When Neil Diamond released his mid-tempo ballad “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” in 1967 it went to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Diamond wrote the song directly for his female fans. At the time when the song was released, Diamond was in his mid-20s and already had a string of hits in the early ’60s from his debut solo single “Solitary Man,” songs he had written that were recorded for The Monkees—”I’m a Believer,” “A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You,” “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow),” and “Love to Love”—and his single “Cherry Cherry,” which went to No. 6 on the Hot 100.

By the late 1960s, most of Diamond’s fans had been following him since they were teenagers in the earlier days and weren’t girls anymore.

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Girl, you’ll be a woman soon
I love you so much, can’t count all the ways
I’ve died for you girl and all they can say is
“He’s not your kind”
They never get tired of putting me down
And I’ll never know when I come around
What I’m gonna find
Don’t let them make up your mind
Don’t you know
Girl, you’ll be a woman soon

Posed portrait of Neil Diamond (Photo by RB/Redferns)
Throughout the lyrics, Diamond says he’s been misunderstood all his life and urges a girl to take his hand.

Please, come take my hand
Girl, you’ll be a woman soon
Soon, you’ll need a man

I’ve been misunderstood for all of my life
But what they’re saying girl it cuts like a knife
“The boy’s no good”
Well I’ve finally found what I’m a looking for
But if they get their chance they’ll end it for sure
Surely would
Baby have done all I could
Now it’s up to you

‘Pulp Fiction’

Nearly three decades after its original release, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” had a resurgence when Urge Overkill‘s cover of the song appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction. The band had previously released their version of the song on their 1992 EP Skull, which Tarantino had picked up while in Amsterdam. Tarantino already had an eclectic mix of songs filling the soundtrack, from Chuck Berry‘s “You Never Can Tell,” “Misirlou” by Dick Dale, and Dusty Springfield’s “Son Of A Preacher Man,” and more, and wanted to add Urge Overkill into the mix.

At first, Diamond didn’t want his song featured in the film because of its violent, drug-fueled nature. “At the point in my career I wrote it, my audience was teenage girls, and the song came out of that context,” said Diamond in 2018. “I wrote it while I was on a Dick Clark Where the Action Is tour. The audience sparked it. And then when Quentin Tarantino a few years later came around and wanted to use it for ‘Pulp Fiction,’ I turned him down because I had a promise to myself I wouldn’t use any of my songs for drug references or even smoking cigarettes.”

Diamond added, “I got a script, and I read it and I thought it was wonderful, but it didn’t fit into the guidelines I had set for myself. And then I spoke to a good friend about it, my friend Dave Rosner, who was my publisher, and he explained Quentin Tarantino was a bonafide star of the future and I should take it as a serious picture.”

Urge Overkill’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” is played during a scene when Mia Wallace, played by Uma Thurman, is dancing and singing along to the song before snorting heroin. In the scene, she nearly dies of an overdose before Vincent Vega (John Travolta) saves her by administering a shot of adrenaline straight into her heart.

An “Odd, Haunting Quality”

The band’s version of the song peaked at No. 59 on the Hot 100 faired better on the Modern Rock Tracks chart at No. 11 and has remained one of the most memorable sounds that came out of the film.

Sungby Urge Overkill’s Nash Kato, the song became one of the band’s most famous songs and was sandwiched between their fourth album Saturation, and their 1995 release Exit the Dragon.

“The record did well and the song hit a nerve because it was in the movie,” said King Roeser of Urge Overkill in 2022. “We lucked out. I don’t think the song would be part of history without it being associated with the movie. But I think it made the movie because of the odd, haunting quality we gave it.”