"American Woman" is a song released by the Canadian rock band The Guess Who in January 1970, from their sixth studio album of the same name. It was later released in March 1970 as a single backed with "No Sugar Tonight", and it reached number one on the BillboardHot 100. Billboard magazine placed the single at number three on the Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1970 list. On May 22, 1970, the single was certified as gold by the RIAA. Produced by Jack Richardson, the single was recorded on August 13, 1969, at RCA's Mid-America Recording Center in Chicago.
Writing and lyrics
The music and lyrics of the song were improvised on stage during a concert in Southern Ontario. Bachman was playing notes while tuning his guitar after replacing a broken string, and he realised he was playing a new riff that he wanted to remember. He continued playing it and the other band members returned to the stage and joined in, creating a jam session in which Cummings improvised the lyrics. They noticed a kid with a cassette recorder making a bootleg recording and asked him for the tape. They listened to the tape and noted down the words that Cummings had extemporized, and which he later revised. The song's lyrics have been the matter of debate, often interpreted as an attack on U.S. politics. Cummings, who composed the lyrics, said in 2013 that they had nothing to do with politics. "What was on my mind was that girls in the States seemed to get older quicker than our girls and that made them, well, dangerous. When I said 'American woman, stay away from me,' I really meant 'Canadian woman, I prefer you.' It was all a happy accident." Jim Kale, the group's bassist, explained his take on the lyrics:
The popular misconception was that it was a chauvinistic tune, which was anything but the case. The fact was, we came from a very strait-laced, conservative, laid-back country, and all of a sudden, there we were in Chicago, Detroit, New York – all these horrendously large places with their big city problems. After that one particularly grinding tour, it was just a real treat to go home and see the girls we had grown up with. Also, the war was going on, and that was terribly unpopular. We didn't have a draft system in Canada, and we were grateful for that. A lot of people called it anti-American, but it wasn't really. We weren't anti-anything. John Lennon once said that the meanings of all songs come after they are recorded. Someone else has to interpret them.
Bachman expressed the view in 2014 that it was "an anti-war protest song", explaining that when they came up with it on stage, the band and the audience had a problem with the Vietnam War. Said Bachman: "We had been touring the States. This was the late '60s, one time at the US/Canada border in North Dakota they tried to draft us and send us to Vietnam. We were back in Canada, playing in the safety of Canada where the dance is full of draft dodgers who've all left the States". The Guess Who were invited to play at the White House on July 17, 1970, shortly after the song's release. Because of its perceived anti-American lyrics, Pat Nixon, the wife of President Richard Nixon, asked that they not play "American Woman".
While most of the band's charting songs during this period were credited to just Bachman or Cummings or the two of them, this piece was credited to all four members of the band, in keeping with the way they all first improvised it together on stage. This full-band writing credit happened only one other time for The Guess Who, with their 1973 top 20 Canadian hit "Follow Your Daughter Home", albeit with a different line-up at that time.
One of the most notable covers of "American Woman" is Lenny Kravitz's 1999 version recorded for the soundtrack of . It was released as a single and was later included in the 1999 reissue of Kravitz's album 5. Kravitz's version is slower and softer than the original, without the signature guitar solo; he later said to Randy Bachman that the reason why he skipped the lead guitar part was "I couldn't get the sound. I couldn't get the tone." The cover reached the top 20 in Australia, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand and Spain, as well as number 26 in Canada and number 49 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The music video featured actress Heather Graham ; the original political themes of the song were largely replaced by sex appeal. In 1999, Kravitz and his band were joined by the Guess Who for a live performance of "American Woman" at the MuchMusic Video Awards.
"American Woman" has been covered by a number of artists. In 1982, Swiss hard rock band Krokus included a cover on their album One Vice at a Time. Butthole Surfers created a drum-heavy experimental version for their 1986 album Rembrandt Pussyhorse., In 2018 the band The Rock Alchemist released a heavy-rock version as an album-single.
Use in film
It was featured in Sam Mendes's film American Beauty, performed by main character Lester Burnham. Sam the Eagle performed a karaoke version of this song in a Muppetsviral video, until he stops in protest of its lyrics, and finds that it is a Canadian song even more upsetting. It was used in the HBO trailer for the film Game Change. A version sung by an older man was used in the film The Cable Guy. It was heard during the ending credits of the WitchbladeTV film, starring Yancy Butler and based on the Top Cow comic book series. American Woman was featured in the second instalment of the Austin Powers film trilogy, The Spy Who Shagged Me, with Heather Graham dancing provocatively whilst it played. The song was featured in an episode of "Due South"s first season. Kelly Clarkson recorded a cover version of the song as a theme song from the Paramount Network TV series, American Woman.
