"Ain't No Woman (Like the One I Got)" by The Four Tops

Song 46:

"Ain't No Woman (Like the One I Got)" by The Four Tops

Peak: 4

Year: 1973

Year end position: 60

Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/17

Chronological Songs by Artist: 15/17

Video?: No

Wikipedia?:  Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain't_No_Woman_%28Like_the_One_I've_Got%29

Spotify?:  Yes

Lyrics:  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/fourtops/aintnowomanliketheoneivegot.html

We are a dozen songs into the “Ain’t” list, and even though I didn’t mention it on the last song, we are more than half way done.  Today’s song is #12 of 20, so we have more than a week of songs to get through before we can start in on all the songs that start with something other than “Ain’t”.  I was looking through the remaining songs, and I was a little surprised to see just how many of them are older.  There is only 1 “Ain’t” song left that hit the charts after 1975.  I was curious to see if there was something going on with these songs, so I compared the distribution of “ain’t” songs versus the overall distribution of songs, and I found that the “Ain’t” songs are actually pretty representative of the charts overall.  I think that is more of an illustration of the overall songs than anything else.

I was having a bit of an issue with this song.  First off, the song is grammatically terrible.  There are at least three grammatical mistakes in the song title.  First off, it starts with “Ain’t”, which we have established is slang, at best.  The second thing in the title is that it starts off with the double negative “Ain’t No”, which would imply that there is a woman like the one he has.  Finally, the part of the title in the parenthesis is incorrect as well.  It should be “Like the One I’ve Got” or “Like the One I Have”.  If you notice the web address for the Wikipedia page, the corrected version is the name of the page.  Apparently, the good people at Wikipedia decided to make the correction for the Four Tops.  I had to double check this information, but the album lists it as “…One I Got”, and that’s how it is sung in the song, so I’m going with that as the correct (incorrect) phrasing.

I was looking into the Four Tops, and I’ve decided that they take the title for “Act Most Likely to Be Confused With the Temptations”.  To be honest, there’s really not a great way to keep the two separate.  They both came out at more or less the same time on the same record label and their sounds are pretty similar.  I only remember which songs are which through rote memory.  There are some differences.  The biggest, I think, is that the four members of the Four Tops stayed together continuously for over 40 years.  The Temptations certainly can’t make that claim.  Both the Temptations and the Four Tops are in my Hall of Fame.  The Four Tops wound up with 17 songs making the top 20.  I was a little surprised at the limits of their success.  If you look at all the Hall of Fame acts, they have the 149^th best average peak position for their hits that made this blog.  They have the lowest peak average of any act in the Hall of Fame that has had at least 2 #1 songs.  For comparison, there are 15 acts that have a higher average that never had a #1 song.

That takes nothing away from this song.  This was the Four Tops last Top 10 hit.  It was the first top 20 hit for them after they left Motown records.  Apparently, Motown decided to move their headquarters from Detroit to Los Angeles, and they were focusing much of their attention on newer acts like the Jackson Five and launching Diana Ross’s solo career.  The song was originally recorded by Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds a year earlier, but it didn’t meet with any success.  That’s more to the benefit of the Four Tops.

The lyrics to this song sing like a male counterpoint to Christina Aguilera’s “Ain’t No Other Man”.  It’s pretty much a tribute to a specific woman.  The first verse is all about how great she is, and all the great things she is capable of doing.  The chorus leads you to believe that part of how great she is, is that she is not high maintenance.  There is a lyric “She don't ask for things, no diamond rings” that may tell you a little more about what the singer values than how great the woman is.  There is another place where this happens.  Right before the bridge, there is a somewhat strange line, “'Cause it's my word, my word she'll obey, now”.  This line is preceded by “I would kiss the ground she walks on”, which is a strange juxtaposition of sentiments.  The first almost sounds like groveling, and the second is almost the opposite.  That’s the only line that really jumps out at me as strange.  The rest of the song is nothing but ebullient praise.  I’m chalking up the “obey” line as a sign of the times that this song was recorded in.  It’s hard to imagine that saying a woman “obeying” wouldn’t be re-written nowadays.