[MUSIC] White Town, "Your Woman"

[rfmcdonald]

Wikipedians have chosen to classify White Town's 1996/1997 international hit song "Your Woman" as one of many many "One-hit wonders in the UK". This is certainly correct--White Town just didn't make any hit songs of note, certainly none which crossed the Atlantic. Fortunately, a decade or so after "Your Woman" disappeared into the ether, Jyoti Mishra himself, the sole member of White Town, uploaded the video for "Your Woman" to Youtube.

Watching the "Your Woman" video on MuchMusic back in the day, during my last difficult and depressing year of high school, I was struck by the video's profound sense of being at play. Wikipedia cites influences from surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel on the making of the video, but what I took from the video was amusement at the sight of a crazy two-person race after something unknown through a strange town that ends so bizarrely. The lyrics also played a role in my reaction, mind.

Just tell me what you've got to say to me
I've been waiting for so long to hear the truth
It comes as no surprise at all you see
So cut the crap and tell me that we're through

Now I know your heart, I know your mind
You don't even know you're bein' unkind
So much for all your highbrow Marxist ways
Just use me up and then you walk away
Boy, you can't play me that way

Well I guess what you say is true
I could never be the right kind of girl for you

Sung by a man, I recognized at the time that something was up with these lyrics. Could it be ... ?