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"Androgynous" was born from one of the most '80s events imaginable: a collaboration between the Replacements and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck.
Replacements manager Peter Jesperson helped out R.E.M. by serving as their tour manager for a short tour in 1983 when they were rising fast and caught between managers. The move caused some tensions within the Replacements as they felt betrayed by one of the figures they appreciated and relied upon more than anyone else.
When Jesperson went back to the Replacements, he brought a couple of Buck's guitars with him. Buck followed soon after, mostly as an excuse to hit the clubs with Westerberg (though there was brief discussion of him producing Let It Be).
As Westerberg and Buck got their debauchery on, they decided to mess around with gaudy makeup and women's clothes. It nearly got them into a fight with some less-progressive locals. A girl called them "androgynous," which was the first time Westerberg heard the word. He looked it up and based the song around it.
The tidy ballad resulting from the Buck-Westerberg club collaboration tells the story of an androgynous couple, Dick and Jane, who don't adhere to traditional gender norms (Dick "might be a father, but he sure ain't a dad").
Rockers like Lou Reed and David Bowie released songs questioning gender roles in the '70s, but by the '80s, it's wasn't a hot topic in rock, owing partly to the rise of disco and New Wave, where it was natively accepted. This song stood out with its message that what now seemed aberrant would eventually be normal:
“Kewpie dolls and urine stalls,
Will be laughed at the way you're laughed at now”
The song was included on The Replacements' fourth album, Let It Be, which is now hailed as a classic. According to Westerberg, the song wasn't hard to write, but getting the band to accept it was a challenge because there was no place for Bob Stinson to blast a guitar solo.
Crash Test Dummies included this song on their 1991 debut album The Ghosts That Haunt Me. Their version was released as a single, where it was a minor hit in Canada. Joan Jett covered the song in 2006 on her album Sinner. Videos were made for both of these versions.
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