My song today is ‘Devil Woman’ which Cliff Richards recorded in a 1976 single from his album ‘I’m Nearly Famous’. The song was written by Terry Britten and Christine Holmes. The song is told from the point of a view of a man jinxed from an encounter with a stray cat with evil eyes, and his discovery that the psychic medium (a Gypsy woman) whose help he sought to break the curse was the one responsible for the curse in the first place. However, the nature of the curse is not made clear.
Released in late April 1976, ‘Devil Woman’ made its way up to Number 9 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’. It became Richard's first single to reach the Top 20 in the US, making Number 6 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’, making it Cliff Richard's highest-peaking single and biggest seller in the US. ‘Devil Woman’ is the third biggest-selling Cliff Richard single with over two million copies sold worldwide. It was certified Gold by the RIAA in the US and the CRIA in Canada.
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Of all the women I have met and known, I cannot really say that any one of them was what I would call a ‘Devil Woman’.
I have known all kinds of women, and some kinds who I wish I had never known at all. I have known virtuous women and bad women: tall women and short women: long-haired women and short-haired women: blonde-haired women, black-haired women, red-haired women, auburn-haired women, and women with straight hair, curly hair, wavy hair. I have known brown-eyed women and blue-eyed women: Christian women, Jewish women, agnostic women, and women who were atheists.
I have known women who followed the stars and planned their everyday lives and major decisions around the position of the planets at any given time. I have known women who believed in free love, women who believed in total celibacy, and women who believed in polygamous relationships, along with women who believed in nothing and everything imaginable. I have known women who loved a man before entering the sisterhood to become a nun and nuns who left the sisterhood because of their newfound love of a man. I have known many women who were proud mothers to priests, as well as having knowledge of several priests who secretly fathered children to parishioners of theirs.
I have known woman frightened to death by spiders and who would burst into tears at the sight of creepy crawlies, and women who would deliberately go out of their way to step on a snail, crush a ladybird; or break a butterfly’s wings just as easily as flattening their partners with a frying pan to the head or tossing a pan of boiling water in their face if they so much as looked at them cross-eyed! I once knew of a woman who dived into deep water and sacrificed her life to save a trapped pet from drowning, and I once knew a woman who deliberately stabbed a horse for no other reason than the horse was looking over the wall minding its own business and she was bored at the time. I also knew of another woman who died giving birth to her child after receiving the medical knowledge beforehand that her pregnancy was too dangerous to proceed with, and was she to go ahead and have her baby, either she or the life of her child could be spared, but not both!
In short, I have known all manner and types of women, yet I cannot say that I have ever known a ‘Devil Woman’. Despite the numerous types of women who I have either known or have known of, I am only too well aware that there is infinitely more about women that I do not know than I will ever know! I do not know what makes them tick, and I will never be able to delve deep enough into their minds to fathom out their female rationale and logic.
In my heart, I cannot say that I have ever known the reason which drives a woman’s mind and propels her towards completely irrational acts, and I have never been able to understand some of their feminine herd behaviour like needing to go to the loo with half a dozen friends to hold their handbags as they have a wee! What’s all that about?
And yet, I do earnestly believe that the happiest of all women are the ones who can keep the darkest of all secrets. For instance, I believe that even in 2020, we still live in a man-made world where society is predominantly shaped and functions primarily for the benefit of the male species over that of the female. Hence, if this assertion of mine is true (as I very much suspect it to be), for most married women to be happy and to remain happy in their marriages, I believe that they must engage in one of the most underhand and unequal of expectations, especially if they want to keep their man content in all ways he considers to be important to his overall state of happiness and wellbeing. I believe that for any 'clever woman' to remain happily married, she needs to keep the best secret of all. I have always believed that if a woman has a profound intellectual superiority to that of her husband, she will have a much happier marriage and relationship with her spouse if she can keep it a profound secret, and simply nod in agreement to his illogical assertions and absurd statements instead of offering her own wiser opinion to the dialogue.
Love and peace Bill xxx