight", but you get the idea.

[jadelennox]

With the lyrics in front of me now, I am willing to more adamantly say that "Lola" is not about homosexual relationship, although it is about a queer one. Whether Lola herself identifies as transgendered or cross-dresser, the singer consistently identifies Lola by female pronouns throughout the entire song. That is, the singer-- who knows what he is and is glad he's a man -- identifies himself as somebody who is attracted to a woman who is part of a mixed up muddled up shook up world. Yes, at the end he says "I'm glad I'm a man / And so is Lola", but again, female pronouns throughout.

[tahnan]

Well, to be 100% technical, there's nothing in the song that says that Lola is or ever was biologically male. The line "But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man / And so is Lola" is ambiguous between

(a) I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man; and Lola is a man, too.
(b) I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man; and Lola is glad I'm a man, too.

The...well. I don't know all that much about late '60s gender and identity politics, especially as it applies to language. My understanding of the song, growing up, had always been that the use of "she/her" was due to the naivete/confusion of the narrator; but of course, I do know a fair amount about my '80s understanding of gender and identity politics, and there wasn't much of it.

I also don't know all that much about current gender and identity politics, even as it applies to language. I've certainly watched enough "RuPaul's Drag Race" that I've seen drag queens use "she" to refer to each other, and I'm not sure how much genuine identity is in that. (I need to check the intuitions of a native drag-queen speaker: is the sentence "Hedda Lettuce is one of my favorite performers, but when she kissed Madonna onstage, that was too heterosexual for me" well-formed? If so, does that mean that in a song like "Lola", "she" can refer to someone in a male/male sexual relationship?)

Mind you, for the purposes of the original discussion, i.e. "what happens to the gender relationship between singer/addressee when the song is covered by someone of a different gender than the original artist", this one remains Exhibit A in the "good luck with that" category.

[jadelennox]

I guess my reading is that the gender identity of Lola zirself, whether in the context of 1960s or 2010s gender and identity politics, is unknowable (within the context that it presumably includes something in the 1960s spectrum of drag/trans/gay/etc). So when I say I don't see it as a homosexual relationship, I am speaking entirely of the perspective of the singer, who in my reading of the song has a completely naïve heteronormative understanding of gender politics. That is, the singer has never encountered anyone like Lola before, so when he uses the pronoun "she", he's not doing it in the context that drag queens would use, but in the context of a straight boy who knows nothing about queer gender politics.

In other words, I can't tell if Lola sees what's going on as homosexual, because I can't tell from the lyrics what Lola's gender is; he could be a male-identified drag queen. But I feel that the lyrics give us great confidence that the narrator sees himself as male and Lola as ... confusing. But still receiving female pronouns. (I do parse the "and so is Lola" line as (a), but I still parse the narrator as seeing Lola as a man with female pronouns.) So queer, but not neccessarily opposite sex.

[jordanwillow]

You mentioned "Your Song" by Elton John. I've always liked the line, "I don't have much money, but boy, if I did..." Is the "boy" too tricksy a usage to count?

[tahnan]

Possibly one of those little signals that maybe the singer wasn't straight? (I always—or maybe "always once I knew about John's sexuality"—thought "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" had a certain older-man-younger-man feel to it as opposed to an older-woman-younger-man feel. But there's no good reason to think that, textually.) I think that "boy" has to be taken as an intensifier, rather than a form of address; or at least, the fact that it's left sufficiently open is enough. (Besides, when Rod Stewart covered it, he kept it as "boy", and Rod Stewart is one of the more obnoxiously heterosexual singers there is.)

[justsomesleddog.livejournal.com]

"One Night in Bangkok" implies a possible gender bending prostitute ("and if you're lucky then the god's a she") but that's not really what you're after.

Also, I totally thought "Least Complicated" by the Indigo Girls was explicit about it being sung to a girl, but I just checked and it isn't.

[cnoocy]

Their cover of "Juliet" is explicitly to a woman, though, as is "Tangled up in Blue". Do those count?

[tahnan]

Their cover of "Tangled Up In Blue" doesn't count for anything. (Though point taken.)

If by "Juliet" you mean the Dire Straits song "Romeo and Juliet", the "I" throughout the song isn't the singer; most of the song comprises the words of the lovestruck Romeo.

[(Anonymous)]

FWIW, in concert IG have stated that "Least Complicated" is about a young crush on a boy. Not that it matters in the least for this conversation.

oops

[lsl.livejournal.com]

that was me

Dude (Looks Like a Lady)?

[(Anonymous)]

by Aerosmith. Although, a bit like Lola*, it's not entirely clear whether the singer is on board after the reveal.

* I've always read the lyrics at the end of Lola to mean that the singer was reluctant at first, but accepting at the end.

Re: Dude (Looks Like a Lady)?

[(Anonymous)]

Also, Alejandro by Lady Gaga is supposed to be about a woman breaking up with her boyfriend because he's gay.

Re: Dude (Looks Like a Lady)?

[tahnan]

I never listened to "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" closely enough to...no, who am I kidding, I never understood Steven Tyler clearly enough to realize that the song is indeed very much about someone who picks up a man thinking he's a woman. It is interesting, too, the fact that, like Lola, the homosexuality is (at least at first) unintentional; see above and the way that same-sex relationships in popular songs often seem to use the gayness for effect.

The Lady Gaga, on the other hand, whatever it's "supposed" to be about, doesn't seem to have that in the lyrics. (It would also fall under the "Walk On the Wild Side" category, insofar as it's a discussion of someone else's same-sex relationship, as opposed to actually being an expression of one.)

[hathor]

Did Elton Motello's Jet Boy Jet Girl chart? If you're going to count Lola, I suppose you should count Aerosmith's Dude (Looks Like a Lady), which has a similar tryst interrupted by the awareness that "she was a he."

[tahnan]

The Elton Motello didn't seem to chart. And yeah, the Aerosmith might well count, though those might need to move to a separate, "not quite consensual" category.

[jordanwillow]

Tangential, and even at that, a stretch to apply much meaning to it -- but the mentions of Lady Gaga reminded me: in On the Rocks's cover of "Bad Romance," I appreciated that they kept the line, "Cuz I'm a freak bitch, baby." 13 male college students could have made a different choice.

[q-pheevr.livejournal.com]

"High School Confidential," by Rough Trade, made the top 40 in Canada, though apparently it didn't chart in the States. But it's not really about a relationship so much as it is about angry, unrequited lust from a distance.

[(Anonymous)]

My first thought was the song Michael by Franz Ferdinand, but that didn't apparently chart in the US (though it did in the UK).

d

I honestly love you

[(Anonymous)]

Was originally from the musical The Boy from Oz, and is sung by a man to a man. No gender references though, so I guess that's how Olivia Newton John did it.

There was a mention on the other site about Falsettos. There are several good love ballads there. And doesn't Rent have a few?

-nubianamy