Lesley Gore, who died of lung cancer on Monday at the age of 68, is often cited as a proto-feminist pop music heroine, mostly on the strength of her hit "You Don't Own Me," which reached #2 on the charts in 1964 when she was just 17. 
 
 Rightly so. "You Don't Own Me," which was written by Philadelphia songwriters John Madera and David White (who also wrote "At The Hop" for Danny & the Juniors) is a song of explicit defiance that says what it means in blunt, direct langauge. "Don't tell me what to do, don't tell me what to say!," sang the born in Brooklyn, raised in Tenafly, N.J. teen, who later graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. "And please, when I go out with you, don't put me on display!" 
 
 Its status has grown in the five decades since it was originally recorded and was only prevented from reaching the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 by The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand." Perhaps the two most memorable versions of the song are by the unlikely trio of Diane Keaton, Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn in the 1996 movie The First Wives Club, and its use as a get-out-the-vote PSA with reproductive rights resonance during the 2012 Presidential campagn in a video that featured appearances by Carrie Brownstein, Miranda July, Natasha Lyonne, Tracee Ellis Ross and Gore herself. Joan Jett also recorded it. 
 
 "You Don't Own Me" is s self empowerment anthem recorded at a time when the roles women were expected to play in pop were more commonly submissive and adoring, as typified by hits like "He's So Fine" by the Chiffons. Released the same year as Betty Friedan's The Femine Mystique, Gore's song pointed forward to future respect-demanding females, from Aretha Franklin to Loretta Lynn to Beyonce. And while "You Don't Own Me," is Gore's most assertive song, her first and even bigger hit, the Quincy Jones-produced "It's My Party," is also a proto-feminist salvo in its own way. It's a memorable evocation of teen heartbreak, and while it's weepy, they were Lesley Gore's tears, and she owned them. It was her party, and she'd cry if she wanted to. 
 
 It's worth noting that the follow-up hit to "It's My Party," "Judy's Turn To Cry," which was written by Beverly Ross and Edna Lewis, departs from this feminist narrative. It finds the snger gloating that Judy, who stole Johnny away in "It's My Party" has now been dumped herself, and that Johnny has come back to his rightful place where he was before the party started. Sisterhood was not quite so powerful in that case. 
 
 Gore had a quite successful second act of her career, performing on Broadway in Smokey Joe's Cafe and co-writing "My Secret Love" for Alison Anders' 1996 film Grace Of My Heart. She's survived by Lois Sasson, her jewelry designer partner of over 30 years. Her obituary is here. 
 
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 Singer Lesley Gore died on Monday from lung cancer at age 68. Gore became famous as a teenager in the early 1960s “girl group” era, when the charts were dominated by pretty young women singing songs about high school heartbreak. Gore's 1963 hit “It's My Party” is a perfect example of the form: lush production, overwhelming emotion, all in service of a story about teen drama that feels like the end of the world when it's happening but seems a bit silly to adult ears. 
 
 But while the girl group genre, at the behest of older male producers like Phil Spector, was dominated by songs that portrayed girls as boy-crazy damsels in distress—“The Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri Las and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by the Shirelles being iconic examples—Gore stood out by showing a more defiant, feminist side with her 1963 hit “You Don't Own Me.” The song portrays a narrator standing up to her controlling, possessive boyfriend: “You don't own me, don't try to change me in any way/ You don't own me, don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay.” 
 
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 Singer Lesley Gore in 1966. She died of cancer on Feb. 16 at 68. (Dan Grossi/AP) 
 
 It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to 
 
 Cry if I want to, cry if I want to 
 
 You would cry too if it happened to you 
 
 Nobody knows where my Johnny has gone 
 
 Judy left the same time 
 
 Why was he holding her hand 
 
 When he’s supposed to be mine? 
 
 It wasn’t exactly a feminist anthem. And “Johnny” was definitely a “he,” not a “she.” But over the decades, Lesley Gore, once a 16-year-old recording artist who wailed about a breakup in the overnight hit single “It’s My Party,” became a feminist, an open lesbian and an independent thinker. 
 
 She grew up in a time when differences weren’t readily accepted — though, once she found herself, she said she was never willing to hide. 
 
 “I just kind of lived my life naturally and did what I wanted to do,” she told the entertainment site After Ellen when she came out in 2005. “I didn’t avoid anything, I didn’t put it in anybody’s face. Times were very different then, so, you know, I just tried to live as normally as humanly possible. But as truthfully as humanly possible.” 
 
 Gore, who was most famous for “It’s My Party” — followed by its sequel, “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” and her anthem “You Don’t Own Me” — died on Monday from lung cancer. The 68-year-old was reportedly a nonsmoker. 
 
 “She was a wonderful human being — caring, giving, a great feminist, great woman, great human being, great humanitarian,” Lois Sasson, her partner for 33 years, told the Associated Press. 
 
 Born Lesley Goldstein, Gore was a 16-year-old student with a smoky voice when she first caught the attention of uber-producer Quincy Jones. In 1963, he helped her record her first hit “It’s My Party,” which embodied teenage angst and, nearly overnight, climbed to the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100. In the next two years, she recorded other hits such as “She’s A Fool,” “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows,” which Marvin Hamlisch co-wrote, “That’s the Way Boys Are” and “Maybe I Know.” Sometimes naively — or maybe knowingly, as in the lesser-known 1964 song “Sometimes I Wish I Were a Boy” — many of her compositions took on gender. 
 
 Among them was a much bolder statement: “You Don’t Own Me,” a song that would become a common thread throughout her life. 
 
 You don’t own me, I’m not just one of your many toys 
 
 You don’t own me, don’t say I can’t go with other boys 
 
 And don’t tell me what to do 
 
 And don’t tell me what to say 
 
 The song continued: 
 
 So just let me be myself 
 
 That’s all I ask of you 
 
 I’m young and I love to be young 
 
 I’m free and I love to be free 
 
 To live my life the way I want 
 
 To say and do whatever I please 
 
 “As I got older, feminism became more a part of my life and more a part of our whole awareness, and I could see why people would use it as a feminist anthem,” Gore told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2010. “I don’t care what are you are — whether you’re 16 or 116 — there’s nothing more wonderful than standing on the stage and shaking your finger and singing, ‘Don’t tell me what to do.'” 
 
 It seemed the song had become her personal mantra. 
 
 Unlike many other artists her age, the Brooklyn-born, New Jersey-raised singing sensation rejected a life on tour for a college education. When she turned 18, she decided to major in English and American literature at Sarah Lawrence College. 
 
 “The record company wasn’t thrilled, my agent wasn’t thrilled — but I sensed very early just how fickle this business is,” she told the Sacramento Bee. “I had a good brain in my head and I saw it was an opportunity to cloister myself.” 
 
 “It would have been very foolish of me to leave school to go into such an unpredictable field on a full-time basis,” she said at the time, according to the New York Times. 
 
 Gore kept her name alive by appearing on musical variety shows such as “Hullabaloo,” “Shindig!” and “The Ed Sullivan Show.” 
 
 While in college in 1967, she released her last top 20 hit called “California Nights.” She graduated the following year — a time when music started moving from girl-pop to psychedelic rock. Her music career began to suffer and she turned to performing in television, movies and on the stage. 
 
 “She was a serious artist that was way ahead of her time,” Ronnie Spector, leader of 1960s girl-group superstars the Ronettes, said in a statement, according to the AP. “She had a certain sound. But you want to be able to do new things too, and it can be hard on an artist that is so identified with a specific sound. Although she wasn’t in a girl group, Lesley was definitely a huge part of that era. But she continued to be creative, and kept looking ahead, and that’s how I will remember her.” 
 
 Gore played the Pink Pussycat in the 1960s TV series “Batman.” She booked small gigs. She wrote songs that never caught on. Then in 1980, she and her brother, Michael, co-wrote the Oscar-nominated single “Out Here On My Own” from the film “Fame.” 
 
 
 
 Gore in 2008. (Louis Lanzano/AP) 
 
 But she was more than a singer and songwriter. 
 
 In 2005, Gore spoke publicly for the first time about her sexuality when she hosted several episodes for a PBS series called “In the Life,” a news magazine that highlighted gay and lesbian issues. She talked about her partner, Sasson. 
 
 “I decided to host a couple of the ‘In the Life’ programs,” she told the New York Times in 2005. “And I did that really as a result of meeting a lot of young gay people in the Midwest who really had nothing to relate to. At least I felt this program is presenting them with some options.” 
 
 “I saw what a difference a show like ‘In the Life’ can make to their lives in some of these small towns where, you know, there are probably two gay people in the whole damn town,” she added in an interview with After Ellen. “It’s made real inroads for them. They come and talk to me about this stuff, so I know how important it is.” 
 
 That same year, Gore returned to the studio to lay down her comeback album, “Ever Since,” re-recording the song that perhaps started it all, “You Don’t Own Me.” But, this time, “it feels more like part of a conversation than a declaration of independence,” the New York Times said at the time. 
 
 “When I heard that song at the age of 17, it felt like a humanist song to me,” she told the newspaper. “I could see a guy singing that to a young woman as easily as I could see a young woman singing it to her boyfriend or father.” 
 
 Record executive Blake Morgan helped her produce her new album. 
 
 “She was a broad, she had moxy, she was tough,” he said, according to NPR. “She had all of that. And she had a strength. … There was something incredibly compelling about just who she was, on or off the record.” 
 
 Then, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Gore used “You Don’t Own Me” for an online public service announcement about reproductive rights. 
 
 “I have to say that when I first started singing, I didn’t think it was a very noble profession,” she told the New York Times in 2005. “I worked for people like Robert Kennedy and I thought: ‘Wow, that’s what it’s about. That’s how you change the world.’ And then I watched that disintegrate in front of my eyes, and it was very discouraging. 
 
 “But I have found over 43 years that I really rather love what I do. And it really does keep me in touch with people, in a way that a lot of people don’t get a chance to be in touch with people. So I have a newfound love and respect for my career.”
– Headlines with singer Lesley Gore's obituary most often link her to the huge 1963 hit "It's My Party." But it's another song of hers from that same year, "You Don't Own Me," that matters far more, writes Amanda Marcotte at Slate. "It's My Party" was a typical entry in the teen-heartbreak genre, but the defiant "You Don't Own Me" was ahead of its time, portraying "a narrator standing up to her controlling, possessive boyfriend." A few years later, songs such as Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walking" and Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" followed the same path as feminism became popular, writes Marcotte. The song "is a self-empowerment anthem recorded at a time when the roles women were expected to play in pop were more commonly submissive and adoring, as typified by hits like 'He's So Fine' by the Chiffons," writes Dan DeLuca at the Philadelphia Inquirer. No wonder the song has been covered so much over the decades, including a version by the cast in the movie First Wives Club. The song seemed to take on more importance to Gore herself over the years; she never went out of her way to hide her homosexuality in an era when it wasn't as accepted. "It seemed the song had become her personal mantra," writes Lindsey Bever at the Washington Post.