1975 Songs: Only Women Bleed

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First, I hope to see you later this evening. I mean that literally: it’s optometrist day, which means the eyes get dilated. But first, music! We’re going back to 1975, which is fifty years removed! Today’s song is a good indication of what happens when people stop the knee-jerk reaction and actually listen. Only Women Bleed - Alice Cooper These days, this is an anthem for battered women. In 1975, women’s rights groups were trying to have the song banned. Others wanted it banned because they thought it was about a woman’s monthly cycle. This was, in reality, the first big hit that dealt with the subject of domestic violence. There was an earlier song, “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)” by the Crystals, but (a) it wasn’t a hit and (b) it was almost an endorsement of violence (where the woman admits that she was untrue and her man smacks her ). I think that a lot of people didn’t know HOW to handle it because it was uncharted territory. We were still in the era of it was okay for the man to cheat, but not the woman (note the veiled threat, “Sundown, you’d better take care if I find you’ve been creepin’ ‘round my back stairs,” in Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown”). This song comes along, with a MAN lending a sympathetic ear to the abused woman (“black eyes all of the time, ‘don’t spend a time, clean up this grime,’ and you there, down on your knees, begging him please, ‘Come watch me bleed!’”) and people just didn’t know how to handle it. Many of you may know that Alice Cooper is a devout Christian. No kidding. He’s taught Sunday School for decades. He said that his songs always try to present clear moral decisions between right and wrong. Nowhere is that more visible than here. Only Women Bleed Written by Alice Cooper and Dick Wagner Recorded by Alice Cooper From Welcome to My Nightmare, 1975 She cries alone at night too often: