“Oh! Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison wrote "Oh, Pretty Woman" with Bill Dees, and after Monument put it out as a single in August 1964 it sat at number one in America for three weeks and did the same in Britain. It was his second and last American chart-topper after "Running Scared", it sold seven million copies, and it was the summit of his career. Even the single carried a cleaned-up line, changed from the stereo LP version because the original wording was judged too risqué.

Its afterlife is a story of its own. The 1990 film Pretty Woman borrowed its title, and a lawsuit over 2 Live Crew's parody went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that parody can count as fair use. The recording on the 1987 collection In Dreams: The Greatest Hits credits Orbison and Michael Utley as producers.

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