Woman Woman!

My mother loved the music of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, especially the song Woman Woman, which hit the charts in November of 1967. I remember her buying the 45 rpm single, and then playing it repeatedly (and literally ad nauseum!) on our family’s Sylvania stereo system, which enjoyed a place of prominence in our living room. (Stereo record players were still quite a novelty back then!)

As you probably know, Gary Puckett is the artist who brought us at least two other great hits: Young Girl and This Girl is a Woman Now – two songs that go wonderfully hand in hand, and together suggest that while it’s inappropriate for a man to pursue a young girl (as it most certainly is – even if she has led him to believe she’s “old enough to give him love”), once that young girl becomes a woman, well, she’s pretty much fair game for just about any middle-aged pop singer who comes down the pike dressed in a Union civil war uniform with a desire to “change her world.”

Yet, I digress. As I think back on my mother playing that record, Woman Woman, I find myself now, years later, wondering, What was my mom thinking? And, more to the point, just what was there about those lyrics that was so exciting to her? The song is, after all, about a woman who has “cheating on her mind,” and who Puckett describes as having “a certain look when she is on the move.” Did those lyrics express some secret fantasy my mother harbored in her own mind? Could my mother have had cheating on her mind? Yikes! Not my mom! And gosh, could it be I was blind to the fact that she wore some certain look when she was on the move? Eek, I don’t even want to go there!

Of course, it is possible (and, in fact, likely), that maybe my mom just simply liked the song – you know, like it had a good beat and you could dance to it – and that there were no other thoughts on her mind… er…well, you know what I mean.

Thoughts? Comments?