This is not an anti-man thread or an anti-women thread...! Or meant to be taken too seriously, but...just raising a point that I find interesting, (and no, I am not a man-hater etc...!)
I write songs for our band. (IF it is relevant, we are a four-piece, all-female, folk/blues band doing a few covers, but mainly our own material.)They are songs about many subjects. We were asked the other day whether we get more support from women than men, for our songs, because we are, obviously, women ourselves and, very strangely, I sometimes write from a female perspective(...whoops, how did that happen?! DOH!)
Stick with this thread...I am not ranting about men!!!
If a man writes a song about a stereotypically male subject, do we all view it as a 'man's song? Or, are people just so used to hearing songs by male songwriters, they don't even think about it?
I wrote a song about PMT which usually gets a laugh and is really just poking fun in a gentle way about the way PMT can turn women into more unpredictable people...it was aimed to laugh at both sexes equally. So, when a man said it was a women's song, (he laughed and said it was funny, when he heard it, BTW)...I thought this was interesting. At one particular gig, a man even once said, he thought we were good but we shouldn't write 'women's songs' as it limited our audience straight away. I had a long animated debate about it, with him! He has since, asked me for several copies of our cd which suggests to me that he has maybe changed his mind, hopefully!)
So,was he right? Note, I don't write with women in mind...just about anything that springs to mind.
Our first cd had songs about September 11th, stress, diplomacy,wild women, love, lost love, grief, living for the moment,Lincolnshire,amongst other things, er...and PMT, whoops! Are they 'female'subjects?
I guess it is perhaps like the idea of some men, who will not read a book if they see it is written by a woman. I am not bracketing all men in the same way, of course.Just responding to a few comments that I thought interesting. I have heard one or two female song-writers write in a constant anti-man vein, they are entitled to their opinion, but that is is all it is, their opinion, not the opinion of all women... that is nothing like the way, I write, or the way I think. I just love music and the chance to write a song gives me a way of expressing myself.
So...can a song written by a woman be taken on face-value and its merits as a song rather than having the label'woman's song' applied?
I await the indifference, thoughful replies and mickey-taking that follows!!!
PS I have to admit, I did write a song about....er...chocolate, once!