You Don't Own Me

Lesley Gore had her first big hit (It reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts) in 1963 at age 16 with the song It's My Party. In 1964 she reached No. 2 on the Billboard charts (The Beatles I Want To Hold Your Hand was No. One.) with a slightly overproduced song called You Don't Own Me. Hidden in the lush Quincy Jones arrangement was the subversive tale of a young women standing up for herself.

You don't own me,
I'm not just one of your many toys.
You don't own me,
Don't say I can't go with other boys.

And don't tell me what to do,
Don't tell me what to say,
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display, 'cause...

You don't own me,
Don't try to change me in any way.
You don't own me,
Don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay.

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.

I'm young and I love to be young,
I'm free and I love to be free,
To live my life the way I want,
To say and do whatever I please.

INSTRUMENTAL

And don't tell me what to do,
Don't tell me what to say,
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display.

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.

I'm young and I love to be young,
I'm free...

You Don't Own Me struck a cord with women singers and it was covered by people such as Dusty Springfield on her debut album A Girl Called Dusty.



And by Joan Jett on her debut album Joan Jett.



In October of 1964 Gore along with The Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, James Brown, The Barbarians, Marvin Gaye, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Jan and Dean, Billy J. Kramer, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Supremes, and The Rolling Stones appeared on The T.A.M.I. Show where she sang You Don't Own Me. This is a stripped down, faster moving, more in-your-face version of the song. Listen to how she phrases the line "you don't own me" in this version, the emphasis is on the word "don't."



I bought the T.A.M.I. Show DVD last Christmas and was blown away by Gore's performance. It was as if I was finally hearing the song the way it should be sung. In all the versions I had listened to before it is sung as a ballad with a hint of sadness to it, as if the singer knows nothing will really change, instead of being sung as a statement of empowerment the way Gore sings it here.

Which brings me to the movie The First Wife's Club (1996). The movie starts out as a revenge flix with three former college roommates deciding to get back at their husband after each one of them gets tossed aside for a younger women but along the way their priories change as they learn to stand up for themselves. You Don't Own me is used in the movie to show, especially for one of the characters, how far each one has come by the end of the movie. The song is sung as a rousing statement of liberation. It makes me smile every time I hear it.