Who recorded it first

Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon

Not an Urge Overkill original — a 1967 Neil Diamond single on Bang Records

Because Uma Thurman dances to it in Pulp Fiction, a great many people file “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” under Urge Overkill. The song was written by Neil Diamond and first recorded by him, released as a Bang Records single in March 1967 with “You’ll Forget” on the B-side. Diamond’s record was no obscurity either — it reached No. 10 on the US pop singles chart and led off his album Just for You. Urge Overkill’s version came much later, cut for their 1992 EP Stull.

The record

Who recorded it first

Record
“Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” b/w “You’ll Forget”
Artist
Neil Diamond
Released
March 1967 · Bang Records (recorded 1966)
Written by
Neil Diamond

Released Issued as a 7-inch single on Bang Records in March 1967, backed with “You’ll Forget” in the US and UK and with “New Orleans” in continental Europe. It also opened side A of Diamond’s 1967 Bang album Just for You (BLPS-217).

Charted A genuine hit, not a lost original: No. 10 on the US pop singles chart in 1967. It later reached No. 27 on the Dutch Mega Top 100 in 1971.

How we checked it

Wikipedia’s article on the song states plainly that it was written by Neil Diamond, whose recording of it on Bang Records reached number 10 on the US pop singles chart in 1967 — see the article ↗.

MusicBrainz places the original recording as track A1 of the 1967 Bang album Just for You (catalogue BLPS-217), timed at 2:48 — the release entry ↗.

Urge Overkill’s version is documented as the opening track of Stull, released by Touch and Go Records on 10 October 1992 — before Pulp Fiction — the EP article ↗.

Wikidata records the song as an original written, composed and performed by Neil Diamond, published 1967 — entity Q1797642 ↗.

MusicBrainz: the composition and every recorded version of it
Know more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →

Paste a URL and we’ll check it. This doesn’t change the page — it goes to our review queue, and if it holds up we update the record.

Fact-check

The record, corrected

The confusion here is purely chronological — Urge Overkill made a memorable record of a song that already existed, and the film that carried it did not stop to say so.

The beliefCover

Urge Overkill

Their version, first released on the EP Stull in October 1992 and later attached to Pulp Fiction, is the one most listeners know. It is a cover.

The originalFirst recording

Neil Diamond

Recorded in 1966 and issued as a Bang Records single in March 1967, backed with “You’ll Forget.” It reached No. 10 on the US pop singles chart.

The writerSole writer

Neil Diamond

Diamond wrote both words and music. Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich produced the original session; they did not write the song.

Written and first recorded by Neil Diamond, released March 1967 on Bang Records. Urge Overkill’s celebrated version dates from 1992.

Context

How a Top 10 hit got mistaken for a cover’s original

The odd thing about this one is that the original was not obscure. Diamond’s single went Top 10 in America. But it arrived in a crowded run of Bang singles, it was never his signature record, and by the 1990s it had settled into the deep shelf of a catalogue better known for “Sweet Caroline.” Urge Overkill’s version had no such competition — it was the only thing most listeners had ever heard the song called.

What sealed it was the placement rather than the record. In Pulp Fiction the song is not background: it plays over one of the film’s most-quoted scenes, and the soundtrack album sold in the millions. A generation met the song there, in a specific arrangement, sung by a specific band, with no sleeve note pointing backwards. That is usually enough.

The chronology, step by step
  • 1966 — Neil Diamond records the song for Bang Records, produced by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich.
  • March 1967 — Bang issues it as a single, backed with “You’ll Forget” in the US and UK (“New Orleans” in continental Europe).
  • 1967 — It reaches No. 10 on the US pop singles chart and opens side A of Diamond’s album Just for You.
  • 1968 — Cliff Richard cuts a version, released as the B-side of “I’ll Love You Forever Today”; Jackie Edwards also records it.
  • 10 October 1992 — Urge Overkill’s version leads off the EP Stull on Touch and Go Records, produced by Kramer.
  • 1994 — Quentin Tarantino uses the Urge Overkill recording in Pulp Fiction; MCA releases it as a single late that year and it charts across Europe and Australasia.
The original was a Top 10 hit. It still lost the credit.

The original recording artist — and the writer

Neil Diamond

b. 1941 · American singer-songwriter · Bang Records, 1966–68

Diamond came up writing for other acts in the Brill Building orbit before Bang Records turned him into a performer in his own right. “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” belongs to the extraordinary Bang run that also produced “Solitary Man,” “Cherry, Cherry” and “Red, Red Wine” — all of them, like this one, gathered onto Just for You in 1967. Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich produced the session; Diamond wrote the words and music alone.

Popularly credited as the original

Urge Overkill

Formed 1985, Chicago · American rock band

The Chicago trio recorded the song for Stull, a six-track EP issued by Touch and Go Records on 10 October 1992 and produced by Kramer. Quentin Tarantino picked it for Pulp Fiction two years on, and MCA pushed it as a single; it reached No. 59 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 11 on Modern Rock Tracks, No. 37 in the UK and No. 1 in Iceland. Theirs is a genuinely fine reading — slower, heavier, sung slightly off the beat — and the only thing wrong with the popular account of it is the chronology.