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You Don't Own Me (WORD)
You Don't Own Me (PDF)
The songsheet was an amalgamation of the two videos below. You can play along in the same key for the first few verses, but then the recording changes several times. We're going to do a key change too, because WE LOVE KEY CHANGES - but just the one. Thanks to Heather Bromberg and Ana Maria Farmakis for bringing this song to BUG!
"You Don't Own Me" was Gore's second most successful recording, after "It's My Party", and her last top-ten single. Gore herself considered "You Don't Own Me" to be her signature song claiming “I just can’t find anything stronger to be honest with you, it’s a song that just grows every time you do it.” Since it's release, the song has been hailed as an early feminist anthem. In 2015, singer SayGrace took Gore's song to No. 1 in Australia with a version featuring rapper G-Eazy. The following year, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Gore said, "My take on the song was: I'm 17, what a wonderful thing, to stand up on a stage and shake your finger at people and sing you don't own me." Lesley Gore re-recorded "You Don't Own Me" for her 11th album Ever Since in 2005, later utilizing it during the 2012 presidential campaign encouraging women to vote and protect women's reproductive rights. The song has since been used in many different feminist rights campaigns, marches and TV shows, highlighting the significance of the powerful message the song still delivers. Gore said “After some 40 years, I still close my show with that song because I can’t find anything stronger, to be honest with you".
Gore died in 2015 at the age of 68, sparking a remembrance of the hit song, "which only grew stronger as the rallying cry during the women’s marches in 2018 around the MeToo movement". In Gore's obituary, The New York Times referred to "You Don't Own Me" as "indelibly defiant".