Lesley Gore’s iconic hit, “You Don’t Own Me,” has left its mark on music and popular culture.

The late singer, born Lesley Sue Goldstein, would have turned 79th on Saturday, May 2. Lesley handed away in February 2015, from lung cancer at the age of 68. She is well-known for her tracks such as It’s My Party, Judy’s Turn To Cry, and You Don’t Own Me. You Don’t Own Me was one of her largest hits, changing into a feminist anthem of ladies’s empowerment. The 1963 track also reached quantity 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for three consecutive weeks, behind the Beatles’ hit I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Lesley recorded the track when she was 17, and it was written by Philadelphia songwriters John Madara and David White. You Don’t Own Me tells the story of a lady telling a man not to objectify her and attempt to control her. John spoke about what impressed him and David to pen the long-lasting monitor.

“Our original intent was to write a song with a woman telling a man off,” the songwriter told Forgotten Hits, per uDiscover Music. “Though we didn’t realize at the time that it would become a woman’s anthem, it definitely was our intention to have a woman make a statement.”

In 2019, John told NPR that he and David have been repulsed by the music written for feminine artists in the early 60s revolving around pining after males and determined they wished to do one thing different: “Let’s write a song about a woman telling a guy off.”

However, the 89-year-old shared that the track’s sensibility was also influenced by his upbringing in a multiracial Philadelphia neighborhood and his involvement in the civil rights motion.

“I saw how Black people got treated,” John elaborated. “It was horrible, horrible, horrible. My friends and I got locked up in Philadelphia and Mississippi, and they treated us like gangsters. And my Black friends got hit more than I got hit. [The police] had billy clubs and hit you across the legs, but the Black guys got hit across the body. Those are things you don’t forget.”

Lesley shared what drew her to the track and what she initially thought it was about in an interview with WHYY’s Fresh Air in 1991

“At the time, I knew I chose it because I knew I liked the strength in the lyric,” she told Fresh Air’s host Terry Gross. “But, for me, it was not a song about being a woman. It was about being a person and what that entails. Of course, it got picked up as an anthem for women, which makes me very proud.”

The track has been coated by feminine artists such as Dusty Springfield, Joan Jett, Christina Aguilera, Kristin Chenoweth, and Ariana Grande. It was also famously sung by Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, and Goldie Hawn in the 1996 film The First Wives Club.

The track had a fashionable resurgence in 2015, when Australian singer-songwriter Grace Sewell launched her own model that includes rapper G-Eazy. The reinterpretation went No. 1 in Australia. Grace spoke to NPR about the coincidence of being the same age as Lesley when she recorded the track. There was another parallel between the 2: both songs have been produced by Quincy Jones.

Quincy grew to become Lesley’s producer after the president of Mercury Records, Irving Green, performed a tape of Lesley for Quincy that her uncle Joe Glaser had given him.

Grace said that the late legendary music producer approached her about recording the monitor after listening to her demo tapes. Before re-recording, Grace shared that Quincy had taught her about the track’s origins in racial politics and feminism.

You Don’t Owe Me was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015. Lesley re-recorded the track in 2005 for her album Ever Since, and she had also publicly come out as a lesbian during that time. She and her late accomplice, jewellery designer Lois Sasson, have been together for over 30 years.

Lesley used the track in a PSA during the 2012 presidential marketing campaign, urging ladies to vote for Barack Obama and for ladies’s rights. In the video, she said, “It’s hard for me to believe, but we’re still fighting for the same things we were then.”

The track continued to interact with politics, serving as an anthem during the #MeToo motion and spotlighting the 2018 Women’s March, when Jessica Chastain sang it during her Saturday Night Live opening monologue alongside other SNL feminine solid members.

Lesley told Digital Interviews that You Don’t Own Me was her signature piece, per BBC

“After some 40 years, I still close my show with that song because I can’t find anything stronger, to be honest with you,” Lesley explained. “It’s a song that just kind of grows every time you do it.”