Fancy (Bobbie Gentry song)

Content

The Southern Gothic style-song is told from the perspective of a woman named Fancy, approximately thirty-three years old, looking back to the summer she was 18.

Fancy's family (consisting of Fancy, a baby sibling whose gender is not mentioned, and their mother; the father having abandoned them) lived in poverty — "a one room, rundown shack on the outskirts of New Orleans". Her mother is terminally ill and has no one to care for the baby.

In a last, desperate act to save Fancy from the vicious cycle, her mother spends her last money to buy Fancy a red "dancing dress", makeup and perfume, and a locket inscribed with the phrase "To thine own self be true". She encourages Fancy to "be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy, and they'll be nice to you" (implying prostitution as a means to gain financial independence). Soon after, Fancy's mother dies and her baby sibling becomes a ward of the state.

Fancy recalls her mother's parting words: "Here's your one chance Fancy don't let me down" and "If you want out, well, it's up to you." Fancy ends up using sex and connections she makes to build a better life for herself (eventually owning a Georgia mansion and a New York City townhouse flat), eventually making peace with her mother and acknowledging the complexity of the decision her mother was forced to make.

Reception

The song was a cross-over country and pop hit for Gentry in early 1970, and she received a Grammy nomination for best female pop vocal performance for it.

Reba McEntire version

In 1991, Reba McEntire took the song to number eight on the Billboard Country charts. McEntire also produced a popular music video for the song, expanding on the song's storyline. For years, McEntire has encored her live concerts with the hit, singing the first half of the song in a ragged black mink coat and hat then removing them to reveal a floor length red gown for the second half. McEntire has referred to the song as her "possible signature hit". (The edit of the song heard on most radio stations cuts the song short after three verses, before the title character makes it off the streets.) Since 1984, Reba wanted to record it but her producer at the time, Jimmy Bowen was against it because he believed the song was too closely associated to Gentry. When Reba changed producers to Tony Brown, she was able to record it for her 1990 album Rumor Has It. As of April 2015, the song has sold 588,000 digital copies in the United States.

In 2014, a mashup of McEntire's version of "Fancy" and Australian rapper Iggy Azalea's hit recording of the same title surfaced on the Internet. The mashup, which replaces the Charli XCX-sung chorus in Azalea's hit with the chorus from McEntire's "Fancy," was reviewed favorably by the country-music website TasteOfCountry.com.

Music video

The music video for the song tells the story of the song itself in more detail. It opens with the title character, Fancy Rae Baker, played by McEntire, riding in a taxi cab and arriving at the site of the small shack on the outskirts of New Orleans where she grew up, which is now abandoned. The video takes something of a creative license with the song as McEntire's version of Fancy, much like McEntire herself, is a famous singer and actress. The story of the song plays out against the background accompanied by flashbacks of Fancy's past with her mother and baby sibling playing prominent roles.

Near the end of the video, Fancy visits her mother's grave in the backyard of the shack and sees her mother's ghost standing nearby. She tells her that she understands now and forgives her. As the video ends, Fancy departs in her taxi and a large sign is seen in the front yard that says that the property is to be the future home of the Fancy Rae Baker Home for Runaways, dedicated to the memory of her late mother, with the home's motto "to thine own self be true" (the engraving on the locket Fancy's mother gave her before she left, which she threw down before leaving but retrieved at her return and placed on her mother's gravestone).

Though the song's lyrics indicate that the events described took place in the summer Fancy turned 18, in the video, the clothing worn by the characters, and the surrounding bare foliage, would appear to indicate winter conditions in southern Louisiana. Another strange fact about the video was it was not filmed in Louisiana; it was actually filmed on a cold, rainy, January day, a few miles outside Nashville.

References in Stephen King's book "Duma Key"

In Stephen King's book Duma Key, there are some references to this song. In the book Edgar says he called his doll "Reba" because the radio in his car played Reba McEntire's song "Fancy" when he had his accident, and when he forgets his doll's name, he thinks about the song, especially about the sentence: "...It was RED!..." from the song. Also, there are a lot of references to this particular sentence ("...It was RED!...") when something in the book is red, all because his car radio played the song when the accident happened.

Other versions