Everyone has her own personal romantic soundtrack, songs that will forever evoke some memory of love or heartbreak. And for much of the history of popular music, if you were a woman who lost her heart to another woman, your soundtrack involved a lot of pronoun-switching.
Today, even though there are plenty of lesbian musicians writing and performing lesbian love songs, sometimes a girl still just wants to hear “Our Song” sung the way she heard it in her mind the first time she fell in love: by and for a woman.
The nice thing is, she can. Lesbian, bisexual, and lesbian-friendly artists have been performing cover songs originally made popular by male artists for years. Some have been released commercially, others are available only on frantic late night searches on YouTube, and some you'll only see if you're lucky enough to catch them performed live.
Iconic lesbian artists such as kd lang or Melissa Etheridge have performed a number of cover songs originally performed by men, although only a small number of those have been recorded. Out bisexual singer Ani DiFranco performs cover songs frequently, as do lesbian artists the Indigo Girls, gay-friendly singer Tori Amos, and more-or-less-out-lesbian rocker Joan Jett.
Along with those better known boy-to-girl cover songs are a few gems that, due to age or genre, might be less familiar to lesbian audiences. Some, like Patti Smith's “Gloria,” are overt love songs to a woman; others, like the Indigo Girls' rendition of Bob Dylan's “Along the Watchtower” or Etheridge's hot cover of “Son of a Preacher Man,” are not. And some, like the Raincoats' cover of the Kinks' “Lola,” are just impossible to categorize.
But if it's lesbian love you're looking for, there's no better place to find it than in between these covers. Here's a look at the Top 10 queered covers of heterosexual love songs.
10. "Angie" by Tori Amos
In 1992, Amos released a five-song CD with her first three recorded cover songs: Led Zeppelin's “Thank You,” Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and the Rolling Stones' “Angie.” All three are hypnotically beautiful, but her shuddering voice and minimalist accompaniment on “Angie” combine into one of the most beautiful cover songs Amos ever recorded or performed. Which is saying a lot, as she's a singer who doesn't shy away from performing material made famous by other artists--including Elton John's “Tiny Dancer,” the Stones' “Wild Horses,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Losing My Religion” by REM, and dozens more.
9. "Tangled Up in Blue" by the Indigo Girls
Ani DiFranco has covered this on her own and with the Indigo Girls, as have many other artists, but the Indigo Girls' version from their 1995 live double album 1200 Curfews may be the definitive cover of Bob Dylan's story of a love gone wrong. This one definitely belongs on the soundtrack of lesbian heartbreak, telling the sometimes-cryptic story of a failed affair with a married woman that haunts the singer for a lifetime. So good it hurts.
8. "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" by Phranc
Phranc is a self-described “typical Jewish lesbian folk singer,” which if it weren't said with tongue firmly in cheek would be nothing but a big fat lie. Phranc is an enormously influential musician, particularly in the hard-to-define homocore movement. Her best cover song is probably “Ode to Billy Joe,” but when it comes to re-making classic 60s love songs, her version of Herman's Hermits' “Mrs. Brown You Have a Lovely Daughter” shows how it should be done. Both these songs are on her Goofyfoot EP, which also has a photo of Phranc playing her guitar while surfing on the cover.
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