"Just Like a Woman" | ||||||||||||
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Single by Bob Dylan | ||||||||||||
from the album Blonde on Blonde | ||||||||||||
B-side | "Obviously 5 Believers" | |||||||||||
Released | August 1966 | |||||||||||
Format | 7" single | |||||||||||
Recorded | March 8, 1966, Columbia Studios, Nashville, TN | |||||||||||
Genre | Folk rock,pop | |||||||||||
Length | 4:53 (album version) 2:56 (single edit) |
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Label | Columbia | |||||||||||
Writer(s) | Bob Dylan | |||||||||||
Producer(s) | Bob Johnston | |||||||||||
Bob Dylan singles chronology | ||||||||||||
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14 tracks |
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"Just Like a Woman" | ||||
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1966 Danish picture sleeve.
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Single by Manfred Mann | ||||
from the album As Is | ||||
B-side | "I Wanna Be Rich" | |||
Released | July 29, 1966 | |||
Format | 7" single | |||
Recorded | 1966 | |||
Genre | Rock, pop | |||
Length | 2:54 | |||
Label | Fontana | |||
Writer(s) | Bob Dylan | |||
Producer(s) | Shel Talmy | |||
Manfred Mann singles chronology | ||||
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"Just Like a Woman" | |
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Album cover of You and I
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Single by Jeff Buckley | |
from the album You and I | |
Released | March 11, 2016 |
Recorded | February 1993 |
Genre | Alternative rock |
Length | 6:28 |
Label | Legacy |
Writer(s) | Bob Dylan |
Producer(s) | Steve Addabbo |
"Just Like a Woman" is a song written by Bob Dylan and first released on his 1966 album, Blonde on Blonde (see 1966 in music). It was also released as a single in the U.S. during August 1966 and peaked at #33 on the Billboard Hot 100. Dylan's recording of "Just Like a Woman" was not issued as a single in the United Kingdom but the British beat group, Manfred Mann, did release a hit single version of the song in July 1966, which peaked at #10 on the UK Singles Chart. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Dylan's version of the song at #232 in their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
In the album notes of his 1985 compilation, Biograph, Dylan claimed that he wrote the lyrics of this song in Kansas City on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1965, while on tour. However, after listening to the recording session tapes of Dylan at work on this song in the Nashville studio, historian Sean Wilentz has written that Dylan improvised the lyrics in the studio, by singing "disconnected lines and semi-gibberish". Dylan was initially unsure what the person described in the song does that is just like a woman, rejecting "shakes", "wakes", and "makes mistakes". The improvisational spirit extends to the band attempting, in their fourth take, a "weird, double-time version", somewhere between Jamaican ska and Bo Diddley.
Clinton Heylin has analysed successive drafts of the song from the so-called Blonde On Blonde papers, papers that Heylin believes were either left behind by Dylan or stolen from his Nashville hotel room. The first draft has a complete first verse, a single couplet from the second verse, and another couplet from the third verse. There is no trace of the chorus of the song. In successive drafts, Dylan added sporadic lines to these verses, without ever writing out the chorus. This leads Heylin to speculate that Dylan was writing the words while Al Kooper played the tune over and over on the piano in the hotel room, and the chorus was a "last-minute formulation in the studio". Kooper has explained that he would play piano for Dylan in his hotel room, to aid the song-writing process, and then would teach the tunes to the studio musicians at the recording sessions.