Lynn Anderson, singer of the 1971 megahit, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," died last August at the age of sixty-seven. Her best known song was a crossover hit, the biggest seller until Shania Twain came along a quarter of a century later.
Blonde and beautiful, with an excellent alto voice, Anderson ran into resistance getting the song recorded. Male producers were reluctant to have her sing the line about men promising diamond rings to women, a way of snatching their hearts and gaining control of their bodies, I suppose. Eighteen years before, Marilyn Monroe sang "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in the film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. That song's message has the singer/narrator welcoming diamonds regardless of the man's intentions. The relevant time bridge between 1953 and 1971 is the women's movement.
Marilyn Monroe, in spite of 1950's cultural and societal restrictions, expressed female sexuality, even if it seemed parodied in many of her movies. Monroe herself liked walking around the house naked and found hangups about sex in her society unfortunate. She chose to celebrate what Kate Bush later called "the sensual world," Marilyn as modern devotee of Aphrodite, whether she knew it or not.
By the 1970s, Lynn Anderson's musical use of the gift of diamonds expressed the idea of coercion on a man's part, rather than self-unquestioning material wants on a woman's. The money-making music industry of that time, run by men with patriarchal ideas, didn't want a pleasant-looking lady suggesting in a verse that men, from their own purposes, impress women with shiny expensive objects. Yet, the public bought the record in millions of copies.
The degree of lyric analysis applied by early 1970s listeners to the song is unknowable, but it's obvious to me that Lynn Anderson's honesty, and persistence in recording the song, make her stand out: a crossover hitmaker paving the way for Shania Twain, and a current freakishly talented blonde success named Taylor Swift.
Vic Neptune
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