Here’s the second part of our ‘Cov­ers’ spe­cial. This time round it’s songs by women being covered by men, which is some­thing I think is much harder to find that songs by men being covered by women. That prob­ably has some­thing to do with the fact that the music industry in gen­eral is just as male dom­in­ated as any other industry out there, hav­ing been powered for years by a col­lec­tion of people known as the 50 quid bloke.

It may also have some­thing to do with the fact that cov­er­ing a female authored song may be seen to be some­thing less than manly. What self-respecting male artist would want to be seen or heard singing a song about feel­ings, shoes or ponies? Tra­di­tion­ally doing this may have led other men to call you a gay or an effem­in­ate nancy boy.

Joy­ously how­ever it’s 2009 and things are chan­ging with the grow­ing influ­ence of the £8.93 woman and the MP3 lady. Like it or not the dis­pos­able income of women in developed coun­tries is a sought after and fought over thing and has been since the emer­gence of equal rights and women’s abil­ity to earn their own money. Women are increas­ingly the driv­ing force behind the mass mar­ket and that means you bet­ter get used to the things they like.

So essen­tially what I’m say­ing here is that the smart move right now, for any man in the music industry, is to start court­ing the ladies — and what bet­ter way to intro­duce your­self and your band of hairy, smelly male friends than by cov­er­ing a well loved lady track. Ser­i­ously. You guys should think about it. Just like the fine examples of man­li­ness and tal­ent on my cov­ers list have.

• Bob Dylan — House Of The Rising Sun

As a tra­di­tional folk bal­lad “House of the Rising Sun” was first recor­ded in 1933 and is prob­ably the most covered song in the uni­verse hav­ing been tried out by a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent artists such as Lead­belly, The Anim­als, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Nina Simone, The Rolling Stones, Dolly Par­ton, Bach­man Turner Over­drive, Tori Amos, Johnny Cash, The Supremes, The Mamas and the Papas, Woodie Guthrie, Joan Baez, Cat Power, House of Pain, The White Stripes, Bon Jovi and even the dreaded Muse to name but a very few. Ori­gin­ally told from the per­spect­ive of an unknown young woman some­how tied to an abus­ive, drunken gam­bler the song has been re-worked as often as it has been covered and there are sev­eral argu­ments as to it’s ori­ginal mean­ing and con­tent. Of the sev­eral ver­sions recor­ded by men Bob Dylan’s is one of the few to retain the ori­ginal gender spe­cif­ics and tone.

• Dizzee Ras­cal — That’s Not My Name

Ori­gin­ally writ­ten as Katie White’s rant on her frus­tra­tions about the music industry, this cover was recor­ded as part of the Radio One Live Lounge Ses­sions presen­ted by Joe Wiley. Per­son­ally I hated the ori­ginal for many reas­ons, not least of which has some­thing to do with this but as it some­times the joy of cov­ers the Dizzee Ras­cal ver­sion adds a layer of dimen­sion and atti­tude to an oth­er­wise bland as fuck filler track.

• Wil­lie Nel­son — Time After Time

Being respons­ible for the National Woman’s Anthem of the 80’s Cyndi Lauper is fairly well known. Equally well known is Wil­lie Nel­son — the tax evad­ing, pot smoking red headed stranger. When the artists of such renown col­lide only good things can hap­pen right? Sur­pris­ingly, all sar­casm aside this is in fact that case as Nelson’s cover of Lauper’s “Time After Time” demon­strates. Ori­gin­ally a hit for Cyndi in 1984 it col­lec­ted a Grammy in the Song of the Year cat­egory and is beloved of the recently single the world over. Sim­il­arly every­one every­where loves Wil­lie Nel­son. Fact.

• Cake — I Will Survive

Ori­gin­ally writ­ten by a man and recor­ded by Gloria Gaynor “I Will Sur­vive” is a disco hit which has become the domain of women with tear streaked mas­cara on the karaoke cir­cuit and drag per­form­ances which may or may not include Jason Donovan. Marked as an anthem of female empower­ment it’s genu­inely inter­est­ing to hear it covered by any men at all, never mind covered well as it is here.

• Travis — I Kissed a Girl

Already know for their cover of “… Baby One More Time” in 1999 Travis have appar­ently been search­ing all this time for another pop song worthy of their atten­tions. Little did they know it would take 9 long years until the release of “I Kissed a Girl” by the etern­ally self sat­is­fied lip stick “les­bian” Katy Perry. Switched in this instance to the per­spect­ive of a gay man exper­i­ment­ing with a woman for the first time the Travis cover at least seems to offer a listen­able, slightly less insult­ing ver­sion of an offens­ive pop song about being a lady who kisses other ladies for male attention.

• The White Stripes — Jolene (Live Under Black­pool Lights)

Ori­gin­ally writ­ten by Dolly Par­ton, Jolene sup­posedly takes its inspir­a­tion from her hus­bands inter­ac­tions with a red headed bank teller and has, like “House of the Rising Sun”, been covered by a wide selec­tion of musi­cians. The only cover ver­sion that mat­ters how­ever is the one given here by The White Stripes. Many of you would be for­given for not noti­cing that it had on this occa­sion been sung by a man since Jack White has been known to look and sound a lot like a woman (Which is prob­ably why he grew that beard). Say what you like about Jack though, this is one of my favour­ite cover ver­sions and I think it proves that no mat­ter the gender of the per­son singing it a good song is still a good song.