Beast of Burden

• Beast of Burden, Bette Midler, 1983
• Form: This is strophic. It repeats "I'll never be your beast of burden." It is very accessible, and easy to sing along to.
• Origin: This is a remake of a Rolling Stones song (Bette pays tribute to them by including Mick Jagger in the music video). Some of the lyrics are altered slightly ("pretty pretty girls" becomes "my little sister is a pretty, pretty girl"). This remake keeps it within the same genre as The Stones did: rock. In both cases, percussion and guitar are featured, and the vocalist has a rough sound to their voice.
• Lyrics: With a female vocalist, the lyrics suddenly seem to have a slightly new meaning. For a long time men have sung such lyrics as "all I want is for you to make love to me" but this was not always so commonplace with women. With Bette singing, the song suddenly becomes a feminist statement; women can express their intimate desire in songs too. Although, still today, when women sing about their sexual exploits (Britney Spears Tweet), it is assumed that they are loose women with few morals while men can sing about it and it will get them a "cool" reputation. Still, the song presents the image of a strong woman. She starts out with a demanding "Now, write this down! I'll never be your beast of burden." A beast of burden is an animal that labors for the benefit of man (such as an ox), so by saying she'll never be a beast of burden, Bette could be saying that she will not just work in a male-dominated industry.
• Melody: The hook that stays in my mind is the chorus, "I'll never be your beast of burden." It is quite catchy.
• Instrumentation: percussion, guitars, solo vocalist.
• Texture: This song is not particularly rich as there is not great variance in the instrumentation, but it is certainly not thin either.
• Range: There is a fair great range explored by the vocalist, but the instruments stay within a fairly limited range.
• Tempo: This tempo is slightly faster than the one The Stones use. It is moderately fast.
• Meter: A simple 4 beat meter, kept very consistently by the drums and guitars.
• Volume: The volume is not varied greatly. The vocals seem to remain fairly loud throughout.
• Personal: Beast of Burden by the Rolling Stones is my absolute favorite song of all time. I had never heard the Bette Midler cover, and was not expecting to like anything short of my favorite song ever recorded, but surprisingly I really enjoyed this version. Bette has a the right kind of voice to pull this rock song off; it sounds a little rough, it's powerful, and she can sing with volume (perhaps a little Pat Benetar/ Joan Jett-esque?). The intro is very catchy as well.