A coworker recently suggested I learn Greenville by Lucinda Williams, with one small adjustment — he said I could tweak the line “You don’t really love me/you’re not my man” to sing the song from a man’s perspective.

It’s something I’ve run into before. I’ve spent the past year building up my repertoire, trying to have a reliable stock of 500 cover tunes. When I’m pulling from a pool that big, I end up learning more than a few songs by female artists. I play a bunch of songs by women, singing about the men they love (or, more often, the men who broke their hearts). 

I’ve never really messed with song lyrics to match my gender, but I wondered if I was the odd man out. I took a quick informal poll on a musicians’ Facebook group, and in general people said they didn’t change the words. A few people said they would leave the words “as is” if they referred to another individual, but if the singer referenced themselves in another gender, they’d change it.*

But for the most part, people said they left the lyrics as the original artist performed them. Most people who didn’t change the lyrics said it was just too difficult to make the rhythm or the rhyme scheme work with an alteration. A few people said they were trying to faithfully recreate the original, and to change the words would be a disservice to the song. 

For me, I feel like I play better when I can put myself in the song. And maybe that means letting go of a bit of myself so I can more completely embody the song’s landscape. I think playing covers can be challenging to do well, and that means I do a bit of acting mixed in with the singing & the guitar. I want to make sure I’m giving the audience my best performance, and I enjoy changing roles with each tune.

*Honorable mention to the singer who suggested changing every instance of the word “girl” with “squirrel.”