A bizarre realization has manifested in my consciousness during the latest epoch of my life.
I completely disregard sex and/or gender in pop music.
Now, I have always done this, and I have always been aware of the fact that I do it. But an alarming number of people apparently do not.
In narratives, we’re supposed to put ourselves in the position of the protagonist.
What’s in their pants doesn’t matter.
Unless it’s somehow relevant to the plot.
I always communicate this challenging concept to dudely dudes through Aretha Franklin’s Respect, which was originally written and recorded by Otis Redding.
Most men have heard Franklin’s version. And are prepared to hear it again.
At a Chili’s.
Or maybe a strip club.
The point is, they all hear it and empathize with a person’s desire for respect. Not simply in relationships, but in all aspects of life. Perhaps relationships aren’t even on their minds.
But the hook is ace.
So they identify with it. However they can.
This is just how I interpret lyrics.
Maybe I’m the only guy in the world who, upon hearing Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl, imagined himself coming to grips with drunkenly snogging another dude. I guess all other guys were just salivating over the thought of her making out with another chick.
Which is a fair interpretation, I suppose, but not immediately where my mind goes.
Although, maybe it should be. I mean, what am I?
Gay?
All too often, our perceptions of gender roles tend to be just that limited.
This is exactly what Gwen Stefani was talking about when she observed, “I’m just a girl in the world. That’s all that you’ll let me be.”
When Just A Girl came out, I was a confused boy being raised in a pretty religious yet aggressively feminist household, constantly confronting a world that was neither of those things. The pressure to be something other than myself was unyielding and immense.
Just like the protagonist’s experience in the song, the dominant force in my world was not what I wanted, but what everyone else demanded. Regardless of how it was packaged, it was always obvious to me that Just A Girl had very little to do with sex or gender.
It’s about the way we relate to our own individuality within a broader social context. Even if the goal is to express the uniquely female aspects of this experience, the song communicates that message to a wider audience effectively by being more general.
The girl is everyman, and her experience is universal.
Or it could be just a feminist anthem.
If that’s all that we’ll let it be.
HR Lincoln 
I completely agree with you. I think that songs SHOULD all be “about the way we relate to our own individuality within a broader social context” but I fear that few people can get beyond some of the more literal interpretations. I really like the way you chose ‘Just a Girl’ as the finish of this piece is spot-on “If that’s all that we’ll let it be.” I’ve also though that the song is more than just about gender-based oppression — it’s definitely about limiting people based on some trait or another, anything, really. When the way things we wish them to be do not match with how we are expected to be
(Though considering I subscribe to an intersectional version of feminism that looks at multiple oppressions, not just based on female-ness or woman-ness, this is still a pretty ‘feminist’ song 😉 )
But anyway, I don’t notice gender in songs a lot either, though I do notice when people perform cover songs and they alter the gender pronouns from the original to make it heterosexual-friendly (e.g.some girl did ‘fell in love with a boy’ instead of ‘fell in love with a girl’ by the white stripes and it was just silly and also awkward). It annoys me because not only are they subscribing to dominant patterns of heteronormativity they are taking away from the original intent of the songwriter, and that song’s character — they refuse to sing from a perspective that is not their own, and embody others’ experiences.
Lovely examples of people keeping original gender referents in the songs include Jack White singing ‘Jolene’, Feist doing the Kinks’ ‘Nothing in the world can stop me worrying about that girl’ and Regina Spektor singing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Chelsea Hotel No.2’. I also find it quite sexy when people do this, (e.g. see lyrics to last song mentioned especially) because it subverts what we expect to hear due to aforementioned mainstream heteronormativity, but that’s just personal opinion 😉