Single Girl

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Sandy Posey - A Single Girl: The Very Best of the MGM Recordings (2002)
Sandy Posey - A Single Girl: The Very Best of the MGM Recordings (2002)

Single Girl was the title of a song by Martha Sharpe that was an international hit for American singer Sandy Posey from late 1966 to early 1967.

[edit] Recording by Sandy Posey (1966)

Sandy Posey recorded "Single Girl" [1] in Nashville, Tennessee on August 10, 1966 [2]. Although not strictly a country song, her rendition gave it a country feel – a style that some years later was often referred to as "countrypolitan".

"Single Girl" was produced by "Chips" Moman and released by MGM, reaching number 12 in the US sales charts in January 1967 [3] and number 15 in Britain [4]. It was re-released in 1975, and it entered the British top 50 again.[5] and, as Posey's signature song, appeared on a number of compilations [6], including a Posey retrospective, A Single Girl: The Very Best of the MGM Recordings, in 2002. The sleeve notes for the latter drew on an interview with Posey about her time at MGM.

An Italian version, "Sempre Solo," recorded in Milan [7], was coupled with "Nata Donna," Posey's first "hit" "single", known in English as "Born a Woman." [8].

Martha Sharpe recorded her own version of "Single Girl" for an album in 1973 [9].

[edit] The song

Like Born a Woman, which was also written by Martha Sharpe, Single Girl contained some sentiments that were obstensibly sceptical of men (for example, "I know all about men and their lies"). But whereas Born a Woman was seen by some as having feminist overtones, Single Girl was essentially more traditional in outlook – a young, isolated woman anticipating that "some day", despite not knowing anybody, people being "phoney" and the nights getting "so lonely", she would find waiting for her a man to "lean on". As one later commentator put it, drawing a contrast with Julie Rogers' The Wedding (1964), "Single Girl ... touched a nerve with every 'wallflower' who possessed a record player" [10].

The score of Single Girl was notable for its gradual crescendo towards the end and a piano backing that, between the closing lines,

Someday I’ll have a sweet loving man to lean on
The single girl needs a sweet loving man to lean on,

contained two distinctive high notes that were apt to linger in the mind of the listener. Billboard described Single Girl as "a strong piece of ballad material with driving rhythm background" [11]. The production overall conveyed very well the sense that "to make it in pop music in the 1960s, a girl needed a really strong song and a strong production, as well as a lot of tenacity and dogged determination" [12].

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ There is no article in the title, although this is sometimes given as A Single Girl (the title of a 2002 Posey compilation) or The Single Girl (as on a 1989 compilation of "hit girls of the sixties" issued by Pickwick).
  2. ^ Sandy Posey - MGM Home Page
  3. ^ Single Girl entered the US top twenty on Christmas Eve, 1966.
  4. ^ Charlie Gillett & Simon Frith (1976) Rock File 4
  5. ^ Guinness British Hit Singles (15th ed, 2002)
  6. ^ An early example on CD was It's My Party: Hit Girls of the Sixties (Pickwick, 1989).
  7. ^ See sleeve notes for CD, A Single Girl: The Very Best of the MGM Recordings (2002)
  8. ^ Released in Italy as MG 70-012
  9. ^ Monument album, Any Woman (KZ 32234)
  10. ^ Sleeve notes for It's My Party: Hit Girls of the Sixties (Pickwick CD, 1989)
  11. ^ Quoted in sleeve notes for A Single Girl CD, 2002
  12. ^ Sleeve notes for It's My Party: Hit Girls of the Sixties (Pickwick CD, 1989)