Women and Men

I'm pretty much caught up on my friends list now, so it's time for me to go back and reply to all those old comments that I saved up.

I was listening to the Magnetic Fields song "Desert Island, and my player then switched to the demo version of They Might Be Giants' "You'll Miss Me." Since I'd already heard that one today, I skipped it, and guess what came up next? XTC's "Desert Island." I found it amusing. {g} It's always kind of weird when artists I like have unrelated songs with the same titles. I understand that Frank Black's upcoming album has one called "Seven Days," which, based on the lyrics, seems to have nothing to do with either the Cracker or Fastbacks songs of the same title. Frank and Liz Phair both have cool songs called "Headache." But those are all fairly mundane titles that different artists could easily come up with individually. What's weirder is when there's a situation like Cracker and Sloan both having songs called "I Hate My Generation." I mean, that CAN'T just be a coincidence, can it?

revme wrote an essay on gender in pop music. I commented on it here, and brought up TMBG, who seem to have no problem singing from the point of view of murderers, stalkers, disembodied heads, and grocery bags, yet apparently draw the line at females. When they covered "Maybe I Know," they changed all the gender-specific pronouns. The thing is, I can think of several covers that someone does from the perspective of the opposite gender, but they're all women singing songs written by men. I don't think Neko Case ever changes the genders when she covers male-penned songs. Kim Deal doesn't do it on the Pixies' version of Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting For You," either. And in the liner notes for the Fastbacks' Truth, Corrosion, and Sour Bisquits, Lulu Gargiulo writes, "As always with covers, Kim and I are singing about girls. It just never seemed right to change the words." I think I would probably have to agree.

Stephin Merritt also came up in the discussion, and he seems to be someone who does more weird stuff with genders than is typical for a man. Since he's gay, it's not weird to hear him sing love songs to men. On the other hand, he'll also do things like "Papa Was A Rodeo," where the female vocalist in the last chorus is apparently singing the part of the "Mike" from the first verse. He also did a cover of the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" with Future Bible Heroes, where the male and female parts were switched. And "The Night You Can't Remember" has him singing as a straight woman who had a fling with a male army officer.

I do think the public wouldn't take too kindly to a man who tried to sing a song about a serious and/or traumatic female experience. While I'm sure it would also work the other way 'round, how many uniquely male experiences are the subject of serious songs?

Speaking of genders, travspence linked to this article, which is really pretty offensive. It always pisses me off when people see women as baby factories, and it's not at all uncommon. This is hardly the worst instance of something like that happening, but it brought the issue to my mind. Some people just can't it through their heads that: 1) not everybody wants to have kids, and 2) the idea is basically a vicious circle. Let's say a woman has daughters, so then those daughters are also treated like factories who will produce even MORE daughters. Where does it end? And it's not just women. While it's nowhere near as bad for men, there's still societal pressure on them to reproduce. I'm all for making conditions better for the future population, but dehumanizing the PRESENT population to do so just strikes me as ridiculous.