The meaning behind Neil Diamond’s Hit that resurfaced in the ’90s with……

The meaning behind Neil Diamond’s Hit that resurfaced in the ’90s with……

The Meaning Behind Neil Diamond’s Hit That Resurfaced in the ’90s With Urge Overkill, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”

In 1967, Neil Diamond’s mid-tempo ballad “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” peaked at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 list. Diamond created the song specifically for his female fanbase. Diamond was in his mid-20s when the song was released, and he already had a string of hits in the early 1960s from his debut solo single “Solitary Man,” songs he had written for The Monkees—”I’m a Believer,” “A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You,” “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow),” and “Love to Love,” and his single “Cherry Cherry,” which peaked at No. 6 on the Hot 100.

By the late 1960s, the majority of Diamond’s fans had been following him since they were teenagers and no longer identified as female.

Girl, you’ll become a woman shortly.
I love you so deeply and have died for you, but all they can say is “He’s not your kind.”
They never stop putting me down, and I’m not sure when I’ll come around.
What am I going to find?
Do not let them make up your mind.
Girl, you will soon become a woman.

Throughout the lyrics, Diamond says he’s been misunderstood all his life and urges a girl to take his hand.

Please come and grasp my hand.
Girl, you’ll become a woman shortly.
Soon, you will need a man.

I’ve always been misunderstood, but what they’re saying cuts like a dagger, girl.
“The boy’s no good”
I’ve discovered what I’m looking for, but if they have the chance, they’ll definitely end it.
I would have done everything I could. Now it’s up to you.

‘Pulp Fiction’

Neil Diamond Has Only Just Started Processing Parkinson's Diagnosis

Nearly three decades after its original release, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” regained popularity when Urge Overkill’s cover appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction. The band’s rendition of the song was previously featured on their 1992 EP Skull, which Tarantino purchased while in Amsterdam. Tarantino already had an eclectic blend of songs on the soundtrack, including Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell,” Dick Dale’s “Misirlou,” Dusty Springfield’s “Son Of A Preacher Man,” and others, and wanted to add Urge Overkill to the mix.
Diamond initially refused to have his song featured in the film since it was violent and drug-fueled. “At the point in my career I wrote it, my audience was teenage girls, and the song came out of that context,” Diamond recalled in 2018. “I composed it while on the Dick Clark Where the Action Is tour. The audience sparked it. And then, when Quentin Tarantino came along a few years later and wanted to use it in ‘Pulp Fiction,’ I turned him down because I had promised myself that I would never use any of my songs for drug references or even smoking cigarettes.

Diamond continued, “I received a script, read it, and thought it was fantastic, but it did not fit inside the parameters I had established for myself. And then I discussed it with a good friend, my publisher Dave Rosner, who indicated that Quentin Tarantino was a bona fide future star and that I should take it seriously.”

Urge Overkill’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” is played during a scene in which Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) dances and sings along to the song before ingesting heroin. In the sequence, she nearly dies from an overdose before Vincent Vega (John Travolta) saves her by injecting adrenaline directly into her heart.

An “Odd, Haunting Quality”

The band’s version of the song reached at No. 59 on the Hot 100 but rose to No. 11 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, and it remains one of the film’s most distinctive sounds.

Sung by Urge Overkill’s Nash Kato, the song became one of the band’s most well-known songs, appearing between their fourth album Saturation and their 1995 release Exit the Dragon.

“The record did well, and the song hit a nerve because it was in the movie,” King Roeser of Urge Overkill stated in 2022. “We lucked out. I don’t think the song would have made history if it hadn’t been tied with the movie. But I believe it made the film because of the strange, eerie tone we gave it.”

Related Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *