Oh, Pretty Woman (1964) – Roy Orbison

As I was waiting in line at my local supermarket I opened up a women’s fashion magazine called Marie Claire. They say they are ‘a magazine for modern women that is interested in fashion, beauty, lifestyle and is committed to gender issues, women’s realities and the environment‘. I hadn’t flipped through a women’s fashion magazine in years, but as I skimmed the pages, the models in the photos stopped me in my tracks. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all, but I couldn’t help feeling baffled and a bit disheartened. Where were the gorgeous, vibrant models I remembered from past beauty magazines or comparable to how Julia Roberts is presented in this scene from Pretty Woman? Women who looked like women—who even smiled. Instead, the pages I saw were filled with ultra-serious faces, dressed in metrosexual or androgynous styles. Is this really the ideal that young women aspire to now? Or is it what they’re being encouraged to become?

Not including his music in the super group The Traveling Wilburys, Oh, Pretty Woman is the 4th song to be presented here so far from Roy Orbison after his previous entry She’s a Mystery to Me. Today’s featured track might possibly be one of the world’s most recognisable and iconic pop tunes thanks in large part to the aforementioned movie by almost the same title – Pretty Woman. The movie gave the song immediate traction and launched it to a wider audience than otherwise; extending Roy’s appeal and legacy. Although I realise it was huge already being the 1964 mega hit, reaching No. 1 both in the US and the UK and spending three weeks there on the Billboard chart.
Orbison posthumously won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the recording of Oh, Pretty Woman from his 1988 HBO television special Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night. In 1999, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and was named one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

The title was inspired by Orbison’s wife, Claudette, interrupting a conversation to announce that she was going out. When Orbison asked if she had enough cash, his co-writer Bill Dees interjected, “A pretty woman never needs any money.”

[Verse 1]
Pretty woman, walking down the street
Pretty woman, the kind I’d like to meet
Pretty woman, I don’t believe you
You’re not the truth
No one could look as good as you
Mercy!

[Verse 2]
Pretty woman, won’t you pardon me?
Pretty woman, I couldn’t help but see
Pretty woman, that you look lovely as can be
Are you lonely just like me?
Rwar-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r

[Middle-Eight]
Pretty woman, stop a while
Pretty woman, talk a while
Pretty woman, give your smile to me
Pretty woman, yeah, yeah, yeah
Pretty woman, look my way
Pretty woman, say you’ll stay with me
‘Cause I need you, I’ll treat you right
Come with me, baby, be mine tonight

[Verse 3]
Pretty woman, don’t walk on by
Pretty woman, don’t make me cry
Pretty woman, don’t walk away, hey

[Outro]
Okay
If that’s the way it must be, okay
I guess I’ll go on home, it’s late
There’ll be tomorrow night, but wait
What do I see?
Is she walking back to me?
Yeah, she’s walking back to me
Oh, oh, pretty woman

For more background on this song and Roy Orbison’s tragic family history I point you to fellow blogger Max’s 2023 article of Oh, Pretty Woman. Below is an extract:

It started on June 6, 1966, when Claudette and Roy were riding motorcycles. Claudette hit the door of a pickup truck and was killed instantly. Orbison poured himself into his work after that. He wrote and toured but was out of step with the mid to late-sixties music.  It was in Birmingham, England in September 1968 when catastrophe struck once more. News reached Orbison that a fire had broken out at his home in Tennessee and that his two eldest sons had tragically passed away. His younger child went to live with his grandparents.

References:
1. Oh, Pretty Woman – Wikipedia