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I Am Woman
"I Am Woman" is a song written by Australian musicians Helen Reddy and Ray Burton. Performed by Reddy, the first recording of "I Am Woman" appeared on her debut album I Don't Know How to Love Him, released in May 1971, and was heard during the closing credits for the 1972 film Stand Up and Be Counted. A new recording of the song was released as a single in May 1972 and became a number-one hit later that year, eventually selling over one million copies. The song came near the apex of the counterculture era and, by celebrating female empowerment, became an enduring feminist anthem for the women's liberation movement. Following Reddy's death in September 2020, the song peaked at number 2 on the Australian digital sales chart.
After securing a recording contract in 1971 with Capitol Records that yielded the hit "I Don't Know How to Love Him", Reddy – then living in Los Angeles – was asked for an album. She gave the label a set of 10 jazz-tinged pop songs. Nestled among the Leon Russell, Graham Nash and Van Morrison songs were two Reddy and Ray Burton originals. "I Am Woman" was one of them. The composition was the result of Reddy's search for a song that would express her growing passion for female empowerment. In a 2003 interview in Australia's Sunday Magazine (published with the Sunday Herald Sun and Sunday Telegraph), she explained:
I couldn't find any songs that said what I thought being woman was about. I thought about all these strong women in my family who had gotten through the Depression and world wars and drunken, abusive husbands. But there was nothing in music that reflected that. The only songs were "I Feel Pretty" or that dreadful song "Born a Woman". (The 1966 hit by Sandy Posey had observed that if you're born a woman "you're born to be stepped on, lied to, cheated on and treated like dirt. I'm glad it happened that way".) These are not exactly empowering lyrics. I certainly never thought of myself as a songwriter, but it came down to having to do it.
Reddy's own long years on stage had also fuelled her contempt for men who belittled women, she said. "Women have always been objectified in showbiz. I'd be the opening act for a comic and as I was leaving the stage he'd say, 'Yeah, take your clothes off and wait for me in the dressing room, I'll be right there'. It was demeaning and humiliating for any woman to have that happen publicly."
Reddy credits the song as having supernatural inspiration. She said: "I remember lying in bed one night and the words, 'I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman', kept going over and over in my head. That part I consider to be divinely inspired. I had been chosen to get a message across."[citation needed] Pressed on who had chosen her, she replied: "The universe."[citation needed] The next day she wrote the lyric and handed it to Australian guitarist Ray Burton to put it to music.
Burton, 26 at the time and playing in Los Angeles with Australian rock band the Executives (and later the founding member of Ayers Rock), was a friend who had often worked with Reddy in live venues across Australia. He has a different recollection of the song's beginning. He told Sunday Magazine that he spoke to Reddy after she hosted a series of regular women's meetings at which he says they would "sit around and whine about their boyfriends".
I said to Helen, 'If you're so serious about the whole thing, why don't you jot down some lyrics and I'll make it a song?' And that's pretty much what happened. She gave me lyrics scribbled down on a piece of paper and I went home that Sunday night and wrote the whole song in about three hours. Her lyrics were more in prose or poetic form, so I rewrote a few bits of it. I had a bit of a melody in my head anyway, so I reconstructed it, then moulded the lyrics to fit that melody. I did a demo on x Revox reel-to-reel tape. She really liked it and she recorded it on an album for Capitol Records. I never thought of it as being one of my better songs. It had commercial potential and I knew the women's lib thing was bubbling and coming to the boil in the U.S.A.. The life of a songwriter from Australia in Los Angeles was not very lucrative, so I figured it was a way to make a few dollars and up the quality of my life. I had a hunch that it was bound to be a hit. Then it went on the Capitol album and just sat there as a "sleeper" and I thought, 'Well, maybe I was wrong'.
Reddy insists Burton did not change a word of the lyrics.
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I Am Woman
"I Am Woman" is a song written by Australian musicians Helen Reddy and Ray Burton. Performed by Reddy, the first recording of "I Am Woman" appeared on her debut album I Don't Know How to Love Him, released in May 1971, and was heard during the closing credits for the 1972 film Stand Up and Be Counted. A new recording of the song was released as a single in May 1972 and became a number-one hit later that year, eventually selling over one million copies. The song came near the apex of the counterculture era and, by celebrating female empowerment, became an enduring feminist anthem for the women's liberation movement. Following Reddy's death in September 2020, the song peaked at number 2 on the Australian digital sales chart.
After securing a recording contract in 1971 with Capitol Records that yielded the hit "I Don't Know How to Love Him", Reddy – then living in Los Angeles – was asked for an album. She gave the label a set of 10 jazz-tinged pop songs. Nestled among the Leon Russell, Graham Nash and Van Morrison songs were two Reddy and Ray Burton originals. "I Am Woman" was one of them. The composition was the result of Reddy's search for a song that would express her growing passion for female empowerment. In a 2003 interview in Australia's Sunday Magazine (published with the Sunday Herald Sun and Sunday Telegraph), she explained:
I couldn't find any songs that said what I thought being woman was about. I thought about all these strong women in my family who had gotten through the Depression and world wars and drunken, abusive husbands. But there was nothing in music that reflected that. The only songs were "I Feel Pretty" or that dreadful song "Born a Woman". (The 1966 hit by Sandy Posey had observed that if you're born a woman "you're born to be stepped on, lied to, cheated on and treated like dirt. I'm glad it happened that way".) These are not exactly empowering lyrics. I certainly never thought of myself as a songwriter, but it came down to having to do it.
Reddy's own long years on stage had also fuelled her contempt for men who belittled women, she said. "Women have always been objectified in showbiz. I'd be the opening act for a comic and as I was leaving the stage he'd say, 'Yeah, take your clothes off and wait for me in the dressing room, I'll be right there'. It was demeaning and humiliating for any woman to have that happen publicly."
Reddy credits the song as having supernatural inspiration. She said: "I remember lying in bed one night and the words, 'I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman', kept going over and over in my head. That part I consider to be divinely inspired. I had been chosen to get a message across."[citation needed] Pressed on who had chosen her, she replied: "The universe."[citation needed] The next day she wrote the lyric and handed it to Australian guitarist Ray Burton to put it to music.
Burton, 26 at the time and playing in Los Angeles with Australian rock band the Executives (and later the founding member of Ayers Rock), was a friend who had often worked with Reddy in live venues across Australia. He has a different recollection of the song's beginning. He told Sunday Magazine that he spoke to Reddy after she hosted a series of regular women's meetings at which he says they would "sit around and whine about their boyfriends".
I said to Helen, 'If you're so serious about the whole thing, why don't you jot down some lyrics and I'll make it a song?' And that's pretty much what happened. She gave me lyrics scribbled down on a piece of paper and I went home that Sunday night and wrote the whole song in about three hours. Her lyrics were more in prose or poetic form, so I rewrote a few bits of it. I had a bit of a melody in my head anyway, so I reconstructed it, then moulded the lyrics to fit that melody. I did a demo on x Revox reel-to-reel tape. She really liked it and she recorded it on an album for Capitol Records. I never thought of it as being one of my better songs. It had commercial potential and I knew the women's lib thing was bubbling and coming to the boil in the U.S.A.. The life of a songwriter from Australia in Los Angeles was not very lucrative, so I figured it was a way to make a few dollars and up the quality of my life. I had a hunch that it was bound to be a hit. Then it went on the Capitol album and just sat there as a "sleeper" and I thought, 'Well, maybe I was wrong'.
Reddy insists Burton did not change a word of the lyrics.