Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys
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LGBTQ Songs That Are More Than 40 Years Old
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Marlene Dietrich
Wenn Die Beste Freundin
English translation
A AWhen the best girlfriend
Duet:
When the best girlfriend
With the best girlfriend
To do some shopping,
To do some shopping,
To get some exercise,
Wander through the streets,
Blabbing about everything,
Says the best girlfriend
To the best girlfriend:
My best, my best girlfriend!
Oh my best girlfriend,
Oh my pretty girlfriend,
Oh my faithful girlfriend,
Oh my sweet girlfriend!
Walks the best girlfriend
With the best girlfriend,
says to the best girlfriend
to the best girlfriend:
My best, my best girlfriend.
Spoken:
1. Girlfriend: Yes, what does the best girlfriend say? Tell me what crosses your mind!
2. Girlfriend: Well, I can only tell you one thing, if I didn’t have you ...
We get along so well …
1. Girlfriend: Yes, we get along so terribly well. How well we get along together!
2. Girlfriend: It's just hardly bearable, how well we both get along together.
1. Girlfriend: There's just one person I get along with equally well, and that is my cute, little husband.
2. Girlfriend: Yes, with your cute, little husband
Duet, sung:
Yes, my husband is a man!
Such a man, like my husband!
Like the husband of the woman,
like the husband of the woman!
We used to have paramours,
but that's all past!
Today, instead of paramours,
we have girlfriends!
Spoken:
2. Girlfriend: Your little man is a bit pushy!
1. Girlfriend: Really?
2. Girlfriend: Yes.
1. Girlfriend: Why?
2. Girlfriend: Well, I think so
1. Girlfriend: Well, why?
2. Girlfriend: Why I think so …?
1. Girlfriend: Why you think so?
2. Girlfriend: He does such things …
1. Girlfriend: I don't like it.
2. Girlfriend: Helloo!
Husband: What's this?
1. Girlfriend: You cheated on me with her.
Husband: Because you cheated on me with her.
2. Girlfriend: And you cheated on with him
1. Girlfriend: Because cheated on me with him
Husband: What's this for intricate family relations! Don't we want to get along?
2. Girlfriend: Yes, we would rather get along.
Husband: Stupid, silly love.
Husband accompanies with:
mmm - da-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta
When the best girlfriend
With the best girlfriend
To do some shopping,
To do some shopping,
To get some exercise,
Wander through the streets,
Blabbing about everything,
Says the best girlfriend
To the best girlfriend:
My best, my best girlfriend!
Oh my best girlfriend,
Oh my pretty girlfriend,
Oh my faithful girlfriend,
Oh my sweet girlfriend!
Walks the best girlfriend
With the best girlfriend,
says to the best girlfriend
to the best girlfriend:
My best, my best girlfriend!
https://lyricstranslate.com
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Any Old Iron
The English music hall has always had a reputation for sexual innuendo. Marie Lloyd, one of the genre's greatest stars, raised the double-entendre to new depths of naughtiness at the turn of the last century, and performers such as Vesta Tilley ("Burlington Bertie") made a fortune from transvestisism during the same period. But evidence has recently come to light that the music hall also flirted with much more daring sexual subversion. It appears that many popular songs - such as Any Old Iron and Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-Wow - contain coded gay content.
The man who has amassed the evidence for these gay interpretations is writer Howard Bradshaw. He has used his research as the basis for a revue of "songs from the closet" called Somebody Bin Usin' that Thing, which I am music directing. The show includes more than a dozen forgotten gems, from Edwardian parlour ballads to black queer blues, and covers all the major centres of gay life of the period 1870 to 1930: London, Paris, Berlin and Harlem.
Bradshaw makes a convincing case for his readings. "In the wake of the Wilde trials, when Any Old Iron was written," he says, "referring openly to homosexuality was playing with fire. So they had to use codes. A lot of what we're doing in the show is decoding and deconstructing."
Any old iron? Any old iron? Any any
any old iron?
You look sweet, talk about a treat,
You look dapper from your napper to
your feet.
Dressed in style, brand new tile
With your father's old green tie on
But I wouldn't give you tuppence for
your old watch chain,
Old iron, old iron.
"First," says Bradshaw, "rhyming slang for 'poof' is 'iron hoof', usually shortened to 'iron'. Second, in 1915 sexual psychologist Henry Havelock Ellis noted that 'inverts' had for some time adopted the green tie as their badge. Third, wrist-watches and not watch chains were all the rage in the 1890s, especially among those fashion-conscious gay men who 'dressed in style': this is why the singer 'wouldn't give tuppence' for a watch chain - because, despite the green tie, it reveals that the person he is addressing is probably not gay."
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Originally posted by Sporting View PostLook no further than Tom Robinson?
(I don't mean any of that, but the visual on that day, was visceral. Gay people booing him at a Pride. Fucking naughty. He was cheered off at the end, as he should be.)
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Originally posted by laverte View Post
Just to clarify, the French lyrics don't have a lesbian theme.
Still, it's a song that's been recorded by Cher, Shirley Bassey and Dalida. i think we can say it's been thoroughly torched.
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Originally posted by diggedy derek View PostSeveral of Ma Rainey's songs back in the day.
talking of The Kinks, what about "David Watts"?
All the cole porter stuff. Especially when sung by him.
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A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all “hues” in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasur
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Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
Thanks for the correction. I wonder if the lyricist who translated it into English knew he was making it readable as lesbian or if whomever encouraged Cher to record it did so?
As with many English-language versions of chansons francaises – think Comme d'habitude / My way – the lyrics are not translated from the original, they are written from scratch. The wiki page you linked in the OP suggests Al Stillman's English lyric included the lines you quoted when it was first recorded by Kathy Kirby, but i don't know that version.
The French version, Parlez-moi de lui, is a tale of obsessive self-torture, in which the singer desperately pleads for information about her ex's new love affair from a mutual acquaintance (who we come to suspect may be his new lover), so that she can go on wounding herself with longing and regret and feelings of inadequacy.
The two famous interpretations are wildly different: Dalida's masochism is intense, explosive, a burning flame she can't extinguish even though her longing is pathetic and scalds her; as for Francoise Hardy, predictably, her obsessiveness is sombre and resigned, a way to make herself feel something, however painful, other than numbness and desolation. Somehow she makes it seem clean, too, this torture – almost healthy.
i get tearful listening to either.
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