Interview - Highway 81 Revisited

Michael Lello, interviewing Juliana for Highway 81 Revisited on the Police covers album:

[Juliana]...quickly dismisses the notion that performing songs written and originally sung by a man had any impact on her approach to them.

“No, not at all. I don’t think gender matters at all in these songs,” she says. “I did not change the gender because I think sometimes when a woman sings a man’s song, sometimes they change the gender and I always find that very jarring. It disturbs the song. It takes you out of the trance of song. I don’t think it matters what pronouns I sing. Plus it changes my perspective too. With ‘Roxanne,’ when Sting sings about it it’s a different story, it’s about a streetwalker, being in this agonized love affair with a streetwalker. When I sing ‘Roxanne’ I’m singing about a friend who’s a streetwalker.”