One-Woman Song

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Brian: Wow, a song named after a girl. There aren't a million of those already. Stewie: Name twenty. Brian: Rosanna, Roxanne, Michelle, Alison, Sarah, Angie, Brandy, Mandy, Gloria, Cecilia, Maggie May, Jessica, Nancy, Barbara Ann, Billie Jean, Layla, Lola, Polly, Helena, Jenny from the Block. Stewie: Name six more. Brian: Sherry, Laura, Wendy, Maria, Peggy Sue, Minnie the Moocher. Stewie: Name five more. Brian: Tracy, Jean, Jane, Mary Ann, Eleanor Rigby. Stewie: (throws down guitar) Go *bleep* yourself. —Family Guy

Songs named after girls, usually the Love Interest of the male singer. This trope is one that just keeps coming back, but for some reason female singers tend to not name songs specifically after guys.

Not to be confused with One-Woman Wail.

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Examples of One-Woman Song include:

Straight Examples

Alternative Dance

• "Jezebel" - Depeche Mode

Alternative Hip Hop

• "Bonita Applebaum" - A Tribe Called Quest

Alternative Rock

• "Joey" - Concrete Blonde. A rare example of a One Man Song.
• "Laura" - Scissor Sisters' pop number opening their first full album. Also the name of a song by Billy Joel.
  • Also, "Mary".
• "Mary Jane" - Alanis Morissette
• "Valerie" - The Zutons (covered - Mark Ronson, of course). Also the name of a song by Steve Winwood.
• "Ramona" - Beck (From Scott Pilgrim Versus the World)
• "Isobel" - Bjork
• "Emaline" - Ben Folds Five
  • Also "Julianne," "Kate," "Alice Childress," and "Gracie."
    • "Gracie" is written (and named) for Folds' daughter.
      • Also Ben Folds' (no longer Five) "Saskia Hamilton"
• "Caroline" - Concrete Blonde
• "Grace" - Jeff Buckley
• "Magdalena", "Brena", and "Judith" - A Perfect Circle
• "Jacqueline" - Franz Ferdinand
• "Tautou" - Brand New
• "Mary", "Talula", "Ophelia", "Marianne" and "Josephine" -Tori Amos
• "Lucy" - Skillet
• "Ruby " -The Kaiser Chiefs
• "Adrienne" - The Calling

Blues

• "Maissie" - Syd Barrett

Blues-Rock

• "Layla" - Riff-driven Derek and the Dominoes signature song.

Country

• "Molly" and "Isabel" - John Denver
• Ruby - Kenny Rogers
• "Austin" - Blake Shelton
• "My Maria" - Brookes and Dunn

Country Rock

• "Amie" - Pure Prairie League

Dark Cabaret

• "Delilah" - The Dresden Dolls
  • Of course we cannot forget the more famous song of the same name by Tom Jones (she stood there laughing, but when we felt the knife in his hands, she laughed no more.)

Folk

• "Suzanne" - Leonard Cohen
• "Barbara Allen" (Also "Barbarous Ellen", for her treatment of the Jimmy Grove.) - traditional British; variants all over the English-speaking world.
• "To Ramona" - Bob Dylan

Folk Rock

• "Cecilia" - Simon and Garfunkel (She's breaking his heart, shaking his confidence daily; AND he's begging her please to come home)
• "Sally Anne", "Penelope" and "Margarita" - Great Big Sea.
• "Rosie" -Fairport Convention
• "Alison Gross" (a witch) -Steeleye Span
• "Hey Rose", "Genevieve", and "Viola" by Girlyman, though only one was written by a man.
• Martina-Phranc, by a woman this instance.

Grunge

• "Polly" - Nirvana
  • If addressing your rape victim as if she was a pet bird counts.

Hard Rock

• "Beth" - KISS (He hears her callin', but he can't come home right now)
• "Carrie" - Europe (band)

Indie Pop

• "Mary Jo" - Belle and Sebastian
• "Silvia" and "Julie" - Jens Lekman. (He also has a Dear Friend Lisa.)

Indie Rock

• "Geraldine" - Glasvegas
• "Celestine" - Kirsty Mac Coll
• "Jezebel" - Two Hours Traffic

Jazz

• "Minnie the Moocher" - Cab Calloway scat-heavy jazz hit.

Jazz Rock

• "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", "Peg", and "Josie" by Steely Dan.

Metal

• "Audrey," "Jessica," and (debatably) "Amber" - Dir en Grey

New Wave

• "Darlene" - Erasure (interesting in that it is sung as if to a love interest, but the singer is a gay male)

Pop

• "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart, about a possessive girlfriend.
• "Billie Jean" - Michael Jackson's signature song.
  • Also, "Dirty Diana," from the Bad album.
• "Jenny from the Block" - Jennifer Lopez's Rockstar Song
• "Kitty" - Written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, recorded by Racey and Covered Up by Toni Basil.
• "Eve" and "Julia" - Chantal Kreviazuk.
• "Sherry", "Ronnie", "Dawn" and "Marlena" are all the Four Seasons.
• "Brandy" - Looking Glass (She's a fine girl. What a good wife she would be.)
• "Diana" - Paul Anka
• "Rosanna" by Toto, sung about the lead singer's girlfriend at the time, Rosanna Arquette.
• "Alison" - Jordy (with both the singer and the cartoon girl being children).
• "Célimène" - David Martial.
• "Oh! Carol" - Neil Sedaka
• "Windy" - Ruthann Friedman, sung by The Association
• "Angie" - Cobra Starship
• "Carrie Ann" - The Hollies

Pop Punk

• "Haushinka" - Green Day
  • "Maria" as well.
• "Josie" - Blink-182
• "Jasey Rae" - All Time Low
• "Dakota" - A Rocket to the Moon
• "Sarah Smiles" - Panic At the Disco

Pop Rock

• "Gloria" - Wise-ass Laura Brannigan disco hit.
  • GLOOOOOOOORIA! G-L-O-R-I-A! (insert guitar riff here)
• "Valleri" - The Monkees
  • "Mary, Mary"
• "Elenore" - The Turtles
• "Lisa" - Dead Flowers
• "Jane" - Barenaked Ladies
• "Alia" - Roza Rymbaeva. This song is a Dedication to a Great Patriotic War sniper.

Post-Hardcore

• "Ashley" - Escape the Fate
• "Emily" - From First To Last

Post-Punk

• "Alice" and "Marian" - The Sisters of Mercy
  • They also covered "Emma" by Hot Chocolate and "Jolene" by Dolly Parton.

Power Pop

• "Denise" - Fountains Of Wayne

R & B

• "Bernadette" - Four Tops (Some men spend their whole lives searching for what we had)
• "Roni" - Bobby Brown

Rap Metal

• "Maria" - Rage Against the Machine

Rock

• "Roxanne" - The Police about "redeeming" a prostitute.
• "Michelle" - Old Silly Love Song from The Beatles when they didn't know how to write anything else.
  • "Eleanor Rigby" - The classic Beatles Tear Jerker, of course.
  • "Julia" and "Sexy Sadie", too.
• "Angie" - Depending on which rumor you believe: Mick Jagger bragging about nailing David Bowie's wife, Mick Jagger lamenting wanting Bowie's wife, or Mick Jagger apologizing for nailing her husband.
• "Barbara Ann" - The Beach Boys' surf rock classic, of course. They tried other girls, but they knew they wouldn't do.
• "Sara" - Bob Dylan
• "Sara" - Starship (Storms are the wind in her eyes, of course.)
• "Rosalita", "Leah", "Sherry Darling" - Bruce Springsteen
• "Suzy Lee" - The White Stripes
• "Emily" - The title of songs by From First to Last, Elton John, and Michael W. Smith, and Frankie Valli, all unrelated to one another
• "Susie Q" - originally by Dale Hawkins, made famous by Creedence Clearwater Revival (Baby, I love you)
• "Sophia" - (həd) Planet Earth
• "Rosemary" - Lenny Kravitz
• "Lydia" - Fur Patrol
• "Maria Maria" - Santana
• "Mary" - The Feelers
• "My Sharona" - The Knack (by the way, the woman named Sharona, who was on the single cover, is an ordinary woman who sells real estate in Southern California.)
• "Ann" - Andy Dwyer's song about Ann Perkins on Parks and Recreation; written and performed by Chris Pratt, the actor who plays Andy. Subverted in a later episode when he wrote a song about April... and titled it "November".
• "Carol" and "Anna" - Al Stewart
• "Vivica" - Jack Off Jill
• "Jane" - Jefferson Starship

Rock and Roll

• "Donna" - Ritchie Valens
• "Lucille" - Little Richard
• "Maybellene" and "Nadine" - Chuck Berry
• "Peggy Sue" - Buddy Holly

Southern Rock

• "Jessica" - The Allman Brothers Band
  • Also "Melissa", "Desdemona" and "Little Martha"

And literally countless others, in itself, an interesting result for Transfinite Number Theory.

Subversions

Alternative Dance

• "Lilian" - Depeche Mode. Ostensibly about a really evil ex who's just broken up with the singer.

Alternative Rock

• "Mary Jane" - Tori Amos. It's not about a girl.
• Also subverted in "Song for Whoever" by the Beautiful South, where due to repeated Muse Abuse the singer/writer can't remember which of the many One Women is which:

Oh Shirley,Oh Deborah, Oh Julie, Oh Jane I wrote so many songs about you I forget your name

• • And it's all for the money:

Oh Cathy, Oh Alison, Oh Phillipa, Oh Sue You made me so much money I wrote this song for you

• Subverted in "Helena"; the song is about grieving for a dead woman (Word of God says the singer's grandma.)
• Subverted in "Debra" - Beck. The song's lyrics begin to direct the song towards one girl ("oh girl, I only wanna be down with you") until it's revealed that Beck has a secondary interest: Debra, the girl's sister ("and your sister, I think her name is Debra"). The track is done in the vein of R. Kelly-like R&B ballads and seems to be one until the hilarious twist of Beck pining for a little more is made apparent.

Country

• "Lucille" by Kenny Rogers, which is about the man's wife running off and leaving him to raise their four children alone on a farm.
• "Jolene" by Dolly Parton, sung by the cuckolded wife to the woman her man is having an affair with.

Folk Rock

• "Reva Thereafter" by Girlyman, about the singer's grandmother, and coping with her suicide.

Heavy Metal

• "Melissa" - Mercyful Fate. She is actually a human sacrifice in black mass.

Hip Hop

• "Kim" - Eminem. Not in the way this trope usually goes. This is no Silly Love Song.

Musical

• "Dammit, Janet" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's also a parody of these types of songs.

New Wave

• "52 Girls" - The B 52s: a song full of girls' names!
• "Shirley" - by Charlie Peacock, which is a song with seemingly Word Salad Lyrics.

Pop

• "Alejandro" by Lady Gaga is possibly a triple subversion. First it is inverted. Second there are three men in the song. And finally Gaga is fending off their advances.
• "Stephen" by Ke$ha is a song about a man, sung by a woman.
• "Etienne" by Guesch Patti, also a song by a woman about a man.

Post-Rock

• More than half of the songs on Slint's Tweez are named after women ("Carol", "Charlotte", "Darlene", "Rhoda", and "Nan Ding"). The thing is that all of these are non-appearing titles that have nothing to do with the song content, and the remaining four songs have male names. They decided to just title the songs as arbitrary shout outs to band members' parents. As for why there's an odd number of names, well, Nan Ding was apparently a dog.

Rock

• "Lola" - Silly little number by The Kinks... that's actually about a Transvestite. Maybe.
  • Similarly, "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis.
• "Delilah" by Queen. The lines "You get away with murder so innocent" and "you pee all over my Chippendale suit" feel somewhat out of place in a sweet and catchy love song, if you don't realise that it's about a cat.
• Why Leelee Won't Love Me by Primitive Whore.
• "Martha My Dear" by The Beatles. It's about Paul's dog.
• "Noelle" by Daniel Amos, which isn't a love song by any means.
• "Mia" by Chevelle. No one's quite sure what it's about.

Comedy

• Stephen Colbert had a signature song that was "chart-adjacent" in the eighties, entitled "Charlene", where the narrator is obsessed with the titular woman and the song literally spells out how the narrator stalks her.
  • There was a sequel song recently that Colbert sang with the Black Belles called "Charlene 2 : I'm over you". Hint:he's not really.
• Martina Navratilova, Wish You Were Mine-As heard on the Tony Horne In The Morning, the song talks about how the legendary tennis champ is Not Like Other Girls, broke the singer's fingers, looks manly, and how he probably wishes she was his girlfriend.