The Cover Changes the Gender

Music may be a universal language, but it's nigh impossible to find a song with lyrics that apply to everyone.

Sex is quite possibly the most common barrier. Many songs (particularly ones about love or sex), are unambiguously addressed to a woman or a man, or specifically sung from a male or female perspective. While it's not uncommon for musicians to perform songs "in-character" rather than as themselves, some people can't accept an artist singing from the viewpoint of a different gender or sexual orientation than their own. So, when covering a song that was originally sung by a member of the opposite sex, what's a singer to do?

Change the lyrics, of course! Most of the time this will entail no more than switching a couple of pronouns (a man would sing "and you're having my baby" while the woman might sing it "and I'm having my baby" or change it to "and I'm having our baby") or changing "boy" to "girl" (or vice versa) but in some cases it can require a much more extensive rewrite. Another common way of doing this is giving the song a Perspective Flip - e.g. "then he kissed me" becomes "then I kissed her."

This can work well in many cases, while sometimes it can seem forced and awkward, sometimes becoming more of a distraction than it would've been if the artist had simply used the original lyrics. It can also come across as Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?, especially if the original version is particularly well known.

For obvious reasons, the trope is almost always averted by openly gay artists — and frequently averted by still-closeted ones as well. Not to mention gay artists putting a Gender Flip on the object of a song that is traditionally sung by their gender, in order to accommodate their sexuality.

It should be noted that, while changing the style of a song is allowed by ASCAP rules, changing any lyrics in a recorded cover requires obtaining permission from the song's owner. Artists have been sued for using this trope without doing so.

See also The Cover Changes the Meaning, Gender Flip, and Perspective Flip. Double Standard may or may not be involved.

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Examples:

Female perspective changed to male

• Elvis Presley performing Dusty Springfield's "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" turns out pretty well, since there's no specific pronouns used. But regardless of gender it does come off with some Ho Yay subtext.
• Tony Bennett did this all over his album For the Ladies which was entirely covers of songs made famous by female singers or written for female singers. This is averted in his live shows, however where he feels the original song is more important than the pronouns. And really trying to make "Black and Blue" about anything other than the colorism black women experience doesn't work.
• Frank Sinatra performed "The Man That Got Away" as "The Gal That Got Away." (Aside from pronouns and such, the only difference in the lyrics was changing "A one-man woman" to "A lost, lost loser.") However, this was averted in Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright's versions. (Then again, Rufus Wainwright is openly gay, so that's not surprising.)
  • Sinatra also recorded "The Girl Next Door," an alternate-pronoun version of another song originally done by Judy Garland, "The Boy Next Door" from Meet Me in St. Louis.
  • And his version of "The Lady is a Tramp", which flipped the song from being sung by the lady in question, to about her.
• Used by The Beatles ("my girl says when I kiss her lips...") in their cover of The Shirelles' "Boys." It's still full of Ho Yay, though.
  • Another Beatles example: the obscure girl group song "Devil in His Heart" was changed to "Devil in Her Heart."
  • Not to mention their cover of The Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman", which changes a song about a woman begging the postman to double-check for letters from her faraway boyfriend to a song about a man begging the postman to double-check for letters from his faraway girlfriend.
• Vanilla Fudge's cover of Sonny and Cher's "Bang Bang" is sung from the boy's perspective rather than the girl's.
• The Beach Boys remade the Crystals song "Then He Kissed Me" as "Then I Kissed Her."
  • Busted on the other hand sang "Whole Again" by Atomic Kitten when they remade the song and made it the second single in the US in 2003.
  • Male singer Magnus Uggla's Swedish version translated the lyrics literally as "Sen så kysste han mig" which gave the song a lot of Ho Yay.
• Counting Crows' cover of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" turns "a big yellow taxi took away my old man" to "a big yellow taxi took my girl away." This stands out as it is in no way clear that the "old man" in question is, in fact, a love interest. It could as easily be the artist's father.
  • Wally Whyton did this first; he changed "old man" to the slightly clumsy "wo-man".
  • Bob Dylan's cover changes the entire line to “A big yellow bulldozer took away the house and land.”
• Neil Diamond covered "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables, changing the pronouns.
• All of the various "I Kissed A Guy" covers on YouTube.
• Used for the French song "Mon amant de la Saint Jean": the original is sung from the point of view of a woman ("I loved him.") When it was covered by a male singer, the lyrics were changed to the point of view of an outsider ("She loved him.")
• Soft Cell's cover of Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love" changes the line "all a girl could give" to "all a boy can give."
• In their cover of Queen's "Sleeping on the Sidewalk", Los Lobos changed the lyric "Now I'm sleepin' like a princess" to "Now I'm sleepin' like a ki-ing". Not only did the change throw off the rhythm, but it changed the meaning of the lyric. The intent is to show that, like the protagonist of the fairy tale "The Princess in the Pea", the singer has become so spoiled that he would notice if there were a pea under his mattress.
• "Mr. Sandman" was originally recorded by Vaughn Monroe with the desired "dream" being a "she". The Chordettes' much more famous cover switches it to a "he" and describes it as having "a lonely heart like Pagliacci, and lots of wavy hair like Liberace". The Four Aces' own cover, used in Back to the Future, keeps the original feminine gender.
  • This is also the case on the Blind Guardian cover. This is made somewhat weirder in the music video, in which the band's singer is dressed in drag. Of course, according to the video the (not-so-desired) "dream" is apparently a bunch of Monster Clowns.
• An interesting variation: Damien Rice's "The Professor" is originally entirely sung by him, but there is a recording in which Lisa Hannigan sings the second half, changing the pronouns so that she is singing as the woman who the first half is talking about, so that the song is about both perspectives.
• The Jonas Brothers' cover of "Poor Unfortunate Souls" removes the singer's gender ("I'm a very busy person/And I haven't got all day.") It also replaces the gendered term "witch" with "kind of strange".
• Parodied heavily in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, in which a male singer does a cover of "Papa, Don't Preach," in which he sings "She's keeping my baby!" while pregnant showgirls pose on stage. It's every bit as sexist and disturbing as it sounds.
• Shaun Cassidy did a male version of "Da Doo Ron Ron" - "her name was Jill" instead of "his name was Bill," and so forth.
• The Doors' cover of "Alabama Song" changed "Show us the way to the next little boy" to "Show me the way to the next little girl." Originally, the song was sung from the perspective of prostitutes.
  • David Bowie covered the same song about a decade later again changing "boy' to "girl" but keeping a verse that the Doors dropped entirely.
• In Moulin Rouge!, "Like a Virgin," sung by Zidler to the Duke (who joins in later), explaining why Satine wasn't there for an arranged rendezvous.
• Bruce Springsteen wrote "Because The Night" from a male perspective, but couldn't make it fit with the rest of Darkness on the Edge of Town. He ended up giving it to Patti Smith, who recast it from a female perspective on her album Easter. Springsteen released a live concert recording of the song, however, and he included a studio version of it on The Promise, his 2010 album of Darkness outtakes. Both he and Smith have also been known to use each others' version of the lyrics when performing live on occasion.
  • Springsteen also used to sing the aforementioned Crystals song "Then He Kissed Me" in live shows as "Then She Kissed Me."
• "Bachelor(ette)", originally recorded by Björk, is covered by Voltaire with the point of view changed.
• Tobias Sammet's Avantasia's cover of "Lay All Your Love on Me" by ABBA changes the "Now every woman I see" to "Now every man that I see."
• Alan Jackson's cover of Charly McClain's 1981 hit "Who's Cheatin' Who" changes the pronouns so that it's a male singing about a female, instead of vice versa. (Yes, Charly is a female.)
• Most songs on Masaaki Endoh's cover series ENSON. These range from the still-working (Wing of Destiny), Eternal Blaze) to the... less so (God Knows, Genesis of Aquarion).
• They Might Be Giants played this straight with their cover of "Maybe I Know" by Lesley Gore (best known for "It's My Party").
• ("You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" has been covered by Rod Stewart as "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Man"
• The Sunset Takeover are a group who explicitly exist to cover female-sung pop hits into male-sung rock songs. Many, although not all (like their cover of "Circus"), use this (such as their cover of "I Kissed a Girl"). Though one song, "Poker Face," starts off like this in the first verse, averts it in the second, and uses it in the chorus... because the original song was allegedly a meditation on bisexuality.
• "Caught a Lite Sneeze" by Tori Amos as covered by Evans Blue. The lyrics were changed to "You're on my left/right side" and "I'm in the middle" instead of "Boys" which made the last line of the chorus make a lot less sense ("And you're not here." Wait, aren't "You" on my left and right sides?)
  • Averted by Voltaire when he kept the original lyrics. (Which, admittedly, came out sounding pretty gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that
• On The X Factor, Danyl Johnson did this in his cover of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from Dreamgirls, prompting a sarcastic comment concerning whether it was necessary by one of the show's judges, effectively outing him on live TV.
• The Mika version of "Poker Face" (it's all downhill from here, folks) changes the intermittent "she's got me like nobody" (fast version, referring to Lady Gaga)/"he's got me like nobody, she's got me like nobody" (slow version, referring to her lovers) to the more neutral "you've got me like nobody," and replaces some of the uses of "he" in the lyrics with "you" to match...some.
• The same for Daughtry's version, which does change the word "he" to "you" or "she" every time.
• The rock band A New Found Glory (now known as simply "New Found Glory") recorded two albums of covers of songs from movies called From the Screen to Your Stereo. The second one features a cover of "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer (which is featured in She's All That). One lyric originally goes, "You'll wear those shoes and I will wear that dress"; NFG's version appropriately changes it to "I'll wear those shoes and you will wear that dress".
  • It's worth noting that "Kiss Me" was written by a man (Matt Slocum, who writes many of Sixpence's songs).
• The Kingston Trio's cover of "Someday Soon" is gender-flipped, and makes a lot more sense once you know that.
• Westworld's cover of Alanis Morissette 's "Uninvited." It helps that the singer Tony Harnell is a high-octave singer.
• Joe plays this trope straight in his cover of Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" as "Before I Cheat"
• This happens a lot when male artists cover Lady Gaga: Greyson Chance's cover of "Paparazzi" as well as both Daughtry and You Me at Six's covers of "Poker Face" are examples.
  • And let us not forget the Artist vs. Poet cover of "Bad Romance."
• In Easyworld's cover of Olivia Newton-John's "Hopelessly Devoted to You," singer David Ford changed nouns and pronouns accordingly. However he later sang Candi Staton's "Young Hearts Run Free" in its original form, and even Carole King's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman". At least in his Easyworld work, he had a voice that could sometimes be confused for female anyway.
• Used by Forever the Sickest Kids in their cover of Taylor Swift's "Love Story."
• Boyce Avenue did a Perspective Flip of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and turned it into something heartwarming:
  "I will get your heart racing, if that's what you need, in this teenage dream tonight. Let you rest your head on me, if that's what you need, in this teenage dream tonight."
  • He's done the same thing with Rihanna's "Only Girl".
• Madness's cover of "Money, Money, Money" by ABBA changed "If I got me a wealthy man" to "If I were a wealthy man," among other changes.
• Bowling for Soup's cover of Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time" changed "boy you've got me blinded" to "girl you've got me blinded".
  • Hilariously, in their cover of Fergie's "London Bridge", the line "I'm such a lady but I'm dancing like a ho" was kept intact (although Jaret replaced "Fergie-Ferg" with his own name).
• One odd example is the Naked Eyes version of "Always Something There To Remind Me." While it was first released by a male singer (Lou Johnson), it was popularized by female singer (Sandie Shaw), and the original lyrics are completely gender neutral. However, Naked Eyes changed them slightly just to make it clear that the song is addressed to a girl.
• Played with by Mark Weigle, who invoked a Gender Flip with the subject of Tommy Tutone's "867-5309/Jenny," even though the singer stayed male. He's remarked that this changed the song's tone in more ways than its sexual orientation, as it hints that "Jenny's" Spear Counterpart "Jimmy" wrote his own number on the men's room wall.
• This Lady Gaga medley by Sam Tsui and Kurt Hugo Schneider changes any gender-specific pronouns to "you."
• Stevie B and Alexia Phillips' duet remake of Jaya's "If You Leave Me Now" gender-flips Stevie's sections.
• Meat Loaf did this on Bat Out Of Hell III, kinda. The song It's All Coming Back To Me Now, previously sung by Celine Dion, is here a duet by Meat and Marion Raven. Although Meat did say it sums up his relationship with the song's writer Jim Steinman, so, you know. Take from that what you will.
• WASP have a cover of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" in which Blackie switches the one gender-specific line to "your eyes, I say your eyes may look like hers," which makes it no longer rhyme with the next line.
• An odd case is Example covering Beyoncé's 'If I Were A Boy', which is about a changed gender perspective. The original is about a woman promising to herself that she'd be a better boyfriend than her past lover, and lamenting the difference between the hearts of men and women. Example's is about a man looking back and seeing how he ruined his relationship with a girl who faithfully loved him, and that though he promises to do better, it's in his nature to let her down.
• The Eurobeat song "Hot Vampire", originally by Go Go Girls, was gender-flipped by Go 2.
• "House of the Rising Sun" is often gender-flipped, despite the fact that doing so completely obscures the fact that the house in question is a brothel.
• Actor-singer Christian Kane covered Tracy Chapman's signature "Fast Car" on his 2011 album The House Rules, changing the subject of the song to a guy instead of a girl.
• One male cover of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" changes the refrain to "Girl, I try to have fun". Which is kind of weird, because the song was originally written and sung by a man in the first place.
• Richard Thompson's cover of Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did It Again." Spears' version makes it sound as if the singer is an innocent teen who genuinely didn't realize she was leading the guy on. Thompson's sleazy-old-man delivery makes it sound utterly hypocritical and unrepentant.
• Local H have a rock cover of Britney Spears' pop song "Toxic" that changes the line "A boy like you/should wear a warning" to "A girl like you/should wear a warning". This cover also changes the meaning of the song somewhat as well, it goes from about how a nice girl loves a bad guy to how a nice guy is being corrupted by his love of a bad girl (and she knows she is corrupting him as well.)
• Butch Walker and the Black Widows covered Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me," with pronoun swaps and a few other changes ("she wears short skirts" becomes "he wears Izods"). The gender flip also has the effect of changing the perspective from that of a Girl Next Door to a rather unfortunate Dogged Nice Guy.
  • Another version by the Yellowjackets also changed the gender...but not the lyrics, turning it into a High School Queer Romance.
• When *NSYNC covered Janet Jackson's "That's the way love goes" they only had to change the line "go deeper baby deeper" to "I'll go deeper" changing who is doing the penetrating because the pronouns were all first and second person.
• Faster Pussycat's version of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" changes the perspective (e.g., "And all the boys dreamed that they'd be your partner") and some other lyrics that the band potentially may not have understood (e.g., "As you watched yourself gavotte" is changed to "And you think you're so damn hot.")
• In Clan of Xymox's cover of "Venus", "I'm your Venus" becomes "She's my Venus".
• A variation: "The Impresario", the Overclocked Remix version of the opera sequence from Final Fantasy VI, uses a male vocalist, and therefore gives the aria to Draco instead of Maria.
• Kenny Rogers and Ronnie Milsap changed Kim Carnes and Barbra Streisand's "Make No Mistake, He's Mine" to "Make No Mistake, She's Mine" in this fashion.
• The a capella group Straight No Chaser did this version of Adele's "Rolling From the Deep" about a lover vowing payback on a treacherous, betraying ex.
• "Do Wah Diddy Diddy," originally recorded by a forgettable girl group called The Exciters, wound up this way when Manfred Mann covered it.
• The Animal's version of "House of the Rising Sun" is of the "extensive rewrite" variety, turning a song about a girl sold into prostitution into a man with a gambling problem.
• The many, many male "Let It Go" covers on YouTube, which often changing "girl" to "boy" and "And it looks like I'm the queen" to "And it looks like I'm the king".
• Halfway To Hollywood's cover of "True Love" by P!nk changes at least most of the song to being from a male perspective. The more abusive parts, like wanting to wrap your hands around your lovers neck and slap them, are referring to the unisex partner.
• Sam Tsui's cover of Demi Lovato's "Heart Attack" is a duet with a female singer. Sam's Perspective Flip parts are predominantly discussing the girl he likes instead of the lyrics being about himself.
• One Direction's and Hands Like Houses cover of "Torn" changes "I thought I saw a man brought to life..." by "I thought I saw a girl brought to life...".
• Ryan Adams covered Taylor Swift 's album 1989 in its entirety, to some critics' chagrin.
• Jonnie Edward's cover of Little Mix's "DNA" changes the male pronouns to female and changes some of the lyrics. It only changes the "And that's what makes a man" part of the chorus - into "And that's what makes me a man" - the first time it comes up though.
• Tyler Ward's cover of Taylor Swift's "Better Than Revenge" changes the love interest into a woman and the 'other' person into a man. Taylor's original lyrics of "She's better known for the things that she does on the mattress" are changed to "He's better known for the game that he spits/He never loved her". The verse near the end is also replaced with completely different lyrics. He keeps other lines intact, so it seems as if he's attacking both his ex and her new boyfriend instead of Taylor's song which was completely against the woman who is dating her ex.
• The Downtown Fiction's cover of Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass" is about a woman instead of a man. It also changes the lyrics such as "He might sell coke" to "She might drink Coke" and "I think I like him better with the fitted cap on/He ain't even gotta try to put the mac on" to "I think I like her better with the mini dress on/She don't even gotta put the skirts on."
• "Seattle" was written to be the opening theme for Here Come the Brides, a TV series about women from the East Coast being recruited to become wives for lumberjacks in the Pacific Northwest. The song was originally from the perspective of the brides ("When you find your own true love, you will know it / By his smile, by the look in his eye"), but Perry Como's more famous cover switches the genders and changes some other lyrics to separate it from the series.
• Pinmonkey's cover of Matraca Berg's "That Train Don't Run", which is about being haunted by a former lover, so that all the pronouns referring to the lover were female instead of the original's male.
• Jonathan Young's cover of "Let It Go". "Don't let them in, don't let them see/Be the gentleman you always have to be."
• Garth Brooks' "Rodeo" was originally written by Larry Bastian as "Miss Rodeo" and sung from a woman's perspective. After trying to convince Trisha Yearwood to record it, he reworked it to a gender-neutral persepective and recorded it himself.
  • Brooks also wrote "What He's Doing Now" for Crystal Gayle, and then recorded it himself as "What She's Doing Now" a few years later.
• Air Supply's cover of Jennifer Rush's "The Power of Love" changes the first lines of the refrain from "'Cause I am your lady and you are my man" to "'Cause you are my lady and I am your man".
• "Tainted Love" was originally sung by Gloria Jones in 1964. Due to several popular covers, such as Soft Cell's and Marilyn Manson's, the song is more often associated with male singers.
• "Breath of Heaven (Mary's Song)" by Amy Grant is from the perspective of Mary, the mother of Jesus, but when Vince Gill covered the song, he changed the perspective to that of Joseph with a few word changes (notably "chosen me now" to "chosen my love").
• Greg Laswell's cover of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" takes the song and turns it from an upbeat women's anthem into a slow, melodramatic melody that fits with his style, changing the parent lines so that the Father's line comes first.
• "Hindi Ako Iiyak" (I Won't Cry) is a Filipino song that talks about the messy breakup of a husband and wife, leaving their child in the care of the mother. The original 1977 version by Berna Apolinario covers the perspective of the wife (with the last two lines of the first chorus being "Ako'y pinulot mo, singdumi ng burak / Binigyang pangalan itong aking anak" [You picked me, as dirty as mud / Gave this child of mine a name]). The 1994 version by Flippers, an all-male group, meanwhile, covers the perspective of the husband and omits the last two lines of the first chorus and replaces them with the last two lines of the second chorus ("Pag-ibig na minsan na ating dinanas / Sa tulad kong putik, tama na at sapat" [A love that we have once felt / To a pile of mud like me, it is good and adequate enough]) throughout the song.
• Through Fire's cover of Roxette's "Listen to Your Heart" changes "before you tell him goodbye" to "before you say goodbye".
• “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is meant to be from the perspective of a tomboy obsessed with baseball. (Hence the line “buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks”—she’s on a date and expects her boyfriend to treat her.) You’d never guess that since the version everyone hears at ballparks not only is sung by a man, but eliminates the Framing Device which introduces “Katie Casey”.
• In the remix of Gabby Barrett's "I Hope" featuring Charlie Puth, the verse Charlie Puth sings is genderflipped so that the ex's new partner is a woman (which weakens the spite a bit: "I hope he goes broke buying you an engagement ring and then cheats" packs less punch than "I hope you go broke buying her an engagement ring and then she cheats".)
• Michael Bublé's cover of "drivers license" by Olivia Rodrigo for The BBC Radio 2 Piano Room, the lines "And you're probably with that blonde girl/Who always made me doubt/She's so much older than me/She's everything I'm insecure about" become "And you're probably with that blond guy/Who always made me doubt/He's so much smarter than me/He's everything I'm insecure about". Rick Astley's version of the same song in a later Piano Room also has "blond guy", but makes him younger.
• In The King and I, the song "Something Wonderful" is sung by Lady Thiang about her husband the King, urging Anna to be an advisor and friend to him. But operatic bass Bryn Terfel recorded the song on his Rodgers and Hammerstein album, also titled Something Wonderful. In his rendition, the song's meaning seems to change: rather than a woman explaining her love for a complicated man to another woman, it seems to depict a man explaining himself to a woman, being frank about his own flaws yet urging her to love him anyway.
• Andy Williams' cover of Barbra Streisand's "My Coloring Book", in addition to pronoun alterations, changes the line "These are the beads that I wore until she came between" into "This is the tie that I wore until he came between".
• Male covers of the Christmas classic "Santa Baby" generally go in two directions: the straight version "Santa Buddy," which has been roundly mocked for removing all flirty undertones, and the gay version "Santa Daddy," which said to hell with undertones.
• Corey Cox's cover of Deana Carter's "Strawberry Wine," a Love Nostalgia Song about a woman looking back on her first intimate relationship at the age of 17. He keeps the lyrics largely the same, just flips the perspective so he's singing about her, rather than her singing about herself. Which makes the song come off less like a woman discussing moving away from being The Ingenue and more like More Experienced Chases the Innocent. Particularly since it keeps the chorus the same, in which the girl's youth is emphasized ("Like strawberry wine/Seventeen/The hot July noon/Saw everything"); in the original, this just adds to her portrayal of herself as The Ingenue, while the gender flip in the cover makes it seem more like it's emphasizing the Unequal Pairing of him being both college-aged and working for her grandfather.

Male perspective changed to female

• Allison Iraheta's cover of Michael Jackson's "Give In To Me".
• Anne Murray, a country-pop crooner from Canada, was quite adept at this during the 1970s and early 1980s, with at least two big hits fitting this trope to her credit:
  • "He Thinks I Still Care," where the male perspective was changed to female (for Murray), and then back again when another man covered the song. Written by Dickey Lee (best known for "Patches" and the country version of the tearjerker hit "Rocky"), the original hit version came in 1962 from country legend George Jones. In 1974, Murray recorded her cover and released it as part of the double A-sided single (along with another cover, this one being the Beatles' "You Won't See Me"). Then, in 1976, it was shifted back to male when Elvis Presley's version was the B-side to his hit, "Moody Blue." All three versions went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, the only known time three versions of the same song topped any of Billboard's major singles charts (Hot 100, country and soul/R&B/hip-hop singles charts).
  • In 1980, Murray changed the gender perspective of The Monkees' 1967 pop hit "Daydream Believer" and had a huge country and pop smash hit.
  • Her 1972 hit, "Cotton Jenny" was told as a third-person narrative (example, "And she waits by the door/Oh Cotton Jenny, he's sore.") to accommodate the gender issue. Gordon Lightfoot had written it in first person. ("Oh Cotton Jenny, I'm sore.")
• Louise Mandrell, the younger sister of Country Music Hall-of-Famer Barbara Mandrell, had a string of hits in the mid-1980s, including a gender-changed cover of "Some Girls Have All the Luck," the hit made most famous by Rod Stewart in 1984. Her version? "Some Guys Have All the Luck," which became a top 25 country hit in early 1986.
• The aria "Sposa, son disprezzata" from Vivaldi's opera Bajazet, which was about a wife raging over her husband's infidelity. The original libretto, "Sposa, non mi conosci", from Geminiano Giacomelli's opera "Merope", was originally sung by the husband, who was denying his infidelity.
• The Cowboy Junkies cover of The Beatles' "Run for Your Life" does this, to mixed results: It does jarringly break the rhyme scheme at times ("you'd better run for your life if you can little boy / hide your head in the sand, little boy / catch you with another woman, that's the end"), but it's still sort of interesting to see their Obsession Song receive a Gender Flip.
  • Nancy Sinatra's version of the same song changes quite a few lyrics in order to fit her gender.
• Ally Hill's cover of Girls/Girls/Boys (originally by Panic at the Disco) does this: While the original is about a boy who isn't sure weather the girl he loves is a lesbian or bisexual (in which case he would have a chance) Ally takes the perspective of the girlfriend of said girl. While the male singer doesn't want to date the girl only to save her reputation Ally as her girlfriend slightly changes the lyrics and claims she doesn't want to continue to hide their relationship to save her reputation.
• Sarah Brightman's genderflipped version of "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera is a tad creepy, simply because Miss Brightman was the original Christine in that musical.
• Alison Moyet's cover of "Windmills of Your Mind."
  • Also, Dusty Springfield's cover.
• Kate Rusby has covered a few folk songs that were written from a male perspective. And she wrote one ("Game of All Fours") with a male narrator.
• Bonnie Raitt turned Skip James's "I'd rather be the devil than be that woman's man" into "that man's woman."
  • She also pulled a Perspective Flip on Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Pride and Joy": I'm his sweet little baby / He's my little lover boy
• Ashley Tisdale's cover of "Never Gonna Give You Up" replaced the lyrics "Any other guy" with "Any other girl," which doesn't really rhyme with "I."
• The Bow Wow Wow cover of "I Want Candy" is a straight-up gender flip, but it does make the line "I like candy when it's wrapped in a sweater" sound a bit odd— as the Sexy Sweater Girl trope is Always Female.
• DEV2.0 flipped the genders on Devo's "Girl U Want" to result in "Boy U Want." Several lyrics was also altered to the nature of the crush sound more precocious, as the original had connotations of sexual arousal.
• Heart's cover of "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin changes some pronouns from third-person to second-person ("started telling your friends you gonna be a star") and others from first-person to second-person ("tell you no lies, make you a happy man").
• In the Robots in Disguise cover of "You Really Got Me," all references to "girl" (e.g., "Girl, you really got me now") are changed to "boy".
• Sheryl Crow's cover of Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine" changes she/her to he/his ("he's got a smile that it seems to me...").
  • As does her cover of the Cat Stevens song "The First Cut is the Deepest".
• On Quiet Night, Diana Krall sings "The Boy From Ipanema".
  • Which is still way better than the grammar bending in Astrud Gilberto's version "But each day when she walks to the sea, she looks straight ahead, not at ... he."
  • She actually sings "not at hiiiiim." It's more evident on the album version (same take, but on the single the vocals are cut off by the repositioned saxophone solo).
  • Petula Clark also performs "The Boy From Ipanema" on The Muppet Show.
• The Bangles' cover of Jules Shear's "If She Knew What She Wants" changed the perspective from first person ("I'd be giving it to her") to third person ("He'd be giving it to her").
• "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" was originally written from the male point of view by songwriter Robert Hazard before Cyndi Lauper recorded it. Being sung from the perspective of a man turns the song into a slightly more sexist one, coming off as more an ode to fast women instead of an empowering jingle about a girls' night out.
  • The song "I Drove All Night" was originally written for Roy Orbison. He recorded it in 1987, but it went unreleased until 1991, three years after Roy died. Cyndi Lauper covered the song in 1989 because she liked the idea "of a woman driving, of a woman in control". Somewhat downplayed in that there were no pronouns to change, although the protagonists in their respective music videos match the gender of the performer^*Cyndi does the job herself in her video. Jason Priestly is the one driving in the Orbison video, since it was made years after Roy had passed away., while their love interest is the opposite.
• The Cardigans on Tom Jones' cover of Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House", Nina Persson is now the "...ordinary girl, burning down the house".
• The Girls Aloud cover of "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus flips the gender, and breaks the rhyme scheme. "Dick" rhymes with "kick". "Bitch" doesn't.
  • The Scala cover, on the other hand, averts this.
• Sinéad O'Connor's cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" does this indirectly; instances of "boy" are changed to "girl" and vice-versa, which in combination with the change in performer shifts the perspective from that of a man pining after a recently departed ex-girlfriend to a woman pining after a recently departed ex-boyfriend.
• Pandora's Box's recording of "It Just Won't Quit," a song originally written for Meat Loaf (their version was released first, though). It actually works out quite well, changing 'There used to be every hope in the world' to (slant) rhyme with 'girl', to: "There used to be every hope, every joy."
• Reba McEntire did this twice:
  • "Cathy's Clown," a cover of the Everly Brothers' 1960 No. 1 pop hit, was changed from first to McEntire's sympathetic, third-party observation.
  • "Ring On Her Finger, Time on Her Hands," covering Lee Greenwood's top 10 country single from 1982. The song's lyrics were changed to first person, with McEntire taking the role of the long-neglected housewife who is forgotten about by her frequently absent husband, and making the decision to turn to another man to fulfill her sexual needs. Oddly, even though this meant changing the hook to "Ring on My Finger, Time on My Hands", it still kept the original title on the album and on the charts.
• In Kirsty Mac Coll's cover of Billy Bragg's "A New England" the first verse changes "People ask when will I grow up to be a man/But all the girls I loved at school are already pushing prams" to "People ask when will I grow up to understand/Why all the girls I knew at school are already pushing prams" and "I put you on a pedestal, they put you on the pill" to "I put you on a pedestal, you put me on the pill". The line in the chorus "I'm just looking for another girl" becomes "Are you looking for another girl?" She also wrote a third verse unique to her version - these days Billy Bragg often adds her verse to his own in tribute, but doesn't change the pronouns.
• Lydia Lunch's version of Classic IV's "Spooky" changes the lines "spooky little girl" and "when a fella looks at you" to "spooky little boy" and "when a girl looks at you." Same goes for Vicious Pink's version. (Daniel Ash's version also uses the "when a girl looks at you" variation while keeping the "spooky little girl" line to add a bit of Les Yay.)
• Shirley Bassey's cover of Ben E. King's "I Who Have Nothing" is another perspective-flipped example. Her cover of George Harrison's "Something" swaps "she" for "he".
• Used in Cat Power's version of "Satisfaction", but averted in Björk and PJ Harvey's version.
  • Britney Spears' cover changes the line "how white my shirts can be" to "how tight my skirts should be", and cuts out the verse about trying to get a girl.
• Toni Basil's famous cover of Racey's "Kitty" was changed to "Mickey". The rest of the lyrics remain the same, so the cover retains the line "Anyway you want to do it, I'll take it like a man". It also rhymes "Mickey" with "pity" and "pretty".
• Joss Stone covered The White Stripes' "Fell in Love With a Girl" as "Fell in Love With a Boy," despite the fact that it doesn't fit with the song's rhyme scheme.
• Tiffany covered the Beatles with "I Saw Him Standing There."
• Blondie's more famous version of "The Tide Is High" by The Paragons does this ("I'm not the kind of man that gives up just like that" becomes "I'm not the kind of girl...", for instance)
  • For that matter, Denis is a cover of a song originally called Denise.
• Conway Twitty's "Lost Her Love on Our Last Date" became "Lost His Love on Our Last Date" when Emmylou Harris covered it.
• Lady Gaga's version of "Viva La Vida" leaves the gender the same in the first few verses, but she eventually screams "who would ever want to be...QUEEN!" and even changes "St. Peter" to "St. Mary" at a few points. Lady Gaga being Lady Gaga, these are some of the more normal changes.
• Both Ellie Goulding and Lady Gaga did this when covering Elton John's "Your Song", by imagining being "a woman who makes potions in a travelling show".
• Aretha Franklin's Signature Song "Respect" was originally written and performed by Otis Redding. The original is from the perspective of a man (possibly a touring musician) who doesn't mind if his lady fools around with other people while he's away but wants her to show him respect when he comes home. Franklin turned the song into a feminist anthem, changing the lyrics to be from the perspective of a lady who is faithful^note (The original lyric "You can do me wrong, honey, if you wanna / But only do me wrong, honey, while I'm gone" was changed to "I ain't gonna do you wrong, while you're gone / I ain't gonna do you wrong, 'cause I don't wanna") and supports her man, demanding to be given the respect she's due.
• Odetta Sings Dylan. Most of the political stuff is gender-neutral, but some of the personal songs needed some pronoun tweaking.
• Minor Contemporary Christian example: Near the end of DC Talk's career, they released a song called "In the Light" which would be covered several years later by Sara Groves. For obvious reasons, a couple of lines were slightly changed, but otherwise remains the same ("I am the king of excuses" changing to "queen of excuses"; "...That I'm still a man in need of a Savior" substitutes "girl" for "man")
• In her cover of "You Can Leave Your Hat On", the magnificent Etta James tells her man to "take off (his) vest" instead of the original "dress". It rhymes very neatly with the following "yes, yes, yes"es.
• The popular George Michael Christmas song "Last Christmas" has been covered by many. When a female artists covers it, the lyric is almost always changed from "a man on a cover" to "a girl on a cover but you tore her apart". Except for Michie Tomizawa singing it as Sailor Mars in another one of the Christmas CDs for Sailor Moon, who left it as is entirely in broken English.
• There is a cover version of Luis Miguel's song "La Incondicional" by Edith Marquez. Since articles, adjectives and nouns are gendered in Spanish pretty much all of the song is changed while remaining the same; the most notable change however, is the line "tu cuerpo de mujer" for "mi cuerpo de mujer."
• All female covers "(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Wanna Be Right" change the point of view from the cheating husband to the other woman.
• Across the Universe (2007) featured a cover of The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" sung by a woman. Only it was about being a lesbian.
  • Cayman Ilika's cover played this trope straight, replacing "you'll let me be your man" with "you're going to be my man".
• Sunday Sharpe covered Paul Anka's "(You're) Having My Baby" as "I'm Having Your Baby".
• An unusual partial example: the country music song "Don't Go Out" was written and originally recorded by the duo Foster & Lloyd from a male perspective. In 1990, Tanya Tucker covered the song as a duet with T. Graham Brown, which resulted in her verses getting gender-flipped but Brown's keeping the original male perspective.
• Scala & Kolacny Brothers' cover of Puddle of Mudd's "She Hates Me" (which, of course, became "He hates me)"
• "Fire," written by Bruce Springsteen and originally recorded by Robert Gordon, was made much more famous by The Pointer Sisters who sang it with a Perspective Flip. This has the happy result of reducing the Unfortunate Implications of the original - the man saying "you say you don't like it, but I know you're a liar" is considerably creepier than the woman admitting as much for herself.
• "Different Drum" was written by Michael Nesmith and contained this verse: "Well I feel pretty sure you'll find a man/who can take a lot more than I ever could or can...". When Linda Ronstadt recorded it, the whole verse was eliminated, probably because there was no way to change "man" to "woman" without changing the rhythm/syllables.
• Most vocal versions of "I Can't Get Started" were for male singers (the original was written for Bob Hope). Ira Gershwin created a female version for Nancy Walker.
  • Speaking of Gershwin, there are male versions of "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "The Girl I Love."
• Corrinne Bailey Rae's cover of Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" changes "them other boys they don't know how to act" to "them other girls...", but leaves the "come here, girl" parts alone (probably to appeal to a certain demographic).
• Judy Collins covered The Incredible String Band's "First Girl I Loved" as "First Boy I Loved."
• Alanis Morissette's cover of The Police's "King of Pain" for her MTV Unplugged' album. Notably, even though she changes the lyrics to "but it's my destiny to be the queen of pain", the title remains the same.
• Twisted Sister's cover of "Leader of the Pack" reverses both the singer's identity and the relationship's outcome, having Betty die in a car crash rather than Jimmy wipe out fatally on his motorcycle.
• Savage Garden's songs are for the the most part very much gender neutral so long as it's not a song with a plot (such as To the Moon and Back and Two Beds and a Coffee Machine). Truly Madly Deeply was covered by Cascada.
• A rather neat version, the female cover of "Kiss from a Rose" as sung by Katherine Jenkins. "There is so much a man can tell you...," becomes "There is so much someone can tell you...,".
• For Mamma Mia!, the song "Does Your Mother Know" is sung in a female perspective, while the original ABBA version is in a male perspective.
• Rockell's version of "The Dance" changes "king" to "queen", which interrupts the rhyming.
• Billie Holiday and other female singers have done "She's Funny That Way" as "He's Funny That Way," though the earliest female versions are "I'm Funny That Way."
• In Donna Summer's version of "MacArthur Park", "Spring was never waiting for us, girl" became "Spring was never waiting for us, dear".
• Amii Stewart's cover version of Eddie Floyd's "Knock on Wood" has her telling the partner rather than herself to knock on wood. Mary Griffin's version, featured in the film 54, leaves the lyrics unchanged.
• Max A Million's and Unique II's covers of Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride" both used a female singer, and thus "she said" became "you said", and the bridge changed from "another girl like you" to "another boy/guy like you".
• Dusty Springfield's cover of "Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa".
• David Guetta and Akon's "Sexy Bitch" was covered by Leah, who changed any instance of female pronouns into first-person pronouns (including changing "Yes, I can see it" to "Yes, boys can see me"). So it's changed from the male singer talking about a girl he finds sexy to a female singer bragging about how sexy she is.
• Tori Amos did an entire Concept Album (Strange Little Girls) based on this trope.
• Cristina's cover of "Drive My Car" gives the song a Perspective Flip, which really only requires the changing of a few lines - For instance "Asked a girl what she wanted to be" becomes "He asked me 'Girl, what do you want to be?'".
• Sarah Brightman's cover of "Scarborough Fair" changes "she once was a true love of mine" to "he was once a true love of mine."
• Alina's version of "When You Leave" (aka "Ma Ya Hi" aka "Numa Numa" aka "Dragostea din Tei") replaced "Picasso" with her own name and "your duke" with "your babe".
• Dandoo's cover of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)'' perspective flips and completely changes the verse lyrics.
• In recent years, since Ashley Tisdale did a cover of "Kiss The Girl" in 2006, it's become common for that song to be sung by women. Before that, in The '90s it was a rarely covered song and it was done by men, but look on YouTube and you'll find cover songs of "Kiss The Girl" done by women outnumber those done by men by about 20 to 1. It's gotten to where people forget that it was sung by Sebastian and not Ariel in The Little Mermaid. The unusual thing is, the words entirely remain the same, but the connotations completely change, when sung by a man it's always a third person urging to just follow his heart and kiss the girl he loves, when sung by a woman it becomes a not-so-subtle hint to the guy she likes that she's growing impatient with his hesitation.
• Sammi Smith's "Help Me Make It Through The Night" from 1971 was originally intended to be sung by a man.
• Female covers of "Save the Last Dance for Me", such as Dolly Parton's version, generally change "the man" to "the girl" or "the one".
• When Swedish jazz singer Monica Zetterlund wanted to cover Olle Adolphson's song "Trubbel", he was initially dubious, according to her autobiography. The song is about a man whose girlfriend is unfaithful, and in one verse he approaches his rival "with a hammer hidden in my coat." Adolphson thought that a woman wouldn't do that, but Zetterlund convinced him differently.
• Cher's cover of Marc Cohn's "Walking in Memphis" changes the singer's gender from male to female, but also the bar pianist's gender in the bridge from female to male.
• Roseanne Cash's cover of The Beatles' "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party" changes the song's perspective from male to female.
• Cimorelli's cover of Justin Bieber's Boyfriend is this. The cover mostly sounds like what a girl promises to the guy she likes, anything she can be if he was her boyfriend.
• Both Shawn Colvin and MYMP have covered "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" by The Police as "Every Little Thing He Does Is Magic"
• A rather extensive example exists in Bazooka Girl's cover of Eurobeat song "Bazooka Man". The original was a rather masculine song about destroying stuff and sleeping with women, while the female cover massively reworks the song to make it more feminine. The change is so drastic that there's little similarity left between the two songs outside of the chorus.
• "This Guy's In Love With You," written by Bacharach and David, was first recorded by Herb Alpert and was a #1 hit in 1968. Dionne Warwick's cover "This Girl's In Love With You" charted the next year.
• "Blues in the Night" was originally written for a movie of the same title to be sung by a male prisoner about women with lines like "a woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave you to sing the blues in the night." Rosemary Clooney and Dinah Shore later recorded versions where a woman is being warned about men by her mother. The song's second line in this version is "when I was in pigtails" instead of "when I was in kneepants."
• The Les Luthiers song "Ya no te amo Raúl" ("I don't love you anymore, Raúl") revolves around Daniel Rabinovich trying to do this to a song on the fly... and failing miserably.
• Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" was originally by a British band called Arrows and sung by a man about a woman. The way Arrows sang it seemed rather dirtier, even though the words aside from the pronouns were the same.
  • A significant portion of Jett's career is this trope.
• Sally Anthony's cover of "Turn the Page" does this, along with a Perspective Flip. "The girl you knew the night before" becomes "the men I knew the night before." In fact, while Bob Seger approved of the cover, he refused to let her release it officially because she ended up changing too much of the song.
• "She's My Rock," a hit for George Jones, contains the line, "She played her game with many, many men." When Brenda Lee gender-flipped it as "He's My Rock," she changed the line to, "He played his game with many women friends," to preserve the scan and most of the rhyme.
• When Marie Osmond covered Lee Greenwood 's "God Bless the USA" in a television performance, she changed the opening lines to reflect her gender. Instead of:
  If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd worked for all my life
  And I had to start again with just my children and my wife

  the lines became:

  If tomorrow all the things were gone I had when I began
  And I had to start again with just my children and my man
• Straight No Chaser, with guest lead vocalist Sara Bareilles did this with the The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." Making the song about a woman who dumps a Nice Guy, only to regret losing him when she sees said Nice Guy in the arms of another (who better appreciates him).
• "21st Century (Digital Boy)" by Bad Religion was turned by Groove Coverage into "21st Century Digital Girl". They also updated the lyrics to mention recent trends like Botox.
• The Go- Gos changed the line "Two girls for every boy" to "Two boys for every girl" in their cover of Jan and Dean's "Surf City".
• A subtle example occurs in Chantal Kreviazuk's version of John Denver's "Leaving On A Jet Plane": Since it's not traditional for women to give an engagement ring to men when marrying, "When I come back, I'll bring your wedding ring" becomes "When I come back, I'll wear your wedding ring".
  • Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary also sang "wear" rather than "bring."
• "Linda On My Mind," a country classic from Conway Twitty, became "Jimmy On My Mind" when Loretta Lynn covered it.
• The All Saints version of "Under the Bridge" changes the Red Hot Chili Peppers' line "she's my companion" to "he's my companion". This seems particularly unnecessary when you consider that "she" is a city.
• AG's cover of "I Saw Her Standing There" by The Beatles turns it into a tender electropop ballad about two teenage girls falling in love with each other.
• Steeleye Span's take on the folk song "Van Deiman's Land" (not the U2 one) about a gang of poachers being Sentenced to Down Under. There are multiple versions where the third or fourth verse begins with some version of "We had a female comrade, Susan Summers was her name". Steeleye's version begins "I am a girl from England, Susan Summers is me name", and displaces the third line of the verse, in which Susan gets married, to the end of the song.
• Pixie Lott's cover of "Caravan of Love" by The Isley Brothers (and previously Covered Up by The Housemartins) transposes "I'm your brother/She's my sister" to "I'm your sister/He's my brother".
• The first single released by the Carpenters was a song by The Beatles, "Ticket to Ride". It was a simple gender swap for Karen Carpenter: "The boy that's driving me mad...", "He's got a ticket to ride, and he don't care...", etc.
• An Older Than Radio example: The semi-autobiographic poem In einem kühlen Grunde by German romantic poet Josef von Eichendorff tells of the near-suicidal dejection of a man after being betrayed by his sweetheart, who lives in a mill in the titular cool vale. It was set to music by Friedrich Glück in 1814 and soon became a favourite both for professional singers and for people at home, including women working in the kitchen. It can be sung both from the original perspective of a man betrayed by a woman and - with minor changes of text - from the perspective of a woman betrayed by a man. This is facilitated by the fact that the musical version generally leave out the third and fourth of the five verses, in which the narrator at first reacts by wanting to go into the world as a wandering minstrel or to join the army and go to war.
• In Darby O Gillandthe Little People, Sean Connery sings "My Pretty Irish Girl". Shortly after, Janet Munro sings the same song referring to the same Irish Girl. Right at the end, both sing the song, with Connery ending on "Girl" and Munro ending on "Boy."
• Within Temptation's cover of "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who changes all instances of "man" to "girl".
• Kate Nash sung a cover of Black Kid's "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You". The original song has the lyrics "You are the girl that I've been dreaming for ever since I was a little girl" however it's an inside joke. Kate's version is clearly about a woman with a case of unrequited love for a taken woman. Kate did change a few lyrics in the chorus a little however it's not a gender related change.
• In Prom Queen's take on Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game", "this girl is only gonna break your heart" becomes "this love is only gonna break your heart".
• Outlander's opening song is Robert Louis Stevenson's poem "Sing Me a Song of a Lad That Is Gone" (written to fit the tune of "The Skye Boat Song") but changes it to "Sing me a song of a lass that is gone", probably because the protagonist is a woman.
• LeAnn Rimes's Lady & Gentlemen album is an entire album built around singing typically male-narrated country songs from a female perspective.
• Shelley Fabares did a cover of the Freddy Cannon classic "Palisades Park", a song about a man describing the fun times he had with a girl he met at the titular park, where the song was sung from the perspective of the girl in question.
• Samantha Fish's version of Ted Taylor's "Somebody's Always Trying" changes the girlfriend people keep trying to steal into a boyfriend. Most of the changes were simply pronouns ("her" to "him"), but the line "every time I look around there's some new guy, filling up my baby's head with some kind of lie" becomes "every time I look around there's some new tease, filling up my baby's head with all kind of 'please.'"
• Phyllis Dillon's cover of "Love The One You're With" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young changes the the line There's a girl, right next to you/And she's just waiting for something to do to Well there's a boy sittin' right next to you/And he's just waiting for something to do.
• Arlene Harden did a cover of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" titled "Lovin' Man (Oh, Pretty Woman)", which replaced the title phrase with "Lovin' man" throughout.
• The protagonist of the novelty song "The Thing" is usually male, but the song was covered by female singers Teresa Brewer and June Carter. Both covers made it clear that the protagonist was a woman in their versions.
• The Fiery Furnaces' "Single Again" is an adaptation of a traditional folk song that's usually sung from a male POV - vocalist Eleanor Friedberger sings it with all the female pronouns turned to male. This ends up overlapping into The Cover Changes the Meaning - it's usually performed as a humorous Misogyny Song, but in their version it seems like the narrator has been through multiple abusive relationships. In particular, the lyric "he beat me, he banged me, he swore he would hang me" comes off as unsettling, whereas in the traditional male POV version it was intended to be funny.
• INOJ's cover of Ready for the World's "Love You Down" changes "girlfriend" to "boyfriend".
• "Triad" was originally a Cut Song from The Byrds' Notorious Byrd Brothers album, then David Crosby gave it to Jefferson Airplane to record - the original lyrics had a male narrator suggesting a two woman, one man threesome, while the Jefferson Airplane version, sung by Grace Slick, changes some pronouns to make it two men and a woman. Interestingly, their version still mentions "your long hair flowing"; since both versions were recorded in The '60s, that description could apply to someone of either gender.
• In Stars on 54's cover of "If You Could Read My Mind" for the film 54, "the hero would be me" becomes "the hero would be you". Averted in the 2001 cover by Aurora (UK) feat. Marcella Detroit.
• Vicious Pink did this with Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire", e.g. "too much love drives a girl insane".
• In the Quantum Leap episode "Miss Deep South" Sam as a female beauty pagent contestant sings "Great Balls of Fire" with the lyric "too much love drives a woman insane" while dressed like Carmen Miranda.
• The Masked Singer: Season 3 contestant Bear who is Sarah Palin in disguise sings Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" changing the lyrics to woman admiring the butt of a man.
• The Belles, an all-female Garage Rock band from Miami, covered "Gloria", best known for the Them version, as "Melvin". Openly Played for Laughs, both because "Melvin" was a stereotypically nerdy name and because there's no attempt to stretch the name out to three syllables.
• There are many variations on "Delia's Gone", but Rhubarb Whiskey covered the Johnny Cash version- except that the narrator was a Psycho Lesbian instead of a Crazy Jealous Guy.
• Walk the Moon's "Shut Up and Dance" had the singer's love interest changed from female to male so it could be sung by the female Brianna Yde for School of Rock.
• Pat Benatar:
  • The original version of "No You Don't", as performed by Sweet^note and written by the record producers/songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, contains the lyric "Well, you think you've got my life in your hands, but I'm a man, I'm a man, and I've got my own plans, I'm a man". Benatar's cover version (from In the Heat of the Night) changes this to make it non-gender-specific: "[…] but you don't understand that I've got my own plans, my own plans".
  • Overlapping with What Could Have Been, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" was originally written from a male point of view. When Benatar got the song, only the line "before you put another notch in your lipstick case" had to be switched and became "before I put another notch in my lipstick case". This added the interesting implication that the female singer has a history of warding off suitors and might be a bit of a heartbreaker herself.
• The Crystals' song "He's a Rebel", which describes a woman's devotion and praise towards a boyfriend with a reputation for being an unruly outcast, originated as a song by Gene Pitney titled "She's a Rebel", which was completely eclipsed by The Crystals' version of the song.
• In the Danish 1970s pop song "Boom Boom" by Mabel, a man goes the doctor because he feels ill with heavy heartbeat and other symptoms. In the chorus of the song, the doctor says "hjertet hamrer løs, når man er forelsket i en pige" ("the heart beats fast when you're in love with a girl"). When the Danish Teen Pop group Small*Talk, which consists of two (presumably straight) teen girls, covers the song, the doctor's line in the chorus is changed to "hjertet hamrer løs, når man er forelsket, lille pige" ("the heart beats fast when you're in love, little girl").
• The song "Sister Moon", by Sting, quotes Creator/William Shakespeare's Sonnet 130—"My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun. . ." When Vanessa Williams covered the song, she included the quote, but changed "mistress" to "lover" and replaced "she/her" with "he/him".
• Bette Bright's 1981 cover of Prince's "When You Were Mine" swaps all the genders. "I know that you're going with another guy" became "I know that I'm going with another guy", and now she spends her time "following her whenever she's with you". As noted below, a later, far more famous cover didn't bother with this.
• Several male artists recorded Burt Bacherach and Hal David's "Kentucky Bluebird/Message to Martha", before being Covered Up by Dionne Warwick's "Message to Michael".
• The Vengaboys, who despite their name have a female lead singer, gender-flipped the Walkers' "Sha-La-La-La-La".
• "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof was gender-flipped into "Rich Girl" by reggae duo Louchie Lou & Michie One, then their version was in turn covered by Gwen Stefani.
• When Texas were in The BBC Radio 2 Piano Room, they did a version of "Would I Lie to You?" by Charles And Eddie with Sharleen Spiteri switching every "girl" to "boy".

Multiple flipflops

• "(She/He) Called Me Baby," a Harlan Howard-penned song that was recorded by multiple artists of both genders. As "She Called Me Baby," the most famous version is by country singer Charlie Rich; when he took this song - originally recorded in the mid 1960s - to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in December 1974, it gave him his fifth No. 1 song in one calendar year (and sixth within 12 months), a record that, shared with Eddy Arnold (1947-1948), stands today. As "He Called Me Baby," Patsy Cline recorded a well-known version - one month before she was involved in a fatal plane crash - that gets lots of oldie airplay on classic country stations, and R&B Candi Staton (best known for her 1976 pop-disco hit "Young Hearts Run Free") had a top 10 R&B hit with the song in 1971.
• Sufficiently old folk songs can go either way. "Black Is The Colour" by... whichever bloke it was originally by has been covered by Cara Dillon, who left it straight, and The Corrs, who flipped it.
• "Me And Bobby McGee" (Kris Kristofferson, Roger Miller, Janis Joplin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash). It helps that the titular character's name works perfectly well for both men and women.
• "House of the Rising Sun" is an interesting case. Originally written from the perspective of a woman who falls for a drunken gambler and ends up becoming a prostitute, many male artists have altered it to be from the gambler's perspective. Some versions, however, juggle the narration between both characters, and some male artists like Bob Dylan averted this trope altogether and used the original female lyrics.
  • No one is sure which version came first, or even who made the first version. Another variation is the version by The Animals, which is probably one of the best known, and is actually from the view of the gambler's son.
• "(He/She) Thinks I Still Care" has been covered by several country music artists of both sexes, with the title getting changed accordingly.
• "I Heard It through the Grapevine" is another odd case. Originally written by Motown hitmakers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, it was first recorded by the Miracles and the Isley Brothers, but never released. The gender was changed for Gladys Knight's version, which was released and became a number one single... only to be Covered Up a year later by Marvin Gaye's iconic recording, which used the original male lyrics.
  • Subsequently semi-flipped, semi-averted by The Slits, who retain the male lyrics for added weirdness.
• "I'm Just Wild About Harry" (which is still remembered mainly due to Looney Tunes), is interchangeable with "I'm Just Wild About Mary."
• "Scarborough Fair" (aka "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme"). Depending on the choice of pronouns, the lyrics can be addressed to a man or a woman, or the singer can switch halfway through so that both lovers asking each other to do various impossible tasks.
• Many old songs from musicals were written to be sung by characters of both genders, by means of a second chorus or a reprise:
  • "Hey There" from The Pajama Game is one example of this; the female version preserves a rhyme by substituting "like a mother" for "like a brother."
  • "Embraceable You" is sung by both members of the leading romantic couple of Girl Crazy. The male phrasing is inverted in the girl's refrain: "Don't be a naughty papa / Come to baby, come to baby, do."
  • "There's No Reason In The World" in Milk and Honey is sung by Phil to Ruth in the first act, and reprised by her with considerably altered lyrics during a long soliloquy.
  • In Damn Yankees, "A Man Doesn't Know" is naturally reprised by Meg as "A Woman Doesn't Know."
  • In Closer Than Ever, the main lyric of "She Loves Me Not" is sung as "He Loves Me Not" by a woman—and then by another man.
• The verse of "I've Got A Crush On You" was written as a boy-girl duet; male solo versions that don't omit the verse change the pronouns in "you're my big and brave and handsome Romeo," while female solo versions may change "Annabels and Lillians" to "Tom and Dick and Harrys" (which breaks the rhyme with "millions").
• Older Than Television: "How'd You Like To Spoon With Me" was originally from a Jerome Kern play that was meant to be a duet between a man and a woman, but as most of the sung is either a duet or sung by the woman, it wasn't a stretch to remove the male part and just sing everything else. Corrinne Morgan did it in her cover in 1906.
• Sonny Charles & The Checkmates' "Black Pearl" was originally about a love affair with a black woman (when segregation was the norm), but Kandystand's version turns it into a lesbian relationship, also resulting in The Cover Changes the Meaning. Their cover of Gary Moore's "Empty Rooms", however, does a straight gender flip.
• In On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, "She Wasn't You" was originally Edward's song, but the show was revised to have Daisy sing it too with different lyrics as "He Wasn't You." The lyrics were rewritten again for Barbra Streisand to perform in the movie as "He Isn't You."
• The Chipmunk Adventure features a cover of "The Girls of Rock and Roll"; they changed every other repetition of the title to "The Boys of Rock and Roll", so the Chipmunks and Chipettes could have a battle-of-the-sexes song.
• Taylor John Williams performed a Softer and Slower Cover of Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" on an episode of the US version of The Voice - On the one hand, his version does away entirely with most lines that are explicitly from the female perspective (which is probably also related to it being a Talent Show version). On the other hand, it did still retain the bridge - "Boys only want love when it's torture / don't say I didn't warn ya" reads a little differently when sung by a man.
  • Similarly, Kalvin Jarvis's cover of Dua Lipa's New Rules. He mostly flips the pronouns, but switches to the perspective flip for one line: "You're only gonna wake up in his bed" becomes "She's only gonna wake up in your bed". The next line is back to a simple pronoun change, keeping the narrator's, well, position the same to preserve the wordplay.
• Information Society's cover of ABBA's "Lay All Your Love on Me" flips the perspective so "Every woman you see is a potential threat", but the cover by Erasure, whose singer is gay, leaves the lyric unchanged.
• Netzwerk's version of Real Life's "Send Me an Angel" keeps the line "If a girl walks in", turning it into a lesbian Gayngst song. Novaspace's version, however, flipped the gender.
• The folk song "The Broom of Cowdenknowes" (or "Bonny May"), like most traditional songs, exists in multiple forms, but the earlier versions are mostly sung in third person, about a shepherdess who loved a "fair lad" and either married him and had to move to his estate or got pregnant out of wedlock and banished. (The chorus is first person, but is pretty clearly meant to be reported speech.) There are versions sung by female singers where they take May/Mary's perspective, and versions of those sung by male singers where they change "lad" to "lass" and largely gloss over why the character can't return to Cowdenknowes.
• Mamma Mia! turns "Lay All Your Love On Me", which was sung entirely from a female perspective, into a duet between Sophie and her fiancé Sky. Sky sings the first verse, altered from "Now every woman I see is a potential threat" into "Now every man that I see..."
• "Never Can Say Goodbye" was originally written for The Supremes before it was given to The Jackson 5, then subsequently covered by Gloria Gaynor and The Communards, among many others.

Aversions

• Averted on Janet Jackson's cover of Rod Stewart's "Tonight's The Night." Well, almost. After going almost the entire song singing "'Cause I love you girl'" as part of the chorus (which changes the meaning into that of a lesbian love affair), on the very last chorus Janet flips it and sings "'Cause I love you boy," effectively turning the song into a ménage-a-trois.
• Averted in Irish and Scottish Traditional Music, where the genders are never flipped because - well - that's the way it's done.
  • Female singers are quite happy singing Burns songs, despite "the lassies" being one of Rab's favourite subjects.
  • Sinéad O'Connor's rendition of "I Am Stretched on Your Grave."
  • Any version of "Danny Boy" sung by a man. It's sometimes suggested that the speaker is changed to Danny's father rather than his lover without altering the lyrics.
    • The original writer also wrote alternate lyrics for a male singer, replacing the words "Danny Boy" with "Eily Dear", but they are almost never used.
  • Also, The Pogues' version of "I'm A Man You Don't Meet Everyday" from Rum, Sodomy And The Lash. Considering their usual singer is male, and it's the only song performed by bassist Cáit O'Riordan, it would appear they did it solely to enforce this aversion.
  • Celtic Woman's cover of Black is the Colour. Most other female singers tend to change the "true love" to a male.
• Averted twice on Ciccone Youth's The Whitey Album, with Kim Gordon's cover of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" and Thurston Moore's cover of Madonna's "Into the Groove"; the album itself is a tongue-in-cheek "tribute" to 80s music and pop culture.
• Kaki King averts this with her cover of Justin Timberlake's "Lovestoned." Also might be an example of The Cover Changes the Meaning, it goes from being just an infatuation song to a song about discovering one's Closet Key.
• While not originally sung by a member of the opposite sex, J Mascis & The Fog's cover of The Smiths' classic "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" manages to turn it into a particularly bad example of Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?.
  • On the other hand, this trope was averted by Morrissey himself when covering songs like "I Want a Boy for My Birthday," "Give Him a Great Big Kiss," and "Golden Lights." However, his version of Bradford's "Skin Storm" leaves out the line "when it's wet and warm", making the song gender neutral rather than specifically heterosexual.
• Averted, probably on purpose, with Los Campesinos!!'s cover of Heavenly's famed duet with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening "C Is the Heavenly Option". That is, Calvin Johnson's part is sung by the female Aleksanda Campesinos!, and Heavenly guitarist Amelia Fletcher's part is sung by the male Gareth Campesinos!.
  • Gareth has said in an interview that it was mainly because he wanted to do Amelia's spoken/rapped breakdown
• The Sisters of Mercy averted this trope with their version of Dolly Parton's "Jolene."
  • The White Stripes' version of "Jolene."
  • Lil Nas X 's version of "Jolene" averts this trope, in that Jolene is stealing his gay lover - but he sings it with more denial that it's already happened than desperation to keep him.
• It's also averted in the Sisters Of Mercy's cover of... ABBA's '"Gimme Gimme Gimme," of all songs.
• Averted in Emily Picha's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel No. 2," which adds a whole new level of meaning to "You told me again you preferred handsome men, but for me you would make an exception."
  • Same goes for Regina Spektor's cover of the same song.
• Averted by Max Vernon's cover of "I Kissed A Girl": he kept the lyrics, which changed the meaning of the song.
  • The same goes for Attack! Attack!s cover, and McFly's
  • And John Barrowman's karaoke attempt.
• Apparently there was a time when it was illegal due to copyright law to change the lyrics of a song, even pronouns- Art Deco released an album called "Can't Help Lovin' that Man" featuring many gentlemen (including Bing Crosby and Ukulele Ike) singing songs intended for women.
• Similar to the Los Campesinos! aversion, the Future Bible Heroes cover of "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League has Claudia Gonson singing the male verse and Stephin Merritt singing the female verse (complete with the line "I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar"). And Chia Pet's version of the same song is a duet between two female vocalists, also without changing any lyrics.
• The Dan Band bases their entire existence around subverting this trope. This all-man band covers nothing but songs originally sung by female artists and never change the gender, but they do throw in gratuitous swearing for fun.
• Most times Blixa Bargeld sings the female part of "Where the Wild Roses Grow" with Nick Cave, there seem to be no pronoun changes from when it was a borderline-Soprano and Gravel duet with Kylie Minogue . Or differences in how the two act when on stage. It makes it either a little more confusing or a little more Ho Yay. (Though it would work fairly well as a song between two men if it weren't for the fact that a major part of the chorus is "for my name was Eliza Day".)
  • This is partly due to Bargeld having sung the female part on the original demo track and the song and Bargeld being such fan favourites that there was no issue performing it like this live. Also, it follows the traditional folk song convention of not changing pronouns.
• Patti Smith's semi-cover of Van Morrison's "Gloria" on her album Horses leaves the gender unchanged.
• Averted by Mr. Bungle performing the Portishead song "Glory Box" from Dummy, with Mike Patton leaving the lyrics (such as "I just wanna be a woman") unchanged.
  • Likewise for Steampunk group Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys' cover of the same song.
• Averted by Richard Cheese, who has no problem asking his bandmate to "lick his pussy", in his cover of My Neck, My Back (originally by Khia). Male covers playing this trope straight will change it to "lick my weenie and my sack" or "suck my cock and lick my sack". (The cover version does contain, maybe or maybe not due to Values Dissonance, the N-word)
• In "Shaken And Stirred: The David Arnold Project", a James Bond theme song cover album, about half of the songs are done by opposite gender singers with none of the lyrics changed, including a Ho Yay-licious male version of the very feminine "Diamonds Are Forever", with lyrics "unlike men, the diamonds linger/ men are mere mortals who are not worth going to your grave for" left intact.
• Averted, or rather ignored altogether in the name of camp, in Erasure's cover of Abba's "Lay All Your Love on Me" and "Voulez-Vous" from the Abba-esque EP. The lyrics "I wasn't jealous before we met/Now every woman I see is a potential threat" and "I still don't know what you've done with me/A grown-up woman should never fall so easily" from "Lay All Your Love on Me" and "I know what you think/The girl means business, so I'll offer her a drink," originally sung by a woman, are sung unchanged by male singer Andy Bell.
  • And don't forget "Gimme gimme gimme (a man after midnight)". Of course, with Bell being gay, this one doesn't even qualify as camp, since it mentions nothing about the gender of the singer.
  • They've done this with several non-Abba covers, namely The Partridge Family's "Walking in the Rain" and Ike & Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High". It's rather amusing to hear a man sing "When I was a little girl, I had a rag doll/The only doll I've ever owned"...
• Averted in Blixa Bargeld's cover of Peggy Lee's "Johnny Guitar" which uses the same lyrics as the original. As a result, it sounds like a love song from one man to another.
• Bluntly averted by The Killing Moon's cover of Alanis Morissette's rather explicit song "You Oughta Know." Which brings us lines like "Are you thinking of me when you fuck her?" sung by a man. The end result is much like a guy being left by his boyfriend for a woman and being seriously pissed off about it (that he's singing about his girlfriend leaving him for another girl gets unlikely with the lines "Would she have your baby?" and "Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity?").
  • 1,000 Mona Lisas did the same with their cover, which was something of a novelty hit in the 90s.
  • Jonathan Coulton did this as well, but with less pissed-off and more being heartbroken.
• Amusingly averted in The The All-American Rejects cover of "Womanizer"
• Averted by Me First And The Gimme Gimmes' Are A Drag, an entire album of non-gender-flipped covers of originally female songs.
  • They even returned to averting this trope a few more times on Blow In The Wind, a cover album that was generally themed around pop songs of the sixties, which included non-gender-flipped versions of "My Boyfriend's Back" by The Angels and "Different Drum" by Linda Ronstadt.
• John Barrowman's cover of "You're So Vain" averts this trope, leaving in lines like "All the girls thought that they'd be your partner". Might not be surprising given that Barrowman is openly gay.
  • Marilyn Manson's cover does the same, which is just as unsurprising given that Manson is bisexual.
• The trope was averted more frequently in years past, which is (probably) the reason Dolly Parton did so when she covered "Rocky Top." ("Once I had a girl on Rocky Top, half-bear the other half cat/Wild as a mink but sweet as soda pop; I still dream about that.")
• Patricia O'Callaghan covered Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man" without changing the lyrics at all, turning a fairly standard love song into a wonderfully lesbian love song.
  • Which has since been used as an epic background song for an International Femmeslash Day music vid.
• Averted by Marissa Nadler's musical treatment of Poe's "Annabelle Lee," giving the tale a new Les Yay flavor.
  • Her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" averts this as well.
• "Annabelle Lee" has also been adapted (with a very different melody) by Sarah Jarosz, again without changing the words.
• It probably goes without saying that Pansy Division averted this in their version of "Son of a Preacher Man," since that was the whole point of them covering the song in the first place.
  • Cam Clarke's and Champ 'N' Reefer's covers also don't change the lyrics.
  • Tom Goss also did a cover like that (only with the minor change to leave out the word "cousin"). It starts with a scene with a preacher from a Christian church giving an outright homophobic preachment. The whole cover has a much more dramatic undertone.
• Averted by The Cardigans cover of Restless Heart's "The Bluest Eyes in Texas", turning a sad country song about leaving your woman into... well, the same thing, only now with lesbians!
• Averted by Sarah Blasko in her covers of "Flame Trees" and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." Yes, she sings "this boy's too young to be singing the blues."
• Averted by Cyndi Lauper when she covered Prince's "When You Were Mine". Given the image she was trying to cultivate, this may have been intentional.
• Also averted by Tegan & Sara's cover of the same song... Of course Tegan and Sara Quin are both gay.
• Sixpence None the Richer's cover of "There She Goes" kept the original gender pronouns, leading to lots of comment wars on Youtube over whether lead singer Leigh Nash was a lesbian or not. She isn't, she just didn't want to change the lyric.
• Averted by Tori Amos in her covers of "Famous Blue Raincoat", "Angie", "I'm On Fire", and many other songs.
  • Of course the whole point of her Strange Little Girls album was to take songs originally written by men and to cover them from a female perspective.
• Averted in the Save Ferris cover of "Come on Eileen". Which is pretty natural, given a female name is in the title. "You in that dress/Oh, my thoughts, I confess/Verge on dirty..."
• Averted in the Anne Murray cover of "You Won't See Me" by The Beatles. The few occurrences of "girl" are merely omitted, which does not significantly alter the song.
• Averted by The Watson Twins' cover of The Cure's "Just Like Heaven". All the original feminine pronouns are kept intact.
• Averted by Joan Jett in her Les Yay-filled cover of "Crimson & Clover"...although played - er, straight - in her cover of "I Love Rock and Roll."
• Averted with Amy Winehouse's cover of "Valerie" on Back to Black. However, while the original singer missed the way that Valerie used to kiss, Amy misses the way that Valerie used to dress.
• Anya Marina's version of T.I.'s "Whatever You Like" averts this: The original is mostly addressed to someone in the second person anyway, but she does keep lines like "My chick can have what she want" and "I know you ain't ever had a man like that". The only thing that is a minor change is "Tell them other broke brothers be quiet".
• Averted with Klaus Nomi's cover of Lesely Gore's "You Don't Own Me". Might not be too surprising, considering that Nomi himself was gay.
• Andrew Huang's version of Rihanna's "Only Girl" is an aversion.
• Freek de Jonge's cover of "Peter" plays this for comedy. At the end of the song, he reveals that "Peter" is the name of a girl from Suriname.
• Oddly enough done by The New Pornographers to themselves: Carl Newman had written the love song "Go Places" for himself to sing, but he thought it sounded better in Neko Case's voice, so she sang it instead, without changing the line "Good morning, Christina".
• The brilliant green, whose vocalist is the very female Tomoko Kawase, did a cover of The Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night" for their single "Blue Daisy," without changing the repeated line "Girl, I want to be with you."
• KT Tunstall's cover of The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" has her singing "Let me show you girl/that I know wrong from right" to the apparent delight of many female fans, especially following her Eye to the Telescope album on which she's wearing a pair of rainbow suspenders/braces and sings endlessly about loving women.
• Averted in Shiny Toy Guns' cover of Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)," which still has the line "Give my wife my love" despite having a female singing the song. Though this is less relevant to this trope than other examples, as the song is a third-person narrative, so it's more like the female singer is quoting a male astronaut.
• Roxette's "How Do You Do" originally had alternating male and female singers. Cascada's version is solely from the girl's point of view, without any change in lyrics.
• Alison Krauss averts this twice on Raising Sand: once with "Through the Morning, Through the Night" and once with "Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson."
• Averted by Pet Shop Boys in "Try It (I'm in Love with a Married Man)," "In Private," and "If Love Were All". As a result, "Try It" has its premise changed to that of Incompatible Orientation.
• Notably averted when Swedish folk artist Sofia Karlsson recorded the album Black Ballads, singing songs written by Dan Andersson. His lyrics are so male-centered that the album is mostly known for the fact that a woman actually sings them unchanged.
• Often averted by English folk singer Kate Rusby. Subverted with the title track from the album "Awkward Annie," since she wrote the song that way on purpose.
• The Cub cover of The Hollies' "You Know He Did" leaves it intact, suggesting the subject would be happier not merely with the singer as opposed to her newly former boyfriend, but abandoning men entirely.
• The Lemonheads version of "Different Drum" leaves the lyrics as Linda Ronstadt sang them.
• Clara Moroni's cover of Michael Sembello's "Maniac".
• Luther Vandross averted this in his cover of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song."
  • Al B. Sure, on the other hand, played it straight.
• Jawbox didn't alter the lyrics when they covered Tori Amos' "Cornflake Girl". Hearing J Robbins sing it borders on surreal.
• Zebrahead's cover of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" make's no attempt to switch around the genders... in fact, EVERYONE is a guy in their video
• Thoroughly averted in Madison's cover of Lil Wayne's ''Lollipop''.
• In The Gun Club's version of "My Man Is Gone Now" from Porgy and Bess, male singer Jeffrey Lee Pierce doesn't change any of the lyrics. Interestingly, Pierce was straight.
• Anna Nalick's cover of "Breaking the Girl" begins with the line "I am a man," which you would think would make it clear that she's singing from a male perspective, but a number of listeners got confused nonetheless. This may be because the lyrics aren't exactly explicitly clear even knowing the speaker is male.
• Gigi d'Agostino did a solo version of his most famous hit, "L'amour Toujours (I'll Fly With You)", previously a duet.
• Patty Griffin's version of Bruce Springsteen's "Stolen Car" preserves the line "I met a little girl and I settled down" unchanged.
• Me'Shell Ndegéocello's cover of Bill Withers' "Who Is He and What Is He to You" changes few of the lyrics, with the exception of "You tell me men don't have much intuition" to "Now you think I'm one not much for intuition." So it's either a woman singing to a woman about an affair that woman had with a man, or a woman singing to a man about an affair he had with a man.
• Averted by Electrelane in their Les Yay cover of "I'm On Fire".
• Joan Baez made several changes to "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (originally by The Band), but kept the line "Back with my wife in Tennessee, and one day she said to me ..."
  • She also left in the intro line, "Virgil Caine is my name." Interestingly, one of the changes she made was the result of a mondegreen. She misheard "I will work the land" as "I'm a working man," and sang it that way, gender notwithstanding.
• Blondie have a couple of examples of playing this straight, but have also averted it with their cover of Buddy Holly's "I'm Gonna Love You Too". Granted, the only line in the original that mentioned gender was "after all, another fella took ya", but leaving that in does change potential interpretations of the song: in the Buddy Holly version it's "another fella" as in "a man other than me", but having a woman sing that line makes it sound like both the subject of the song and the person he's currently with are men.
• Averted by Claudette's cover of Billy Joel's ''Only the Good Die Young''. This is also an example of The Cover Changes the Meaning, as the song goes from being about a young man trying to get with a Catholic girl by suggesting that she not take religion too seriously to being about a girl encouraging a potential girlfriend to embrace her true self (Come out, Virginia.), not to let her faith get her down about it (The stained glass curtain you're hiding behind never lets in the sun.) and become part of the queer community that already accepts her. (I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun.)
• Xiu Xiu have a habit of covering songs without changing any of the pronouns. Considering singer Jamie Stewart is quite camp (and has written many songs of his own sung to men, both from male and female perspectives) this is almost always the least troubling example of The Cover Changes the Meaning in their versions however.
  • Their version of Don't Cha by the Pussy Cat Dolls is a particularly notable effort. Instead of playing up on the joke of covering a dodgy pop song, he sings it entirely straight and turns it into a kind of moving - and deeply disturbing - tale of a man refusing to let his bisexual lover leave his wife for him.
  • They even do it to their own songs, releasing two different versions of Helsabot, one sung plaintively by regular singer Jamie Stewart and the other by (now ex) musician Caralee McElroy, who has quite a sweet, girlish voice. Though they don't change the lyrics, considering the song deals with the antics of a violent alcoholic robot, lines like "I did something bad, I got in a fight, about drugs, kicked him in the neck" they have wildly differing contexts.
  • Though "Fast Car", originally by Tracy Chapman, doesn't really gender the narrator, they still manage it. The song changes from being a blue collar couple escaping for a better life elsewhere, to a young homosexuals dream of leaving for the big city.
• Linda Eder's "Man of La Mancha (I, Don Quixote)" averts this completely. She sells it anyway. Complete with blazing soprano note at the climax.
• Subverted by jazz singer Patricia Barber, who sang a cover of Tom Jones' "She's a Lady" and doesn't change a single word.
  • However, Ertha Kitt simply changed two words to make it into a strong statement of a powerful woman, by only changing two words. Changing the title from "She's a Lady" to "I'm a Lady," and the line "and the lady is mine," to "and the lady is fine." And she definitely is!
• Inverted by Incubus' "Promises, Promises"; Brandon Boyd, male, sings an original song from a woman's point of view.
  • Similarly, Fugazi's "Suggestion", a song about the objectification of women, is at least mostly from the perspective of a woman ^note near the end, the POV seems to switch to that of someone else, possibly a man, who witnesses the sexual harassment described earlier in the song but doesn't speak up, but is written and sung by male vocalist Ian MacKaye ("Why can't I walk down the street free of suggestion? Is my body the only trait in the eyes of men?")
• Bon Voyage (a female-fronted Starflyer 59 side project) covered The Smiths' "Girlfriend in a Coma" and didn't change a word.
• The Sucker Punch soundtrack is mostly female singers doing songs by male artists (The Beatles, The Smiths, Jefferson Airplane) - but the lyrics are unchanged (the most blantant is Search and Destroy", which is still "I'm the world's forgotten boy...").
• Judy Garland averts this completely when she sings "For Me and My Gal."
• Fastbacks' cover of Green River's "Swallow My Pride" keeps all the female pronouns, despite lines like First I fell for her looks / Now I just want to go for the throat", and the fact that the title phrase seems to be used as an Unusual Euphemism for fellatio.
• Otep's cover of Nirvana's Breed - fitting because Otep is a lesbian.
• The 1990s Randy Travis song "I Told You So" is sung in the first person and has no gender-specific words. Carrie Underwood covered it with ease recently without having to change the lyrics.
• The Breeders' version of Aerosmith's "Lord Of The Thighs": They apparently covered the song specifically because they thought it would be funny for lesbian bassist Josephine Wiggs to Step Up to the Microphone and sing those sleazy Intercourse with You lyrics in a way that made it sound like she was coming on to another woman.
• Eurodance band Captain Jack covered both Rupert Holmes's "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" and The J. Geils Band's "Centerfold". The original songs were both sung by men, about a clearly female love interest. In the Captain Jack covers, the female band member sang the lyrics, but didn't change a single word.
• Bananarama recorded a version of Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" without changing any of the lyrics.
• Joy Electric's cover of Paramore's "Decode" did not change the lyrics "What kind of man that you are/If you're a man at all". Considering that Ronnie Martin is a Christian and has a wife and daughter...it's kinda awkward.
  • Then again, the "if you're a man at all" line could apply to a Sweet on Polly Oliver situation.
• In the Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of Flashdance, Michael Sembello's "Maniac" is sung by the Chorus Girls, although the lyrics remain the same.
• Bratmobile's Les Yay version of The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb" changes the line from "Hey street boy" to "Hey straight girl."
• Veruca Salt's version of "Somebody" by Depeche Mode retains the female pronouns, resulting in Nina Gordon singing about wanting a woman "who cares about me passionately" and will "put their arms around me /And kiss me tenderly"
• Swedish punk band Psychotic Youth covered Aneka's "Japanese Boy" in 1994. The male lead singer keeps all the original lyrics intact.
• Judy Collins' cover of "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin, on her album The Wind Beneath My Wings, sounds rather odd when she sings about her son calling her "dad".
• When Buffy Saint-Marie sang the traditional American folk song "Cripple Creek", about going to see a girl, kissing her on the mouth and wrapping around her like a vine, she didn't change a word. Did I mention this was on Sesame Street?
• Strangely done by two Har Mar Superstar songs originally intended for other artists: he wrote "Girls Only" and "Tall Boy" with the intention of giving them to The Cheetah Girls and Britney Spears respectively. When both declined, he put out his own versions without any lyrical changes. The former is about a girls' night out and finds him singing about having "the cutest little cuticles". The latter is technically an Ode to Intoxication drinking "tall boys", as in large cans of beer, but it's also full of innuendo that could apply to wanting a literal "tall boy" ("where's my tall boy?/ to satisfy my needs/ feel like drinking/ so come on get inside of me").
• Averted conspicuously on Bryan Ferry's cover of Lesley Gore's "It's My Party".
• Some male covers of Robyn's "Dancing On My Own" retain the lines "watching you kiss her" and "I'm not the girl you're taking home", meaning that either the singer is a gay man, or his love interest is a lesbian.
  • Calum Scott's cover, which became a Top 10 hit in late 2016 in several European countries, retains the first lyric and changes the second lyric to "I'm not the guy you're taking home", with the protagonist being a gay man whose boyfriend is cheating on him with a woman. Doubles as Heartwarming in Hindsight as Scott would come out in mid 2017.
• Averted in the Indigo Girls' cover of Dire Straits' "Romeo & Juliet". The lyrics mostly consist of Romeo expressing his feelings to Juliet, but the singer isn't actually "playing the part" of Romeo; to use a literary term, it's more like third-person limited p.o.v. than first-person.
• Averted by most, if not all, of Julia Nunes' covers (e.g. Mr. Brightside and Build Me Up Buttercup).
• Kina Grannis' version of "Rude" (originally by Magic!), which keeps all of the female pronouns, and therefor has her repeatedly vowing to "marry that girl". Whether or not it was intentional, this also makes it sound like the singer is being rebuffed so harshly by her girlfriend's father because he rejects his daughter's sexual orientation and/or is against gay marriage.
• Postmodern Jukebox usually uses female singers for their vintage covers of songs, even when it's about a man singing about a woman. The result is often the songs are now about gay women in the early 20th century.
• Neon Jungle's cover of Hozier's "Take Me to Church" keeps the lover female. As does the one by Ellie Goulding.
• Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's version of "Whole Again"^note co-written for Atomic Kitten by OMD members Andy McCluskey and Stewart Kershaw, as well as Bill Padley and Jem Godfrey goes gender neutral with "and if you see me with another one" instead of man.
• The French song Je l'aime à mourir ("I love her to death") by Francis Cabrel is essentially a man telling the world of his love for the woman who shares his life. The bilingual (French & Spanish) cover by Shakira does not bother to change the gender of the target of the narrator's affection.
• Bastille's cover of TLC's "No Scrubs" keeps all the male references. The only change is the removal of the rap in exchange for "Being in love with you as I am..". The singer said he didn't to change the lyrics just because he was afraid people would think he's gay.
  • Weezer also covered the song without changing any lyrics (though they too removed the rap section). When they decided to cover the song, Rivers Cuomo was thinking about whether to use this trope when he happened upon a popular tweet saying that if you're a straight man covering a love song about a man, you should keep the original lyrics and be "gay for the next three minutes".
• Amy MacDonald's cover of "Born To Run" is an aversion, and in the process becomes a Les Yay fueled power ballad.
• Mackenzie Johnson's cover of "Don't" by Ed Sheeran keeps the lover as a female.
• Played for Laughs with Nyanners' cover of "Tipsy" by J-Kwon. The fact that such a cute voice is singing a sexually explicit song about drinking and partying is the joke.
• A Static Lullaby keeps the "A guy like you should wear a warning" line in Britney Spears' cover of "Toxic". "Guy" can be used unisex but in the song it still comes off as masculine.
• Dave Day's cover of "Hot Problems" by Double Take still refers to him as being a "hot girl".
• From Make It Sweet!: On "FRIGHT FLIGHT!!", "FIRE FIRE!!", and Katy's parts on "POWER OFF! POWER ON!" (all songs sung by male characters in Um Jammer Lammy), nearly all of the lyrics were left intact.
• The Jasmine Thompson cover of "Hey There Delilah" by Plain White Tee's keeps the song being about a distant girlfriend.
• TLC's cover of Prince's "If I Was Your Girlfriend" keeps all the original lyrics intact. Funny enough, since Prince was the original singing the lyric "If I was your girlfriend..." it actually seems to make more sense coming from TLC. While Prince surely had a specific reason for the gender swapping in the original, TLC's cover seems like a standard song about wanting to be with someone. Another lyric states "If I was your MAN," which TLC also keep in their version.
• Electric Youth's cover of Anuna's "If All She Has is You" implies that the protagonist and her ex are either lesbian or bisexual.
• They Might Be Giants did a cover of "Bills, Bills, Bills" by Destiny's Child that left in all the lyrics referring to the subject of the song as a man.
• Mary Lambert's version of "Jessie's Girl", making it seem like a song about a lesbian developing a crush on her straight male friend's new girlfriend. No doubt intentional, as the artist is openly gay.
• XTM's Speedy Techno Remake of the Olsen Brothers' "Fly on the Wings of Love" is sung by a woman, but still has the line "she's the greatest love I've ever had", making it a lesbian relationship.
• Bizarrely averted by The Band Perry's cover of Glen Campbell's "Gentle on My Mind". It sounds weird to hear a female sing about her beard...
• The cover of "Zero To Hero" by Jonathan Young and Savannah Stuckmeyer doesn't change the pronouns, which makes sense considering the subject matter is Hercules. What is hilarious is all the lines where the Muses are Distracted by the Sexy are sung in Young's basso profundo.
• Halestorm's cover of AC/DC's "Mistress for Christmas" unsurprisingly leaves the lyrics unchanged, since Halestorm songs tend to feature a lot of Les Yay to begin with.
• The Dixie Chicks' cover of Darrell Scott's "Long Time Gone" left the bits about "Me and Deliah singin' every Sunday/Watchin' the kids and the garden grow" unchanged.
• "When She Loved Me" was originally sung by Sarah McLachlan for Toy Story 2 from the point of view of the doll Jessie, which makes perfect sense in context. Michael Crawford and a few other male singers have covered it without changing the gender, which makes a whole lot more sense if you think of it as a song about lost romantic love. The funny thing is, there's still female singers covering it, like Jordan Pruitt on Disneymania 5.
• Canadian "gay church folk" indie-pop band The Hidden Cameras recorded one of the best-loved (and most intensely Canadian) Canadian folk songs, "The Log Driver's Waltz" by Wade Hemsworth, in which a girl sings about why she and all the other girls want to waltz with a log driver (because he goes birling down, etc.). The lead singer is male, and none of the lyrics were changed. (Delightfully, among the several well-known Canadian singers who back him up on the chorus was Rufus Wainwright — the gay son of singer Kate McGarrigle, who with her sister Anna recorded the best-known and most broadcast version of the song.)
• Kris Delmhorst's album "Cars" consists entirely of covers of songs originally by The Cars. She doesn't change any of the lyrics, even in the extremely gender-specific "My Best Friend's Girl".
• Thalia's and Jessica Simpson's covers of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" both keep the original lyrics, which are gender-neutral anyways.
• Averted in Groove Coverage's cover of Alice Cooper's "Poison". Ditto the Eurobeat version by Elisa.
• Aviators' cover of Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero" leaves the male pronouns untouched, making it a Ho Yay song, though Tyler Shaw is heterosexual (as far as we know).
• Caleb Hyles has done various covers of songs sung by female characters like "Let it Go" and "Other Friends", without changing the lyrics.
• While Jonathan Young usually changes the lyrics to be from a male perspective, he has a few interesting aversions:
  • in "How Far I'll Go," it's still Jonathan singing it but the song is now in third person, still talking about Moana. When the rhyme scheme requires it to be first person, he slips in a "She says"
  • Played with for laughs in his cover of "Sk8ter Boi", where he stumbles over the line "I'm just a girl" and starts wondering just why he decided to do this cover in the first place.
• The cover of Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" by Tricky uses a female vocalist and doesn't change the lyrics, leading to Martina Topley-Bird repeatedly referring to herself as "a brother" and "a black man," and BEAVIS called her on it.
• Averted in Republica's and Moloko's covers of Tubeway Army's "Are Friends Electric?".
• In The Simpsons episode "Bart's Comet", Ned Flanders sings Doris Day's "Que Sera, Sera" without amending "When I was just a little girl...".
• Avril Lavigne in her cover of Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" for One Piece Film: Z keeps "wise man/poor man/blind man".
• Maddie Ross' cover of Lustra's "Scotty Doesn't Know" doesn't change the gender of anyone but the singer, meaning that in the context of the song Scotty doesn't know that his girlfriend (Fiona) is cheating on him with a woman. Given that Maddie Ross is married to a woman, it's not hard to understand why she'd be comfortable singing a song about sleeping with someone's girlfriend.
• Luke Combs's cover of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" retains the line about working as a "check out girl" to save money to run away. According to Combs himself, he kept the lyrics as-is out of respect for Chapman and her work.
• Eurobeat musician Dave Rodgers did a cover of Leslie Parrish's "Killing My Love", without changing the lyrics, including the one gender-specific line in the song: "I was thinking to become your wife." Male-wife Dave, anyone?
• Sally Shapiro averts this in her cover of the Pet Shop Boys' "Rent", originally sung by the gay Neil Tennant, though it lacks gender-specifc lyrics.
• In the medley "Cold Heart" by Elton John and Dua Lipa, the latter's rendition of the "Rocket Man" chorus retains "I'm not the man they think I am at home", perhaps to highlight their Incompatible Orientation.

Other

• After Ricky Martin came out in 2010, he started performing some of his earlier hits from a gay male perspective, such as changing "She's All I Ever Had" to "He's All I Ever Had" in concert.
• In his 2017 Edinburgh show I'm Still Here, Mitch Benn sang his mid-nineties song "Be My Doctor Who Girl". He then sang an entirely new version, in honour of Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor - "Let Me Be Your Doctor Who Boy".
• The film Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again changes the titular instructor of ABBA's "When I Kissed the Teacher" from male to female, but does not do likewise with the singer (Donna).
• Renato Russo's cover of Bob Dylan's "If You See Her Say Hello" flips the title to the masculine.
• Cam Clarke's cover of James Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves" flips the title to the masculine.
• Similarly to the above Ricky Martin example, after Country Music singer Ty Herndon came out as gay in 2014, he went on to re-record his 1995 debut single "What Mattered Most" from the perspective of a gay man. (The opening line "I thought I knew the girl so well" becomes "I thought I knew the boy so well", and the pronouns change to male, although the facts about the partner stay the same, even "His hair was long."). According to Word of God, Herndon was in a closeted gay relationship when he first released the song, and had always wanted to redo it accordingly.
• "Johnny Remember Me" by John Leyton was originally about a straight man hearing the voice of his deceased lover, provided by Lissa Gray. In Bronski Beat's version medleyed with their cover of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love", the gay Jimmy Somerville (Marc Almond in the single version) pleads for his jilted love interest named Johnny to remember him.
• In a case of "The Cover Changes the Race", Indigenous Australian group Southeast Desert Metal's cover version of Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" changes some of the lines:
  • Original:
  The time has come, to say "Fair's fair",
  To pay the rent, to pay our share
  The time has come, a fact's a fact,
  It belongs to them, let's give it back!
  • Cover:
  The time has come, to say "Fair's fair",
  To pay the rent, to pay your share
  The time has come, a fact's a fact,
  It belongs to us, now give it back!
• Adam Lambert's 2022 cover of "Mad About the Boy" from Noël Coward's revue Words and Music, in which the lines "Lord knows I'm not a fool girl"/"Lord knows I'm not a schoolgirl" are changed to "fool boy" and "schoolboy". The "Boy" the song is adressed to is unchanged. The 1939 Broadway production of Words and Music under the title Set to Music was meant to include a closeted gay man amongst the starstruck women singing, and Coward rewrote some of the lyrics accordingly, but it was a Cut Song because you just couldn't do that on Broadway in 1939.

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