Greatest Love Songs Ever: #18 “Stand By Your Man”
Country music’s all-time #1 song is a counter-cultural oddity to 21st century’s young listeners. “Stand by Your Man” is an anthem to forgiveness. Without it, relationships don’t have a chance.
Feminists railed against this lyrical powerhouse-of-a-song which was first performed by Tammy Wynette and co-written by Wynette with Billy Sherrill.
The exasperated Wynette once remarked:
“It’s unbelievable to me that a song that took me 20 minutes to write, I’ve spent 20 or 30 years defending.”
Feminists like Gloria Steinem pushed back by popularizing a slogan that:
“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
This is one of the classic song refrains ever. You hear it once and it sticks with you forever. The lyrics are timeless:
“Stand by your man,
Give him two arms to cling to,
And something warm to come to,
When nights are cold and lonely.”
A triumphant anthem
The melody has the feel of a triumphant anthem that so infuriated the fledgling women’s lib movement that coincided with this 1968 hit song. The refrain is so good that Wynette sings it three times in a row. I’m not sure I’ve heard that done before.
Newsweek characterized it as a song …
“… for the beleaguered housewife who grits her teeth as destiny dumps its slop on her head.”
Just two years after Wynette recorded the song, ‘no-fault’ divorce swept the country, and Iowa became the second state to adopt this awful law in 1970.
Why awful? Because it made it easy to break the marital bond. Marriages always have some bumps in the road.
Many marriages were lost because couples took the easy way out thanks to no-fault divorce, when some of these relationships could have been saved with counseling and hard work.
The power of marital vows
“Stand By Your Man” honors the power of the marital vow to be true in good times and in bad, you know, to stand by your man … or woman. It works both ways.
As is often the case, artists create a work of art which presents an ideal they can’t live up to themselves. Ms. Wynette married five times in all. According to the CDC, the average American woman has 4.3 sex partners in a lifetime compared to 6.3 for men.
How sad. Couples that save sexual intimacy for marriage fare better than couples that don’t. Promiscuity denies the virtue of the faithfulness Wynette promotes in “Stand By Your Man.”
Data supports the virtues of chastity and faithfulness. The Journal of Family Issues released a 2018 study that revealed “people who had sex with anyone besides their eventual spouse were 151% more likely to divorce than people who married as virgins.”
As the chart below shows, married women over the age of thirty who preserved the sex act for a single man, their husband, had marriages that were nearly twice as stable as women who had four non-marital sex partners.
“Stand By Your Man” acknowledges that “sometimes it’s hard to be a woman, giving all your love to just one man,” and it’s no different with men.
But it also affirms the need for forgiveness in relationships. It’s not a call for a woman to be a doormat, as Hillary Clinton infamously implied in a 1992 “60 Minutes” interview in the wake of her husband’s dalliance with Gennifer Flowers.
Ms. Clinton averred that she wasn’t “some little woman standing by her man like Tammy Wynette.”
Watching the interview in her bedroom, Wynette was livid with Clinton:
“I came up out of the bed. I said, `It didn’t make me so mad about the song right then, it made me mad ’cause she said “some little old woman.’ `The women I knew–my mother, my grandmother, my aunts–they stood by their man. Nowhere does it say be a doormat and let this man walk on you.’”
I’ve led with Wynette’s iconic presentation of the song. Take a listen (top of page).
Carla Bruni sings “Stand By Your Man”
I’ve also included a cover of the song by former first lady of France, Carla Bruni, whose husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, served as president of France from 2007 to 2012. Mr. Sarkozy was just found guilty of criminal conspiracy and sentenced to 5 years in jail. Ms. Bruni will be sorely tested to ‘stand by her man.’
And just for fun, watch the Blues Brothers sing it!
I’m counting down the 52 Greatest Love Songs Ever, because love is the antidote for abortion. Next week presents a beautiful love song by my favorite songwriter ever, who is the greatest American songwriter. Ever. (In my humble opinion.) See you then!
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