He Thinks He'll Keep Her

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“He Thinks He'll Keep Her”

Single by Mary-Chapin Carpenter
from the album Come On Come On

Released

1993

Format

cassette single, CD single, 7" vinyl single

Recorded

1992

Genre

country music

Length

4:04 (album version)

Label

Columbia

Writer(s)

Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Don Schlitz

Producer

Steve Buckingham, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, John Jennings

Mary-Chapin Carpenter singles chronology

"The Bug"
(1992)

"He Thinks He'll Keep Her"
(1993)

"I Take My Chances"
(1993)

"He Thinks He'll Keep Her" was a 1993 song recorded by American popular music artist Mary Chapin Carpenter. The song was Carpenter’s first number-one single on the Radio & Records country music charts, although it peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.

First appearing as a cut on her album Come On Come On, the song was motivated in response to a 1970s Geritol TV commercial in which a man points to his wife’s many accomplishments and attributes, and then concludes with "My wife...I think I'll keep her".^[1] Carpenter's song lyrics at first seem to echo the sentiments of the Geritol spot, describing the many duties and demands of a seemingly perfect wife. However, in the second verse of the song, the woman throws her husband out of the house and it becomes apparent that Carpenter intends the phrase to be taken literally ("he thinks he'll keep her").

The song was nominated for a Grammy, and was accompanied by a live performance music video, taken from the 1993 CBS special Women of Country, where Carpenter was accompanied by Emmylou Harris, Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, Trisha Yearwood, Suzy Bogguss and Pam Tillis. None of these singers appeared on the actual recording of the song.