She’s Always a Winner to Me (1990)

Sung to Billy Joel’s She’s Always a Woman to Me (1977)

I wrote and performed this for the rehearsal dinner of the wedding between my former girlfriend, Dr. Jane Rosen, a chiropractor, and Frank Coombs, an engineer, in Atlanta, Georgia.

First, the Billy Joel video, from the song’s earliest live performance (1976), the year before its release:

My performance was accompanied by a handful of props, including an actual menu borrowed from the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel (her favorite brunch site) and a license plate borrowed from her Chrysler ragtop convertible, DR JANE.

My lyric features one of my parody repertoire’s five most virtuoso lines:

“And the most she will do is take X-rays of you but she’s winner-take-always to me.”

She’s Always a Winner to Me (1990)

She’ll scratch ’til you bleed, then she’ll purrr to appear yuh,

She’ll buy you the moon, have it billed to your Visa;

She returns what she takes; if she don’t, say-la-vee;

Tho there’r times you could skin ’er, she’s always a winner to me.

She’ll order red snapper, and-it-better be boneless;

Then she’ll bolt from the table to succor the homeless,

But she’ll slip her dessert to the tramp in Booth Three;

Let her write off her dinner: She’s always a winner to me.

Ohhhhhh—

She can license her name, (I held up her license plate, DR JANE)

Bend the rules of your game,

Leap ahead of her goals.

Ohhhhhh—

She’ll lambada in furs,

Then she’ll cool off her spurs

Waltzing barefoot on coals.

She can shed seven pounds on a diet unflavorly,

Then gain it back twice in one brunnnch at The Waverly;

But she fills her silk dresses so sinnn-u-ously:

Be she never much thinner, the lady’s a winner to me.

She’ll assail The Good Book with her sharp hermeneutic;

She’ll rail at the rabbis while waxing Talmudic;

But she seeks out His Truth, wheresoever it be:

Don’t call her a sinner, she’s more than a winner to thee.

Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm-mmm mmm-mmm-mmm,

Mmm mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm, mm-mmm.

Ohhhhh—

You can wake to her cats,

Feed a snake to her bats,

If ya follow her plan.

Ohhhhh—

’Cause she’ll never concede,

Or retract her “Indeed!”—

She just changes her man.

If ya pledge your devotion, you’ve earrrned her entrustment;

If you can’t, she’ll prescribe you an “attitude adjustment”,

Then she’ll billl your insurance for “slipped mem-o-ree,”
And the most she will do is take X-rays a’ you, but she’s winner-take-always, to meeeee.

Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm-mmm mmm-mmm-mmm,

Mmm mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm, mm-mmm.