Title Fight: "She's a Girl"

Photograph titled "Man in Costume and with Lute", c. 1880

The sentence "She's a girl," contains very little useful information - unless the species of the observation's object is in question, all you have is a redundant assertion of gender. But I've got two favorite songs called "She's a Girl" nonetheless.

The first is by Romford freakbeat band the Attraction, who released a cover of the Kinks' "Partyline" as a single in 1966. The single failed, even though Dave Davies produced the a-side for the band - I've never heard the cover, but the single's b-side, "She's a Girl" has gained some prominence as a rare freakbeat classic. With a driving drumbeat, a simple melody, and little else, it's not obvious at first why the song would be appealing. But the song's hook is infectious, and there's a neat twist in the lyric. The first verse is all manly assertions about how "she's a girl that belongs to me", but the second verse flips it over with, "All I want to do is belong to you." A good fit for a b-side to one of the Kinks' lesser-known gender-questioning songs.

In 1995, Breeders side-project the Amps (originally Tammy & the Amps) released just one album, but I like it as well as anything the Breeders put out. That's no big surprise, as the Amps featured two guys that went on to play in Guided By Voices. The Amps album, Pacer, is a little less conventional than the Breeders stuff that preceded it - the songs are rough around the edges and have more of a lo-fi sound. "She's a Girl" is a favorite because of Kim Deal's cool-sounding treated vocal (listen for the chorus-processed exhale she does right at the beginning) and because of the intrusive little guitar-string sounds that pop up at the end of the chorus, leading into the guitar solo. The song is an impressive example of the "pop concision" lessons Kim Deal had learned from hanging out with GBV - she does more in under two minutes than the Attraction does with their song in three. I have to give the Amps the win here because of simple economics.

Winner: THE AMPS

"She's a Girl" by the Amps

"She's a Girl" by the Attraction