Male singers you thought were Female or vice-versa

I always assumed that Laurie London of "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands" fame was a woman. Nope, it was a 13 year old boy singing this number one song from 1958!

 

My first throught was Neil Sedaka.

Second was Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes.

When I heard "What's Up" for the first time I was reasonably sure it was a guy.

 

Feargal Sharkey

 

Female Singers I thought were Male

Shocking Blue on "Venus"
Carpenters on "We've Only Just Begun" - when I first heard it as a young boy.

Male Singers I thought were Female

Chris Montez' "Call Me," "The More I See You," and "There Will Never Be Another You."
Neil Sedaka's "Solitaire" and "Trying To Say Goodbye."
The Stylistics' "Betcha By Golly Wow"
The Alessi Brother's "Oh, Lori"

 

Now there's a good question, one that I've wondered myself.

 

Falsetto has been used in music for hundreds if not thousands of years, originally, as a means of communication. For very different reasons (namely that women weren't allowed to be actors), opera originally used it when men played women's roles.

The falsetto prevalent in today's music, dates back to Africa:

In "The Music of Black Americans," Eileen Southern describes that, falsetto whoops, hollers, and field cries, evolved into the development of "three types of plantation songs in which the African tradition of using music on all occasions and of classifying the music according to function was most clearly reflected --

* Songs that accompanied religious gatherings
* Songs of harvest celebrations
* Songs that accompanied the work of men and women in the fields

The work songs may offer the best example of how African rhythms survived to resurface later in the blues.

To the improvised work songs -- the shouts and "field hollers" that accompanied plantation labor, communicated between workers, and expressed personal feelings of the moment -- American slaves introduced what would be later recognized as the distinctive sound of the blues."

So it's been part of American music for at least 400 years.

 

I remember buying the album "Age of Consent" by Bronski Beat back in 1984. A great album which still sounds excellent today.

I'd thought the falsetto , Jimmy Sommerville, was a guy, but on the train ride back to school from Newbury Comics, opened up the album and started reading the lyrics.

Some of them were about the "sweet taste of a man."

So, I naively thought, this is a girl singing. Right?

My friend looked across the seat at me and shook his head "no."

Ahhhh, uhhh, hmmmm. Ohhhh now I've got it. I was a bit slow.

 

I used to think Ya Kid K from Technotronic was a dude.... I guess you just didn't see very many chick rappers in those days.

(I'm ashamed and embarassed to have even brought that one up...)

 

Hey,

30 Days In The Hole, by Humble Pie. In fact, I still haven't done the research on that. Could still be a woman, actually. But if so, I wasn't sure if she was a man...

ccm

 

Five years later he sounded like this .

 

Here's Swedish actress Zarah Leander singing Wonderland by Night.

 

Heh, dont feel too bad, I posted about Ya Kid K in the Milli Vanilli thread.. I know embarrasment!

 

I don't know who the singer is, but I thought "I'm In Love With a Girl" by Big Star was sung by a female. It gave the song an interesting angle...

I also remember a funny incident with a male singer. I was watching a television special on a countertenor and was astonished at how this guy could sing. I called a friend of mine and had him look away from his TV, and put on the station and just listen. His comment was along the lines of "Yeah, so what?" I said "Okay, look at the TV." It took him a while to get back on the phone because he was laughing so hard, having figured he was listening to a woman, and then seeing a man singing.