Who sang it better? I am woman
This week Red Karaoke is celebrating International Women’s Day (tomorrow) by honoring some of our favorite music from female musicians and artists throughout the decades. And what better way to show some love for the ladies than to consider one of our favorite girl anthems, I am woman, in a new installment of Who sang it better?
Early in her career, Helen Reddy probably never thought her voice would become one of the most well known in the women’s liberation movement. But Reddy’s early search for an original song that “would express her growing passion for female empowerment”, Reddy not only recorded a single that would become one of the most supernaturally inspiring anthems for women, it would also propel her to pop stardom, when I am woman made over $40 million in the united states and topped the charts in 1972, a year after its release.
Reddy described the song’s message as reaching beyond feminism. “It’s not just for women,” she said. “It’s a general empowerment song about feeling good about yourself, believing in yourself. When my former brother-in-law, a doctor, was going to medical school he played it every morning just to get him going.”
But while Reddy’s version may be the original and most well known rendition, even going so far as to be played as the theme at a Miss World competition (infuriating feminists everywhere), there are a few other interesting and fun contenders for who might have sang it better…
Possibly one of our favorite remakes of the seventies hits came much more recently and from a surprising source… the cast of Sex and the City sang their own version in a karaoke scene we just happened to love from the second film. Sure, the girls may not be professional singers, but our favorite ladies from one of women’s favorite television series singing one of the world’s most well known girl anthems? What’s not to love?
Of course, Jordin Sparks sang her own incredible rendition of the theme during her time competing on American Idol in the final four, and Dusty Springfield her own classic performances of the anthem.
You get to be the judge though…. take a listen to these recordings, or record your own rendition of I am woman and share it in the forum - either way, we want to know - Who sang it better?
