Helen Reddy – I Am Woman

“I Am Woman” – Single by Helen Reddy from the album I Am Woman
B-side: “More Than You Could Take”
Released: May 1972
Songwriters: Ray Burton, Helen Reddy
Producer by Jay Senter
Charted No.1 in US

Helen Reddy wrote this when she couldn’t find enough songs to include on her first album, I Don’t Know How To Love Him. She was looking for songs that reflected a positive self-image that she felt she had gained from her participation in the women’s liberation movement.

Included on the 1971 album, Reddy didn’t like the way this version came out and neither did her producer, Larry Marks (he thought she sounded “too butch”), but they put it on the album anyway. Another producer did like it. Movie producer Mike Frankovitch wanted to use it in his “feminist comedy” Stand Up And Be Counted. Reddy agreed on two conditions: That she would re-record the song, and that he would donate $1000 each to Women’s Centers in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

To coincide with the movie’s release, the song was issued as a single in 1972, which slowly rose to #1 in America. Reddy’s second album was subsequently titled I Am Woman and included this new version of the song.

“I Am Woman” was the first number one single for Capitol Records since “Ode to Billie Joe” by Bobbie Gentry five years earlier, in 1967. It was the first number one hit on the Billboard chart by an Australian-born artist and the first Australian-penned song to win a Grammy Award (in her acceptance speech for Best Female Performance, Reddy thanked “God, because She makes everything possible”). It also became the second Helen Reddy hit – after “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” – to peak at number two in her native Australia.

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