I'm just gonna shake

[metaphortunate]

Okay. I hate to say this. I really really hate to say this. I hate to say it because, as Sady Doyle says, likability is a gendered problem; in this world where guys just have faces but girls have "resting bitch face" and guys are assertive but girls are bitchy and so on, I grit my teeth at realizing that I like these songs when a girl sings them but I may like them even more when this guy sings them. And then there's the fuckers taking it a step further to "These songs were dumb when a girl sang them, but now that a guy's singing them, THEY'RE GRRRREAT!" Fuck all that, I hate it, but I can't deny this: I love Ryan Adams' 1989, maybe more than the original.

Except "This Love". That song is perfect as is, I want a MMFR vid to it, nothing can improve on the original.

No Ryan doesn't ~fix Swift's mistakes~ or any such bullshit, but I love his version of the songs. Take my favorite: "Shake It Off", not coincidentally not one of my favorites on the original, largely because Swift (or Martin or Shellback or whoever) just straight up stole Janelle Monae's "Tightrope". Go on, take a listen: first "Tightrope" (wait for the beats to start) then "Shake It Off". See what I mean? Anyway, Adams just turns it inside out. At the end, especially; the "it off" part of the chorus dwindles into an afterthought, and as he repeats "I'm gonna shake, baby I'm just gonna shake," the song transforms entirely from an anthem of resilience into a haunting refrain about accepting the inevitability of taking damage.

ETA: Genderswapping these songs really highlights how many songs there are about guys driving girls around. Off the top of my head I can think of two pop songs with a girl picking a guy up, and one of them is Ryan Adams's new cover of "Style", and one of them is his original "Dear Chicago".

Comments

[alanj]

I adore both "Tightrope" and "Shake It Off", and while I hear some similarity, I can't describe the latter as anything close to a rip-off.

I do enjoy transformative covers. Screaming Females did an interesting job with "Shake It Off" too, but I think I like this Ryan Adams version even more.

[jedusaur]

I spent the latter half of adolescence intentionally training myself not to prefer male voices (because I noticed around age 14 that female vocals tended to bug me, and decided shortly thereafter that this was not acceptable) and now I have absolutely 0 interest in white dudes with acoustic guitars being soulfully ironic. I made it through half of two of these before giving up. But I'm all for transformation, and I'm glad you found a thing you enjoy!

[kore]

...I feel the same way. My ear candy right now is his cover of "I Know Places," which is sort of okay-to-meh when she does it, but he turns it into this almost alt-country jangly hopeful despair.

It's also interesting to me to listen to him sing her songs and realize how many of them are about being scrutinized.