(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please CLICK HERE)
Helen Reddy - "I Am Woman"
Hit Number 1: December 9, 1972
Stay at Number 1: 1 Week
Some songs are damn near impossible to review. You can describe the way the song sounds, but as a reviewer you have to be subjective. Anyone who reviews stuff objectively isn't doing it right. It's your opinion about whatever it is you're talking about. In the case of "I Am Woman", it's pretty obvious what's going on here. It's a song about the empowerment of women, a movement that was finally starting to gain some steam in the early '70s. Helen Reddy, the artist on the song, wasn't some young kid just getting her start in the music world. She was 30 at the time of the song's recording, but was still new to the music industry after her first hit "I Don't Know How to Love Him", an Yvonne Elliman song that Reddy covered for her debut single at Capitol Records. (Her version peaked at #13. It's a 5. Elliman, the original artist, will eventually appear in this blog) That song only circulated around the radio after Reddy's then-husband, Jeff Wald, kept bugging the radio into playing it. Wald himself was briefly employed at Capitol Records, which is probably why his words meant something to Radio DJs, and is largely what helped Reddy get her first record deal.
"I Am Woman" is different from "I Don't Know How to Love Him" because it's not your typical pop love song. It stood for a much deeper meaning. Reddy recalled that one night when she was lying in bed, the words just came to her: "I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman." There were some events in Reddy's life that led up to that moment: She described how men would always objectify women in the music industry, and also said one time as she was leaving the stage after opening for a comic he said to her "Yeah, take your clothes off and wait for me in the dressing room, I'll be right there." Obviously, that's pretty demeaning for Reddy, and she wanted to find the right words for how she felt into a song.
Reddy didn't even expect "I Am Woman" to be a hit. She jotted down lyrics for the song and had Australian musician Ray Burton put music with the song. She admitted to not thinking the song had "hit material", and it was more of a song for her to open with for live shows. But the song picked up some steam after it played during the credits of the movie Stand Up and Be Counted, a movie that also dealt with the women's liberation movement. The single release of "I Am Woman" was due to Capitol Records expecting the song to become a hit after it played in the movie, and indeed, the song became a hit, topping the charts for a week in December 1972. After that, Reddy became an icon for the feminism movement, even though some feminists got pissed off from the line "But I'm still an embryo with a long, long way to go." Reddy dismissed that by saying she felt the song wasn't about just feminism, but it was a more unified approach. She described her former brother-in-law playing the song in the mornings to "get him going."
Now's the hard part. It's hard for me to pin an opinion on "I Am Woman". The opening line says "I am woman, hear me roar", but the song doesn't work as some triumphant, majestic pledge to women. Instead, it's smothered in typical '70s cheese, and more works as a simple tune for easy-listening fans. That still works, because the message of "I Am Woman" is also simple. But what's hard for me is that I'm obviously not a woman, so the song doesn't have some strong bearing on my life. Even though I respect Reddy's message, if it ever comes on '70s radio, that's great. If I never heard the song again, then it's whatever. Maybe things would be different for me if I was a woman. Instead, as a guy, my 100% subjective take on the song is that it's a piece of early '70s easy-listening cheese that doesn't stand out from the rest. Reddy sings the song with a happy-go-lucky chirp that's about as far from a roar as you can get, and the instrumentation is mellow and uninspiring. But not bad, exactly. If you take away the lyrics, "I Am Woman" is really not that special of a song. It's clean water, easy to take in without thinking much of it. With that being said, it seems that we live in a time where we consider pieces of hot garbage like "WAP" to be songs to "empower women." If that's the case, then "I Am Woman" delivers the message a lot better (and a lot more appropriately) to its audience. I regret to inform that the aforementioned piece of hot garbage will appear in this series in the future. So, again, will Helen Reddy, but I'm not as upset about that.
GRADE: 6/10
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