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'POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME' AS A PIANO BALLAD? A SENSITIVE 'SONG 2'? IT'S
GIRL AGAINST BOYS ON EMM GRYNER'S GIRL VERSIONS.
- by Amanda Factor photo by Rannie Turingan
Emm Gryner made a funny. By calling her newest album Girl
Versions, the Lilith-Fair veteran is poking fun at the belief that
all female music is soft and sensitive. “The misconception is that
everyone who played that festival is a soft-rock folkie, and that’s
really not the case.”
Five years ago, the Forest Ontario native passed around
a cassette of covers of Clash, Foo Fighters, Stone Temple Pilots and
Paul Weller songs to a small circle of supporters. As time went by,
Emm added more covers to her sets and eventually thought putting them
all on one CD would be a good idea
The result is a collection of covers Emm herself describes as “noisy
boy songs stripped right down to piano and cello and vocal.” Think
what Tori Amos did to Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
years ago. Take away the cranked-up guitars and you’re left with
a melancholy take on Thrush Hermit’s ‘The Day We Hit the Coast’
and a haunting version of Blur’s ‘Song 2’, wherein the
‘woo-hoo’s sound almost sad.
In the case of Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’,
Emm’s version casts the original in a whole new light for some
listeners. “The lyrics are so absurd, really, with all due respect,
that when you unmask them, because they’re very hard to figure
out in the original version, people sit up and take notice and finally
realize what Def Leppard were singing about,” Emm concedes. “Also,
to turn it into a ballad changes the meaning of the song a little bit,
so that’s interesting too.”
For her unique covers, Emm left lyrics alone but freely
messed around with musical arrangements like it ain’t no thang.
She admits tampering with the classics can be intimidating. “It’s
a little nerve-wracking to [cover] songs by someone like Nick Cave and
Robert Wyatt, people who are sometimes just better left alone. I think
the point is that I’m not really trying to improve them, rather
I’m trying to interpret them.”
In the end, Emm says, she makes her music the way
she wants. Which doesn’t mean she doesn’t concern herself
with her fans. In the CD sleeve she individually thanks each and every
person who listened to these songs prior to recording, from Trish Anderson
to Sarah “Zippy” Zawacki. But would you expect anything less
from someone who regularly contributes to her revealing online journal
and has invited fans to choose songs for her album?
Emm remembers what it’s like to be a fan. She
recalls an embarrassing encounter with an ex-idol. “When
I was fourteen I really liked Simply Red. I ran into Mick Hucknall at
Canada’s Wonderland and he dissed me. And then, funnily enough,
I ran into him in a hotel in Paris when I was touring with David Bowie
[as a back-up singer] and he dissed me again. So needless to say, I
stopped buying Simply Red records.”
Ironically, Emm credits the Thin White Duke with keeping
her grounded. “You could sit there and listen to him talk about
all his crazy stories or pick up some new jokes or fashion tips.”
A childhood spent being chased around the house by a mother wielding
a spanking stick (actually a paint stick from Beaver Lumber) likely
contributed to the good head Emm carries on her shoulders.
So despite the fact that she is a female singer who
is nice as pie and sings sensitive songs, Emm Gryner insists there is
no such thing as “female” music. When she transforms a feedback-heavy
Blur song into an emotional piano ballad, she is not “feminizing”
it. Period.
“I think when PJ Harvey’s screaming her
guts out, that’s just as female as when you’re whispering
something sensitive. There’s no rule.”
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