A Boy named "Sue"

I wonder why a male singer would cover a song which has a female protagonist in first person, and vice versa. In some cases they adjust the lyrics to take care of the gender references – like changing “I’m your lady” to “you’re my lady” (Power of love, not sure which one is the original) etc.

Two brilliant covers I heard recently that doesn't take the pain (well, it’s not possible in these cases) to do a "gender flip":

Rosanne Cash – Long black veil (a live version here)

The White stripes– Jolene (Jack White sings Jolene Jolene.. pls don’t take my man, heh! Heard it on Sound Opinions)

The same old tune

“Genius borrows nobly. Art is theft. Good poets borrow; great poets steal. James Joyce said, “I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors-and-paste man.” Who owns the words? We all do, though not all of us know it yet. Art is not a patent office. It’s a conversation between and among artists.”

That was David Shields, in the introduction to his post on NYT’s Living with music blog series. I don’t agree with him on this, as you know there is so much art out there which is absolutely original... like...er, I don’t know. His playlist, however, is very interesting – a list of recyled/sampled music.