Sandy Posey’s “Single Girl” is today’s classic song of the day. Released in December of 1966 on MGM Records, this single peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 early the next year.
“Single Girl” was written by Martha Sharp, who also wrote tunes performed by the likes of Bobby Vee, Eddy Arnold, and Tom Jones. Like Dusty Springfield’s “Wishin’ and Hopin’” and Bobbi Martin’s “For the Love of Him,” this one takes us back to a time before female empowerment where the lyrics tell us:
I’m a single girl, all alone in a great big town
I’m a single girl, and I get so tired of love letting me down
But there’s a man I’ve yet to know
Waiting somewhere I’ve yet to go
Someday I’ll have a sweet, loving man to lean on
Not exactly Women’s Lib material, is it?
Sandy Posey was born in Alabama, grew up in Arkansas, and got a job as a receptionist in Memphis, Tennessee. She also found work as a background vocalist, working for producer Chips Moman on sessions for Elvis Presley, Joe Tex, Bobby Goldsboro, Tommy Roe, and Percy Sledge. (She was on Sledge’s best-selling single, “When a Man Loves a Woman.”) Moman was responsible for taking Ms. Posey solo and producing her big hits, including another Martha Sharp song, “Born a Woman,” which went to #12 earlier in 1966. While she always had a little country in her blood, Ms. Posey went full-time into country music in 1971, with some minor success. She returned to doing background vocals in the early ’80s, with only the occasional foray into solo work.
Sandy Posey passed away in 2024 of dementia. She was 80 years old.
And here’s today’s daily bonus video of the day, Sandy Posey lip-synching “Single Girl” on the West German television program Beat-Club in 1967. I gotta tell ya, this one seems like either a throwback to earlier in the decade or something a little more suited for the country charts; it seems a little out of place with the more psychedelic sounds on the radio at the time.
