“Just Like a Woman” by Bob Dylan

"Just Like a Woman" is one of the aching moments on Bob Dylan's seventh album, Blonde on Blonde, out in 1966, cut at Columbia Studio A in Nashville that March with Bob Johnston producing. The story goes that Dylan wrote it on Thanksgiving Day 1965; some biographers aren't buying it and figure he made up the words on the spot in the studio.

Who it's about is anybody's guess: some critics point to Edie Sedgwick, others to Joan Baez. The lyric has drawn fire as sexist, while its defenders argue it's really about growing up, not about gender. A trimmed-down edit went out as a US single that August, and the song's standing has only climbed with time; Rolling Stone placed it at 232 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2011.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.