If I were a boy I think I could understand How it feels to love a girl I swear I'd be a better man Si j'etais un garçon Je crois que je pourrais comprendre Ce que ça fait d’aimer une fille Je jure que je serais un homme meilleur
“Everybody says to record everything, and for once everybody is right! Your therapy notes and diary entries are probably platinum-selling lyric material, but you have to be a certain kind of brave to make yourself sing them.If I were a boy even just for a day I'd roll out of bed in the morning And throw on what I wanted and go Drink beer with the guys drink beer with the guys And chase after girls I'd kick it with who I wanted And I'd never get confronted for it 'Cause they stick up for me Si j'etais un garçon, ne serait-ce que pour un jour Je me lèverais du lit le matin Enfilerais tout et n'importe quoi et partirais Boire de la bière avec mes potes Et draguer les nanas Je m'amuserais avec qui je veux Et on ne me le reprochera jamais Car mes potes me défendent So many girls were going through the same thing I was at that time and needed to hear those strong, empowering words. “You don’t realise a song has impacted so many people until you’re on the street and talk to people. “I wrote from such personal experiences, I never imagined that someone else would ever want to sing about my ex-boyfriend! So I was like, ‘Tell her, thank you,’ but they were like, ‘No, you don’t understand, she has to have this song!’ Then I got lots of calls from lots of people being very, very persuasive, and the next thing I know, Beyoncé is singing the song and I’m getting signed to Clive Davis’ label, J Records. Then I believe Toby had a meeting with Beyoncé, and when she heard If I Were A Boy she said, ‘That’s it! I want to record that right now.’īC Jean: “I never imagined that someone else would ever want to sing about my ex-boyfriend!” “The song wasn’t supposed to go to anybody, though – I wanted to sing it! Everyone wanted to sign me, but some people were trying to get it to their bigger artists because they knew it was such a smash. Toby was crying, going ‘Oh my God, this is a smash!’ so he definitely knew it was special. Then we recorded the demo that day, which I never changed – that was the one that Beyoncé eventually heard. “It was probably the easiest song I’ve ever written. We ran back to the studio and it was what I like to call a therapy session or diary entry, because I’d finally decided to open my heart and 20 minutes later we had a song! I’d eat the pizza and the popcorn.’ He was like, ‘That’s so weird, how would you sing that?’ He put a recorder in front of my mouth and I sang, ‘If I were a boy…’ just like that. I was trying to fit into my skinny jeans, watching my weight and all that stuff, and I was like, ‘Oh man, I wish were a boy right now.
Toby carried around a recorder and any time I said something ‘weird’, as he called it, he’d record it. We were walking through Times Square on a lunch break. “When eventually I did, it was a complete accident. I was 20 years old at this point, I was with my first boyfriend and things were going really well, but during the course of writing with Toby I found out my boyfriend had cheated on me. I flew to New York to work with him and wrote a handful of songs. I’d written lots of songs and used those demos to get to the next producer I wanted to work with, and met Toby Gad – he’d worked with The Veronicas and Fergie and had a couple of cool hits. US chart position: 3“I wanted to be a singer, so songwriting was just part of the deal for me.
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