Product Code Database
" Your Woman" is a song by British record producer White Town. It was originally released in 1996 on the US indie label Parasol Records as the lead track on the >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ EP, when it picked up play on BBC Radio One. This resulted in a major label re-release of the EP in January 1997 by Chrysalis, Brilliant! and EMI Records. It served as the lead single from his second album, Women in Technology (1997), and features a muted trumpet sample performed by Nat Gonella in the 1932 recording of "My Woman" by Lew Stone and his Monseigneur Band. The song peaked at 1 on the UK Singles Chart and also topped the charts of Iceland and Spain. It peaked within the top 10 of the charts in 12 other countries and reached No. 23 in the United States. The song's music video was filmed in black and white silent film style.
With male vocals sung from a female perspective, "Your Woman" became the first gender-reversal song to top the UK chart. In the booklet of their 1999 album 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields' frontman Stephin Merritt described "Your Woman" as one of his "favourite pop songs of the last few years." In 2010, the song was named the 158th best track of the 1990s by Pitchfork.
Mishra has stated that the lyrics could stem from or be related to multiple situations. He says "When I wrote it, I was trying to write a pop song that had more than one perspective. Although it's written in the first person, the character behind that viewpoint isn't necessarily what the casual listener would expect".
Mishra wrote that the themes of the song include: "Being a member of an orthodox Trotskyist/Marxist movement. Being a straight guy in love with a lesbian. Being a gay guy in love with a straight man. Being a straight girl in love with a lying, two-timing, fake-arse Marxist. The hypocrisy that results when love and lust get mixed up with highbrow ideals." Mishra admitted that being signed to a major label (EMI) did not allow him to express creative control, and the loss of his anonymity due to the song's popularity drove him "mad".
The '>Abort, Retry, Fail?_' message that appeared on some inlay cards was explained by the artist: "Well, this cheerful message became a kind of shibboleth for me and sort-of characterises what's been going on for me the last few years." The song was created using free MIDI sequencing software for the Atari ST and a cheap multitrack cassette tape recorder.
The song's lyrics contain various perspectives about love and relationships, and is, according to Mishra, a "flip" of Lew Stone vocalist Al Bowlly's original "anti-woman" theme. Regarding the song's concept and the perspective of which it is sung from, Mishra said "When you love somebody, it's not logical, it's not rational, and you think, 'This is ridiculous, I can never be with you, I can never be the person you need, why am I even feeling these feelings?' So, I was trying to write from all these different sides… I wanted people to go, 'this is catchy,' and sing it, but then be like, 'What the hell?' at the same time".
A reviewer from Music Week gave it five out of five and named it Single of the Week, noting that it has already won Radio One support "and it's easy to see why. With a vocal reverberating somewhere between The Buggles and Stephen Duffy, this instantly catchy synth-pop dance track is simplicity at its irresistible best." Dave Fawbert from ShortList said, "It's one of those classic, not-quite-sure-why-it-works-but-it-definitely-does tunes, so lo-fi that the song was actually on an Atari ST." Gina Morris from Smash Hits commented that "what's cool is that he recorded his debut single in his own room and then watched it go to number one."
In the video, there are numerous elements of acting, cinematography and editing that suggest an old-fashioned film. The exaggerated gestures of Chloé Treend, the hat-wearing woman, helpless and fearful, and those of her quick-tempered lover hint at the acting style from 1920s expressionist films. The ostensive , such as the use of hypnosis on the woman by the man or the recurring shots of crossroad signs bearing names of romantic relationship related attitudes, remind of the 1920s and 1930s efforts to express subjectivism in film.
The use of circular masks, as to emphasise focal points or for a mere elegant look, also belongs to the aforementioned period. At the point where the woman first enters the man's bedroom and in the final rope scene, are used in a manner resemblant of that from silent experimental films. Mishra can be seen for brief moments on television screens in the background.
There is also a scene where the woman closes the door on the man's arm, as she tries to escape from his advances. This is a direct reference to scene from Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's surrealism film Un chien andalou (1928).
The title of the EP was taken from the MS-DOS error message "Abort, Retry, Fail?". This referred to the problems White Town's sole member, Jyoti Mishra, had when a computer crashed during the production of the track. Mishra's liner notes and associated blog post of the single explain this with "I got the title for this single from the weekend I mixed the tracks. My hard drive went bonkers and I spent 72 hours reformatting the dang thing".
The EP was sent to various national UK Radio DJs where it was quickly picked up for play by Mark Radcliffe on his late night BBC Radio 1 show. When Radcliffe stood in on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show a few weeks later, the song was aired to a much wider audience and quickly caught the attention of major labels, leading to its re-release in January 1997 by Chrysalis, Brilliant! and EMI Records. Mishra insisted that the full EP title, track listing and artwork be retained from the original release, with the title "Your Woman" being added in order to minimise confusion.
As an EP, it reached 40 in New Zealand.
In 2011, Slant Magazine ranked it No. 72 in their list of "The 100 Best Singles of the 1990s", writing, "A one-hit wonder whose other material totally justifies that status, White Town stumbled into a moment of sheer brilliance on "Your Woman", a single that married a fucked-up horn sample to a funk rhythm section straight out of Prince's playbook. The sheer catchiness of the song's arrangement got some adventurous radio programmers on board, but it was the say-what-now gender politics of the song's lyrics that proved to be most compelling. Hearing Jyoti Mishra's plaintive tenor croon, I guess what they say is true/I could never be the right kind of girl for you/I could never be your woman, remains one of the most subversive moments in '90s pop." In 2017, Billboard ranked it No. 31 in their list of "The 100 Greatest Pop Songs of 1997".
| 25 February 1997 | ||
| 11 March 1997 | ||
| CD |
|
|
