Song of The Day: White Town 'Your Woman'!

If ever there was a song that functioned as both a brilliant, left-field Top 40 hit (or #1 smash hit if you live in the UK) and a rallying cry for both the D.I.Y. enthusiast and the sexually confused, it is White Town's "Your Woman".

White Town isn't so much a band as the nom de pop for producer/multi-instrumentalist Jyoti Mishra, whose concise pop songs are the canvas upon which he methodically sets about wrestling with love, lust and the confusion that ensues when one is mistaken for the other.

Just tell me what you've got to say to me
I've been waiting for so long to hear the truth
It comes as no surprise at all you see
So cut the crap and tell me that we're through

Now I know your heart, I know your mind
You don't even know you're bein' unkind
So much for all your highbrow Marxist ways
Just use me up and then you walk away
Boy, you can't play me that way

In the case of "Your Woman", the listener who follows the lyrics too closely is probably left wondering just who to root for in this tangled web that Mishra so eloquently weaves. By the time the song ends, we're left with more questions than answers and, damn it, isn't that what great pop is all about?

I mean, who hasn't listened to Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" and gone "Great fookin' song, but what's it about? Who's it about? Are they being cheeky?" Of course, "Your Woman"'s charm lies in the ambiguity of its lyrics as much as it does the irresistible musical arrangement and that unshakable, hypnotic groove.

Well I guess what you say is true
I could never be the right kind of girl for you

I could never be your woman...

It's no coincidence that the best pop music often dabbles in some truly masterful levels of gender-bending (Just ask Ray Davies or that Ziggy guy) and moral/sexual ambiguity, which Mishra has continued to do over the past two decades, albeit on a much smaller scale as his major label career only lasted the one album (1997's Women In Technology), but his bedroom pop aesthetic and oft-challenging lyrics continue to mine true pop gold for anyone who takes the time to seek it out.

One can't help wonder what Mishra could've accomplished in the wake of the massive success of "Your Woman" if he'd only been able to bring himself to play the game like so many lesser talents whose careers we cannot escape. Perhaps if he had, there'd be one less Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift clogging up the pipeline or they'd have been influenced by him instead of whatever mediocre pablum they chose to regurgitate instead.