“It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World” by James Brown

James Brown cut "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" in a New York City studio on February 16, 1966, and King had it out as a single later that year; it resurfaced on the 1970 album Soul on Top. The title winks at the 1963 comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but the song plays it dead serious, down in E-flat minor.

Brown hands men the credit for cars, trains, boats and the electric light, then concedes that none of it adds up to a thing without a woman, and by the fade he's calling man lost in bitterness. Rolling Stone later called the lyrics "biblically chauvinistic", yet the words came from Betty Jean Newsome, his co-writer and one-time girlfriend, drawing on her own view of the sexes. It topped the Billboard R&B chart and reached No. 8 on the Hot 100.

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