Lyrics and gender
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Many JoCo songs are sung by some narrator (“I”) to some listener (“you”), and when there are romantic overtones, I think it’s generally assumed that the narrator and listener are a man and a woman, respectively. It’s fun to modify that assumption, though, either for the sake of variety or to allow a song to address your personal experiences more than it might otherwise. In many cases, the gender isn’t explicitly stated; lyrics dominated by “me” and “you” and similar neuter pronouns often leave a lot of wiggle room.
Imagine the following songs with a female narrator:
Big Bad World One (ignore the wrinkled suit and the borrowed tie and mentally transform the narrator into a lonely lesbian)
You Could Be Her (another lonely lesbian with certain feminine aspects: belle of the ball, can’t dress me up, can’t take me out)Imagine the following songs being sung to a man by another man:
Soft Rocked by Me (though “your boyfriend calls” and “a man who’s sensitive/a man who cries” leave only one of the characters with any gender ambiguity)
Skullcrusher Mountain (which gets especially transformed if it’s being sung by a gay man to a straight male “pretty thing”; I picture Tim Curry singing this song to Barry Bostwick)There are a few cases in which there’s no gender implied at all, notably Octopus, Make You Cry, and Drinking With You. This total ambiguity allows both of the traditionally assumed genders to be reversed; Make You Cry gets significantly transformed if the seducer is a woman who intends to break a man’s heart, and Drinking With You seems much less creepy if it’s about a woman who has a crush on a guy at work. Of course, all these songs work equally well with gay and lesbian couples.
Shop Vac implies certain gender stereotypes and corresponding gender roles but only has neuter pronouns; as newspapers in Massachusetts have been reporting for a few years now, straight couples don’t have a monopoly on marital unhappiness.
I think a lot of songs clearly target a specific audience; a man singing “I love you” songs is courting a female audience that wants to hear such things and can relate to (or identify with) the listener, whereas a man singing “I like women” songs appeals most to a male audience (or a bi/lesbian female audience, I suppose) that can relate to the narrator. I think JoCo sings both types, but for many of the more bizarre situations (Better?), we’re all standing on the outside looking in with amusement.
Discuss: Does the gender ambiguity of JoCo’s lyrics broaden their appeal?
Well being a heterosexual man and JoCo being a man singing the songs. I pretty much always assume it is a man singing to a woman and that assumption works well for me. So I find it hard to comment on broadening appeal. I think anyone can understand the underlying message whatever your sex or sexual orientation. To a certain extent the sex is just cosmetic to the mind of the listener so the appeal is universal regardless of ambiguity in the lyrics. But if you take the lyrics for more face value ambiguity could lend itself to greater appeal yes.
Also I have to say, Drinking With You I do not find in the slightest creepy. What may help is this (some of my handiwork), this really helps you get a feeling for where the song is coming from. I think my perspective of the song changed when I transcribed that. I think it is quite nice as the guy is clearly quite shy but likes the girl and she likes him so it is mutual and it is quite nice how they just fall together, but it is planned. I can really emphasise with the singer. I should probably get around to linking these transcriptions from the song pages at some stage, I keep thinking wait until I have done the rest of the Jawbone interviews. To be honest last time I tried there was a word I could not work out and gave up.
I think at a concert, JoCo jokingly said that he isn’t endorsing getting people you like drunk, and that it’s more sweet than it sounds.
I don’t necessarily consider Drinking With You creepy, but I get the impression that some people are at least a little uneasy about it.
my b/f did a whole analysis of gender in coulton's work. i'd been meaning to process it and put something in the questions thread in case i'd get some kind of a reaction to it from the man himself, but i dunno if i'd want him to see criticisms like that, especially in a period where he's supposedly working on new material. i would inflict harm on myself if i thought i'd prevented, deterred or delayed the production of new material. (not very serious harm, because i'm a wuss, but it's the principle of the thing. i'd have to, at least a little.) maybe i can put it here instead and we can all chew it over, instead.
I think Mark’s right. It’s like a bonus feature of JoCo’s songs that they’re specific where they need to be specific, but often they’re vague where vague produces possibilities.
Since I’m a straight male, the songs always do click with me, as they do with Ben S. I don’t even need to do that pesky lyric change when I sing the song.
my b/f did a whole analysis of gender in coulton’s work… i dunno if i’d want him to see criticisms like that
I’ve done more analysis than criticism. The original context of my analysis was just wanting to come up with a list of songs a woman could sing without needing to change lyrics. It also offers some insight into his songwriting technique. I’m sure he’s aware of the fact that the narrators of his songs often have issues (cluelessness being one of the more common ones), but it’s arguably necessary to making interesting music, and it’s often abundantly clear that he’s not really supportive of his narrators, though he’s sometimes sympathetic.
JoCo changed the gender phrasing in the cover of Bills, Bills, Bills but he didn’t change it in the You Ought to Know cover.
He didn’t change it in Bills, Bills, Bills actually.
“Good for nothing type of brother”
“Instead of a scrub like you who don’t know what a man’s about”He also left in words like “baller/balling” which implies gender stereotype, rather than change it to “flossing” which in my limited understanding of this kind of language is fairly similar (although possibly flossing is spending a man’s money, I’m not too sure.) Isn’t the whole song a gender stereotype really? That the man should pay his own way and even pay for the woman, but the woman’s money is her own?
I love both covers and especially love that he hadn’t changed it on both, as they are both songs I loved the original of and the banjoes and stuff just really make for a funny cover. No-one I play them too seems to agree with me though 🙁
For some reason I love hearing a song with specifically female lyrics being covered by a man. My husband’s metal band covered “Glorybox” by Portishead brilliantly and the crowd absolutely loved it when the singer sung “I just wanna be a woman”
iTunes play count:
Bills, Bills, Bills: 33
You Oughta Know: 24I never realised that ‘Bills, Bills, Bills’ was originally sung by a woman, and I just assumed it was literally about a brother. I’m going to have to read both sets of lyrics now, and re-listen.
Heh… just looked up ‘balling‘ on urbandictionary and I guess it has a double meaning in the original song. I never really noticed it in the JoCo song; I probably just ignored the word because I didn’t hear/understand it properly, and never got around to reading the lyrics. This ties in with the funny songs thread now, because I always thought that song was funny (perhaps influenced by the fact that I thought JoCo wrote it) but I guess the original song wasn’t meant to be.
For some reason I love hearing a song with specifically female lyrics being covered by a man. My husband’s metal band covered “Glorybox” by Portishead brilliantly and the crowd absolutely loved it when the singer sung “I just wanna be a woman”
I love listening to ‘Si j’
to me, music like mr coulton's that has a strong narrative has value no matter what kind of person or relationship is described, because it is essentially telling a story. i'll read all kinds of novels, not just ones with homosexual male protagonists. for example, take hot fuss (the killers' debut album). there's a song on there sung by brandon flowers, the chorus of which is, "andy, you're a star in nobody's life but mine." however, it's not my favorite. my favorite is, instead, 'smile like you mean it,' which essentially describes or contains a breakup between a man and a woman. i like it better primarily because the emotional themes are more resonant with me. (they're both good, though.) the strength of the story and storytelling are more important than the identities of those involved in the story, because it's still describing the same human experience we all share.
course, as i mentioned in the gender confusion thread, i've got more incentive than some to think about this question and to come down where i do on the matter, but i feel like it's not hard to do, conceptually. how does that compare with everyone else's experience? can you / people you know manage that mental flip?
alot of those 00’s garage rock revival bands have songs that people saw as homoerotic. Apparently, Franz Ferdinand has a song called “Michael”, and the Killers’ have the previously mentioned “Andy, You’re a Star” (which I think is a great song, btw). Of course, the very same album has a song about Jenny being a friend of his.
brandon flowers is… a special case. 'nuff said. from what i understand of michael, it was based on a friend of franz ferdinand's lyricist, which i really respect. an artist who can assume a very different subjectivity from their own is an artist who's willing to challenge himself to make something meaningful. course… i mean i dunno the circumstances of the song's creation, but as an outside observer, it does seem to have been influenced somewhat by all the sociocultural baggage that goes along with perceptions of homosexuality. that said, it's still an interesting effort and a catchy tune, and it'll be neat to see if they go anywhere with it from there. if i had to guess i'd say it's probably a one-off, but time will tell.
CoolJammer, I totally lump those two songs in the same category too. When three08 mentioned Andy, You’re a Star I thought automatically of Michael. Perhaps coz I have both songs on my iPod and they are two of the few non-singles off those albums that I don’t skip out of sheer curiosity.
Also Angeltastic, the song definately means the first meaning on urbandictionary, not the other two!
“To full of money,
To be rich.”I think it even extends to making a show of having lots of money, by flashing your bling around, buying expensive things etc. Its quite commonly used in a lot of R&B/rap these days.
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