Tremeloes – "You Don't Own Me" (1965)

You don't own me

Don't say I can't go with other girls

The late Lesley Gore's 1964 hit, "You Don't Own Me," is viewed by some as a protofeminist anthem.

Some might say that a song that was written by two men is automatically disqualified from being a "feminist touchstone" (New York Times) and “a major factor in the rise of the second-wave feminist movement” (Wikipedia) that belongs on the list of works that helped inspire the women's liberation movement.

Lesley Gore

But I think there's a more compelling reason to question those who view "You Don't Own Me" through feminist-tinted glasses.

"You Don't Own Me" is what you might call a bisexual song.  If a song works just as well with a male singer as with a female singer after you do a little tweaking of the lyrics (for example, you change "Don't say I can't go with other boys" to "Don't say I can't go with other girls"), then how can it be a protofeminist anthem?

Some songs are suitable for performance only by singers of one gender or the other.

For example, there's Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man."  You can change the title to "Stand By Your Woman," and revise the first line to read "Sometimes it's hard . . . to be a man," but the song simply doesn't work if a male sings it.

But the situation described in "You Don't Own Me" is as applicable to boys as it is to girls.

In fact, that song actually makes more sense when sung by a male than a female.

For example, consider those lines from "You Don't Own Me":

I don't tell you what to say 

I don't tell you what to do 

So just let me be myself 

That's all I ask of you 

Let's face it, boys and girls.  The need to tell men what to do is an inherent female characteristic.    

By contrast, men generally don't care what women do as long as they don't try to tell men what to do.  

Jack White spoke for men all over the world in his 2014 song, "Entitlement":

I'm tired

Of being told

What to do

Please don't be offended by this, ladies.  The world might well be a better place if men listened to you more often.  My point is simply that even when what you tell a man to do is 100% right, that man isn't going to like to be told what to do.

The Tremeloes

On New Year's Day, 1962, Decca Records auditioned the Tremeloes and another promising young band.  Decca chose to sign the Tremeloes because they were from London, which made them more accessible than the other group, which was from . . . Liverpool?

You guessed it, folks – the other group was the Beatles, who signed with a different label.

The Tremeloes had a nice career.  They had eleven singles that were top-ten hits in the UK, and their covers of the Contours' "Do You Love Me?" and the Four Seasons' "Silence Is Golden" both made it to #1 across the pond. 

But they weren't the Beatles any more than 17-year-old Lesley Gore was Betty Friedan.  

Here's the Tremeloes' cover of "You Don't Own Me":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Lesley Gore – "Je Ne Sais Plus" (1965)

Je ne sais plus

Ce qui vient d'arriver entre nous

In the last 2 or 3 lines, our featured song was the late Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me."

Miss Gore recorded that song not only in English, but also in French, Italian, and German.

Lesley Gore

I am as monolingual as a man can be, so I used Google Translate to compare the lyrics of Gore's  foreign-language versions of "You Don't Own Me" to the lyrics of the original English version.

The non-English lyrics seem to bear little resemblance to the English lyrics.  The German version – which is titled "Goodbye, Tony" – seems particularly dissimilar to the original.

Many other singers covered "You Don't Own Me," which some people view as a seminal feminist cri de coeur.  (As I explained in the previous 2 or 3 lines, I am not one of those people.)

Dusty Springfield

Dusty Springfield – whose real name was Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien – covered "You Don't Own Me" a few months after Lesley Gore's version was released in 1963.  

Miss Springfield was seven years older than Miss Gore, but her warm, sensual, mature voice was not as well-suited for "You Don't Own Me."  When you hear Dusty sing, "Don't say I can't go with other boys," the line loses all credibility.  Lesley Gore's uncomplicated teenaged voice and innocent appearance works much better.

It's an odd coincidence that both Gore and Springfield were gay.  Gore's relationship with Lois Sasson (which dated to 1982) was not only long-lasting but seemingly free of drama.

Dusty Springfield and Teda Bracci

Springfield's love life was much more tempestuous.  In 1982, for example, she met actress Teda Bracci at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.  The two later moved in together and exchanged vows at an unofficial wedding ceremony shortly thereafter.  But a few months later, Bracci smashed Springfield in the mouth with a saucepan, knocking out several of her teeth.  The two then separated.

Dalida, the legendary Italian-Egyptian singer who received 70 gold records, recorded "You Don't Know Me" in French and Italian, while other singers covered the song in Dutch, Swedish, Czech, and Japanese.  

Joan Jett's funereal cover of "You Don't Own Me" is shockingly bad:

But for sheer douche-chill-generating power, no cover version of "You Don't Own Me" comes close to the one performed by Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, and Bette Midler in the 1996 movie, The First Wives Club. 

A sign that the apocalypse is just around the corner is the fact that a musical based on that movie is scheduled to open in Chicago any day now.  The book for First Wives Club: The Musical was written by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.  Along with her husband Harry, Ms. Bloodworth-Thomason is responsible not only for "Designing Women" but also for the Bill Clinton hagiography, The Man from Hope.

Here's Lesley Gore's French cover of "You Don't Know Me," which is titled "Je Ne Sais Plus":

Lesley Gore – "You Don't Own Me" (1965)

You don't own me

Don't say I can't go with other boys

In 1965 – I was 12, going on 13 – I saw the T.A.M.I. Show at the Lux Theater in Joplin, Missouri.

The T.A.M.I. Show was a 123-minute concert film that combined footage from two back-to-back October 1964 concerts at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.  The featured performers included the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Rolling Stones, the Supremes, and several others – the crème de la crème of pop music (with the exception of the Beatles, of course).

Here's the trailer for that movie:

The T.A.M.I. Show's co-hosts were Jan and Dean (who entered on skateboards) and the 18-year-old Lesley Gore, who already had four top-ten hits (including a #1 and a #2) under her belt.

You probably wouldn't rank Lesley Gore in the same class as the Beach Boys, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes.  But while each of those artists performed four songs in the movie, Miss Gore sang six numbers -- more than another else in the movie except the Rolling Stones (who also performed six songs).

Here are all six of those songs:

Lesley Gore (nee Lesley Sue Goldstein) – who died of lung cancer last month – was a student at the tony Dwight School for Girls in New Jersey when she recorded “You Don’t Own Me” in 1963.  (She was only 16 when she recorded her biggest hit, “It’s My Party.”)

“You Don’t Own Me” is a very good pop record.  But let's not try to make it something that it's not.

Like “It’s My Party” and “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” “You Don’t Own Me” is a song about teenagers that was written for teenagers – 1963-vintage teenagers to boot.  

Gore’s New York Times obituary – which was written by veteran popular-music critic Jon Pareles -- described her as a singer of songs “about heartbreak and resilience that went on to become feminist touchstones.”

Lesley Gore as a teenager

I don’t think anyone in their right mind would describe “It’s My Party” and “Judy’s Turn to Cry” as “feminist touchstones.”  Pareles was clearly talking about “You Don’t Own Me” when he used that term.

Wikipedia goes even further, claiming that the song was “a major factor in the rise of the second-wave feminist movement.”  (Really?)

But Songfacts calls the Times and Wikipedia, and then raises them:

Along with Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique (which was published shortly before this song's release), this song can be considered one of the many artistic works that helped begin the Women's Liberation Movement, despite the fact that the movement did not really take off until a decade later.

Let’s take a deep breath, boys and girls.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar (as Sigmund Freud supposedly said), and sometimes a teenage puppy-love song is just a teenage puppy-love song – not a “feminist touchstone,” and not “a major factor in the rise of the second-wave feminist movement” comparable in impact to the writing of Betty Friedan.

All you people who want to turn "You Don't Own Me" into some kind of protofeminist liberation anthem are off your rockers.  The singer’s isn’t angry about the patriarchy’s oppression of the fairer sex.  Her main complaint is simply that her possessive boyfriend doesn’t want her to “go with other boys.”  

Of course, the woman who left the following comment on the Songfacts page about “You Don’t Own Me” would argue that the song has much greater significance than I give it credit for having:

I still love this song & Lesley Gore after all these years.  When it was #2 in Dec. '63, I was in high school & having difficulties with a boyfriend who was trying to be domineering with me.  Well, anyone who knew me back then knew I was NOT the type of gal to be toyed with!!  In short, he tried to dominate me so I just set him straight and left him with two black eyes & bruised ribs!  Back then, I was 200 lbs. at 6' 3" tall and not a girl to be trifled with. Haaa! Go Lesley Gore, Go!!!

(Admit it, ladies.  That tale of a linebacker-sized “gal” beating the crap out of her obnoxious, controlling boyfriend put a smile on your face, didn’t it?  It would a different story if the shoe were on the other foot, of course – you’d send the boyfriend off to the poke . . . perhaps after he had been neutered with some rusty hedge trimmers.)

Lesley Gore as a sixty-something

Let’s not forget that “You Don’t Own Me” was written by two old-pro male pop songwriters, John Madara and David White.  Madara and White’s biggest hits other than “You Don’t Own Me” were “At the Hop” and “1-2-3,” which no one has ever viewed as anything more than enjoyable pop songs.  I'm guessing that Messrs. Madara and White would be bemused to learn that they had written a "feminist touchstone."

By the way, Lesley Gore's next top-ten single after "You Don't Own Me" was "Maybe I Know," whose singer chose to stick with her boyfriend despite the fact that he cheats on her.  (I wonder if Hillary Clinton owned the 45?)

Maybe I know that he's been a cheatin'

Maybe I know that he's been untrue

But what can I do?

The 17-year-old Lesley Gore was a very talented performer, and she knocked "You Don't Own Me" out of the park.  

But many other well-known chanteuses have covered "You Don't Own Me."  (We'll talk about some of them in the next 2 or 3 lines.)

Here's Lesley Gore singing "You Don't Own Me":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: