You Are the Woman - Firefall (cover-live by Bill Sharkey)

You Are the Woman (Firefall, 1976). Live cover performance by Bill Sharkey, Home Studio, Hawaii Kai, HI. 2023-08-12 "Keeping the Oldies & Classics Alive"

"You Are the Woman," written by guitarist Rick Roberts, was Firefall's best selling release rising to no. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the fall of 1976 (Whitburn, 2013). The band was a rock band and did not like the soft rock song, but their producer insisted that they needed a hit and this was it. In fact bassist Mark Andes said "We knew it was going to be hugely successful, but we resisted. I remember feeling like, "Oh God, really?" (songfacts podcast, 2021). Guitarist Jock Bartley did eventually come around; he said, "I've been playing 'You Are The Woman' for 40-plus years and we are so lucky to have a hit song that is that big. It isn't totally representative of what all the rest of our songs sounded like, but that song has kept me working for 40 years and has kept Firefall together, so I'm happy to play it" (songfest podcast, 2021). How the song came about is a bit interesting. According to bandmate Larry Burnett, "[Roberts] gets a big bag of cocaine and gets real high, and then he gets papers and pencil and starts writing down rhyming words on the right-hand side of the page . . . And then he tries to attach sentences to each rhyming word, and then pushes everything around and tries to have it make sense, because, as you might imagine, it's not going to make sense right away, considering his approach to songwriting" (songfacts, 2023). Roberts commented on who the song was written for: "As I understand it, there are about a half a dozen women around this country who have told people repeatedly that ['You Are the Woman'] was written about them, . . . In fact, [this] song was not written about anyone, because the woman I had always dreamed of, I was still dreaming of" (songfacts, 2013).

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Lyrics:

You are the woman that I've always dreamed of
I knew it from the start
I saw your face and that's the last I've seen of my heart

It's not so much the things you say to me
It's not the things you do
It's how I feel each time you're close to me
That keeps me close to you

Whoa, oh
You are the woman that I've always dreamed of
I knew it from the start
I saw your face and that's the last I've seen of my heart

It's not so much your pretty face I see
It's not the clothes you wear
It's more that special way you look at me
That always keeps me there

Whoa, whoa
You are the woman that I've always dreamed of
I knew it from the start
I saw your face and that's the last I've seen of my heart

It's hard to tell you all the love I'm feeling
That's just not my style
You've got a way to send my senses reeling
Every time you smile

Whoa
You are the woman that I've always dreamed of
I knew it from the start
I saw your face and that's the last I've seen of my heart

Of my heart
Ooh, of my heart