B-side "Give Me Some Pain" Format 7"
12
CD Length 4:20 | Released 13 January 1997 Recorded 1996 | |
Genre Alternative dance
trip hop
synthpop
funktronica | ||
"Your Woman" is a song by British one-man band White Town. It was released on 13 January 1997 as the lead single from the album Women in Technology. It features a muted trumpet line taken from "My Woman" by Al Bowlly. The song peaked at number 1 on the UK Singles Chart. Outside the United Kingdom, the single topped the charts in Spain, peaked within the top ten of the charts Australia, Canada, Denmark and Finland and peaked within the top thirty of the charts in the United States. "Your Woman" was White Town's only hit.
Contents
The song was named the 158th best track of the 1990s by Pitchfork Media.
Background and writing
White Town's sole band member and writer of "Your Woman", Jyoti Prakash Mishra, has stated that the lyrics could stem from or be related to multiple situations. He says "When I wrote it, I was trying to write a pop song that had more than one perspective. Although it’s written in the first person the character behind that viewpoint isn’t necessarily what the casual listener would expect".
Mishra writes that the themes of the song include: "Being a member of an orthodox Trotskyist / Marxist movement. Being a straight guy in love with a lesbian. Being a gay guy in love with a straight man. Being a straight girl in love with a lying, two-timing, fake-arse Marxist. The hypocrisy that results when love and lust get mixed up with highbrow ideals."
The '>Abort, Retry, Fail?_' message that appeared on some inlay cards is explained by the artist thus: "Well, this cheerful message became a kind of shibboleth for me and sort-of characterizes what's been going on for me the last few years." The song was mixed on a Atari ST computer.
Music video
The music video was produced in black-and-white silent film style. Most of the outdoor scenes were filmed in Derby.
In the video there are numerous elements of acting, cinematography, and editing that suggest an old-fashioned film style. The exaggerated gestures of the hat-wearing woman, helpless and fearful, and those of her quick-tempered lover hint at the acting style from 1920s expressionist films. The ostensive metaphors, such as the use of hypnosis on the woman by the man or the recurring shots of crossroad signs bearing names of romantic relationship-related attitudes, remind of the 1920s and 1930s efforts to express subjectivism in film.
The use of circular masks, as to emphasize focal points or for a mere elegant look, also belongs to the aforementioned period. At the point where the woman first enters the man's bedroom and in the final rope scene, match cuts are used in a manner resemblant of that from silent experimental films. Mishra can be seen for brief moments on television screens in the background.
There is also a scene where the woman closes the door on the man's arm, as she tries to escape from his advances. This is a direct reference to a very similar scene from Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's 1928 surrealist film Un chien andalou.
Tyler James version
British singer–songwriter Tyler James released a cover of the song. It was released as the third and final single from his debut studio album The Unlikely Lad (2005). It was released as a Digital download in the United Kingdom on 22 August 2005. The song peaked to number 60 on the UK Singles Chart.
Princess Chelsea version
New Zealand musician Princess Chelsea released a cover of the song in 2009. It was released as her first single and was a non-album single. It was released as a digital download.