Instrumentation: Vocals (Midler), Electric Guitar, Electric Bass, Drums - typical ‘rock’ instrumentation
Form: Strophic form – established chorus and verses, with the repetition of ‘Beast of Burden’.
Origin: The song was originally written and recorded by The Rolling Stones, and was covered by Midler in 1983. Midler makes a few fairly significant changes (changing the lyrics to be from the female perspective instead of the male), but overall remains surprisingly faithful to the original. Ironically, by remaining faithful to the original, Midler changes the perspective of the song from the typical ‘male rock star’ to an empowered female comfortable enough with her sexuality to sing about it, which was somewhat shocking for the time (and to an extent remains so today).
Melody: The song’s melody is fairly simple: as a contemporary rock song, it is easily singable and repetitive, making it accessible to the audience so that they can identify. Midler adds a little bit of vocal improvisation to the recording, which lends a spontaneous and vivacious feeling to the song.
Timbre: In comparison to Mick Jagger’s original version, Midler’s voice brings a richer and more expressive tone to the song. Whether she is belting out low notes, wailing on the held high notes, growling, or squeaking, she never seems strained, but always presents an attitude of confidence. In fact, Midler’s version of the song suggests that her confidence as a woman is more ‘sexy’ than any other contrived version.
Lyrics: The lyrics undoubtedly originally meant something quite different to The Rolling Stones, who wrote this song from a man’s perspective, singing to a woman. Yet Midler’s rendition changes this meaning considerably. Midler constantly returns to the refrain “I’ll never be your beast of burden / All I want is for you to make love to me.” According to Wikipedia, “A beast of burden is a semi-domesticated animal that labors for the benefit of man.” While the Stones probably meant this in terms of the general phrase, here it seems to invoke Midler singing to her man that she won’t ‘carry his burden’, or accept his dominance over her, any longer. In addition, Midler deliberately changed the masculine lyric “Pretty, pretty, girls” to “my little sister is a pretty, pretty girl”, and then goes on to sing about how this girl is constantly being used as a disposable object for sex by men. It seems here that Midler is disparaging the horrific way in which young girls let themselves be objectified and used by men just to feel admired and fake confidence. By constantly repeating the phrase “What’s the matter with me / Ain’t I hot/rich/rought enough”, and following it with “I’m not too blind to see”, Midler challenges the unrealistic expectations of beauty and behavior that men have developed for women. Perhaps Midler didn’t necessarily take on this song with these feminist stances, but at the very least she must have realized and embraced the controversy of a female singer covering a ‘masculine’ rock song written by a male rock group.
Personal Response: I’d never heard the original Rolling stones version of this song, so Midler’s version was the first contact I’d had with the song. That being said, I was completely surprised by this song – by Midler’s attitude and ability to rock out vocally, by the over-the-top sexuality of the lyrics, and the Midler’s nerve in taking on this song (I assume there was probably some dissension from the Stones fans). I definitely enjoy Midler’s version better: the background instrumentation sounds much more processed (maybe due to having been a product of the 80s?), but I really like the fact that Midler was able to take this ‘masculine’ song written by a ‘masculine’ band, and make it her own.
In addition, I found this Youtube video of the music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4R9FiKE0Tk) - it’s pretty cheesy, but I enjoyed the way they portrayed Midler and Jagger’s characters, and found it interesting to see how she dominates him performance-wise in the video. This song seems to be largely forgotten in Midler’s career, however: her top-selling song, “Wind Beneath My Wings”, is a delicate (if not sappy) love song about how her (presumedly male lover’s) love allows her to do anything. I have to wonder what happened with Midler’s music, and why she allowed this to happen.
Wellll --- she got older. If she were to sing Beast of Burden now, as a woman in her 60s, what would your response be? Maybe also it's a matter of guaranteed sales.
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