For the record, I hate American Idol, and I don’t watch it, but according to this article, Ellen DeGeneres chose a song for a girl contestant that was originally sung by Paul McCartney, and she (!!!!) didn’t even change the pronouns to protect Fundamentalists from thinking about genitals and other various shame-parts.
American Idol judge Ellen DeGeneres picked a love song written to be sung by a man to a woman for contestant Crystal Bowersox–a single mom with a boyfriend–to perform on the show’ semifinal program on Tuesday night.
The song, “Maybe I’m Amazed,” written by Paul McCartney and dedicated to his now-deceased wife Linda McCartney, includes the repeated lyric “baby, I’m a man” in the chorus.
OH NOES! This has never happened before! What will happen how?!?!
Predictably also wigging out: Peter, who wants to break up Ellen’s marriage. Good luck with that.
The video is at the above link, but I’m not embedding it. Instead, I thought I’d post one of my favorite gender-bendy, same-sex-y covers of all time, Tori Amos doing The Rolling Stones’ “Angie.” Feel free to link to your favorites in the comments.
This is idiocy. “Maybe I’m Amazed” is a great song and there’s absolutely no reason a woman couldn’t sing it.
These people are so backwards. In Kereoke, people sing songs originally sung by a different gender all the time.
They really need to wake up, grow up and get with the times.
What it really comes down to is disliking anything that a prominent gay person–no, scratch that–”liberal” does. They (the “Fundies,” but really the power-mongering, straight, white dudes stoking their fires) do the same thing with anything that comes from the White House.
Cheer up guys. Soon the rapture will take them all off our hands. Added bonus here is that there would be no one left to listen to right wing radio. Ha.
Life is good…
“More gender confusion,” says Peter LaBarbera. Just how out of touch with reality is this person? In the world of classical opera the parts of Orpheus in Gluck’ “Orfeo ed Euridice” and of Cherubino in Mozart’ “Le nozze di Figaro” have been sung by women sopranos for well over a century — probably nearer two. And God only knows how many sopranos and contraltos have sung songs like “Bonnie Annie Laurie”. Going in the opposite direction across the gender divide, Brendan O’Dowda’ rendition of “The Irish Mother” is the most beautiful and heart-rending that I’ve ever heard.
LaBarbera is just a neurotic screwball. Why doesn’t he get a life?
On his website, Jeremy Hooper posted a clip of the 1978 movie “An Unmarried Woman”, in which single mom Erica (Jill Clayburgh) and teen daughter Patty (Lisa Lucas) sit at the piano and sing “Maybe I’m Amazed”. I was 14 when I saw that movie, and yet, miraculously, I was still bright enough to figure out that Erica wasn’t a lesbian, or trying to turn her daughter into one.
So how is it that, in 2010, there are adults who can’t figure out that she’s just singing the song as written?
Homophobia truly DOES make people stupider.
I don’t see how this is any different than women dancing together in public, which as been ‘ok’ since forever. Unfortunately, not so for men, unless they were doing some type of a folk dance together like the German Schuplattler.
I suspect the absurd uproar over this is because the song was chosen by an out and proud Lesbian, who was obviously ‘promoting homosexuality and the gay agenda’….like that’s a bad thing to do?!?!
If it hadn’t been Ellen DeGeneres who picked the song they probably wouldn’t have even noticed. Really, it’s such a non-issue. But then again, most of the things they get their panties in a wad over are non-issues.