Lesley Gore - You Don't Own Me

How Brilliantly "Unladylike"

1. Oh you delightful cats and kittens, Lesley was 17 years old in 1963 when she cut this. At 17 I was struggling to earn a B in AP psych. This darkly polished gem was so potent and bold it took the culturally saturating Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand to keep it out of the number one spot. What a significant juxtaposition in 1963 - the Liverpudlian Lads at #1 telling a lady they want to hold her hand and the Brooklyn-born Lady Gore at #2 (literally and metaphorically) telling men they simply do not own her. It was a revolutionary manifesto wrapped in a pop song, like a subversive candy bar.

   The first Feminist Movement, like the inevitable wave it was, broke on America in the middle 1800s, peaking at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. The wave was born out of a swirling mass of urban industrialization and a wild notion that women deserved opportunities, some as absolutely bonkers as voting for the people who represent them. What a fucking batshit concept, I know, especially in a country that espoused equality and freedom in their “break-up-letter-to-beat-all-other-break-up-letters” to England. The Second Wave of Feminism began in the 1960s, and like so many other bonkers movements it demanded outlandish concepts like equal and civil rights for ALL. Betty Friedan’s wave-inducing The Feminine Mystique hit the shelves in February 1963. You Don’t Own Me arrived in December of the same year.

2. Lesley exploded on the popular charts with her #1 adolescent heartbreak hit It’s My Party in April ‘63. Mercury Records quickly doubled down on the success of that teenage mini-opera and churned out the direct sequel Judy’s Turn To Cry in June. American Bandstand and the Hit Parade had a new ingenue to throw on stage and exploit and Lesley cashed the checks knowing full well the United States wasn’t ready to accept her in her full capacity. She became the queen of sass following the release of She’s a Fool in September ‘63. In the span of seven months, the Quincy Jones (Yes, THAT Quincy Jones) prodigy had three top-five hits. Then December came and Quincy Jones, the otherworldly brilliant and absurdly prolific composer, producer, arranger, conductor, and sideman who worked with or produced Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderly, Ray Charles, (is that enough???) and Ella “For the Love of God” Fitzgerald said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I have an idea.” He added the ominous introduction, the near-classical burst of piano notes, and the minor-key orchestration to prove a point. This was a prominent black man guiding a still-closeted-gay white teenager in the early 1960s through the turmoil of a music career (not to mention a litany of prominent social issues) to arrive at a destination the New York Times referred to as “indelibly defiant.”

3. Cultural shifts ain’t overnight sensations (though we often argue they should be). They take time, patience, and persistence. It starts with a single idea - a groundbreaking, revolutionary concept that will upset the status quo in ways the status quo is willing to kill to avoid. I can give you a list of examples, but a halfway decent grade school education should suffice, and if it doesn’t then one should sue one’s school board for dereliction and malfeasance. It’s not my job to spoon-feed the socially inept and historically ignorant. It requires a well-reasoned approach to handle genuine, no-shit, life-and-death matters, and in the 1960s, feminism and civil rights were exactly that. What's truly radical about You Don't Own Me is the lyrics. They're defiant, they're angry, but they're also so damn reasoned. Gore's not just saying she's independent from her boyfriend; she's celebrating it, proudly declaring she's her own person, free to do as she pleases, even if that means seeing other dudes. And in 1963 and ‘64, when women were still expected to be these docile little creatures, that was like dropping a bomb. Gore slices through those lyrics like a razor through velvet. It's all minor keys and seething restraint, with just a hint of venom dripping from her words. But then… BAM! The second part of the verse hits, and suddenly we're in a whole different vibe. It's like the clouds parting after a storm, with choral backup vocals rising like a gospel choir on a mission. Gore doesn’t hold back. Her vocals assert themselves with newfound strength, especially when the melody takes this wild journey through different keys before swooping back to where it all began. Then comes the instrumental break, and it's pure cinematic angst. Those sweeping strings, they're like the crashing waves of a romance gone sour, washing over you with their dramatic intensity.

   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

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

   Gore died in New York in 2015 after a bout with lung cancer. She and her partner, jewelry designer Lois Sasson, were together for 33 years when she passed. Her New York Times obituary had this to say:

   …with songs like It's My Party, Judy's Turn to Cry, and the indelibly defiant 1964 single You Don't Own Me — all recorded before she was 18 — Gore made herself the voice of teenaged girls aggrieved by fickle boyfriends, moving quickly from tearful self-pity to fierce self-assertion.

   - New York Times obituary of Lesley Gore, 2015

   Fierce self-assertion… That’s a goal to which we should all aspire.