Pop · Soft Rock · Singer-Songwriter
The voice of a movement — an Australian singer whose anthem became a generation’s rallying cry.
The anthem and the artist
Born in Melbourne, Australia, into a show-business family, Helen Reddy arrived in New York in the late 1960s with a suitcase, a small child, and a stubborn belief in herself. Her breakthrough came with “I Am Woman” in 1972 — a song she co-wrote after struggling to find material that spoke to her experience. It became a number one hit and the unofficial anthem of the women’s liberation movement, earning her a Grammy and a permanent place in cultural history.
Reddy wasn’t a one-song story. “Delta Dawn,” “Angie Baby,” “Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress),” and “You and Me Against the World” all reached the top ten, and for a stretch in the mid-seventies she was one of the most consistent hitmakers in pop. Her voice — clear, warm, and quietly steely — carried songs that balanced personal feeling with something larger.
She stepped away from recording in the 1980s, returned to Australia, and later became a clinical hypnotherapist — a second act as unexpected as the first was triumphant. Reddy passed away in 2020, but “I Am Woman” still rings out wherever people gather to be heard.