"What Part of No" is a song written by
Wayne Perry and Gerald Smith, and recorded by American
country music artist
Lorrie Morgan. It was released in December 1992 as the second single from her album ''
Watch Me''. The song reached Number One on the U.S. ''Billboard''
Hot Country Singles & Tracks
Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine in the United States.
This 50-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly by collecting airplay data from Nielsen BDS along with digital sal ...
charts dated for the week of February 27, 1993, holding the Number One position for three weeks. To date, it is Morgan's biggest hit.
She performed the song on the live telecast of the 11th annual Music City News Country Songwriters Awards.
Music City News Country Songwriters Awards
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Content
A woman in a social setting is approached repeatedly by a persistent man who sends her a rose, then buys her a drink and asks her to dance. The woman, uninterested in the man despite his advances, finally asks "What part of 'no' don't you understand?"
Analyses
The writer Sandy Carter
Sandra “Sandy” Carter is an American businesswoman, speaker and author. She was a general manager at IBM from 2013 to 2016, vice president at Amazon Web Services from 2017 to 2021 and is currently the Chief Operating Officer at Unstoppable D ...
cites "What Part of No" in an article on the politics of country music, giving it as an example of his argument, "Most significantly, the commercial appeal of the current generation of country women seems directly linked to a feminist oriented lyric." He argues that this song, together with Morgan's other hits "Watch Me" and "Five Minutes", sends a message that the singer "takes clear control of her relationships" and then discusses similar trends in songs by other artists.[Sandy Carter,]
Wild And Blue: The Politics Of Country
" ''Z Magazine'', September 1994 The song is also mentioned in the introduction to a legal article, "What Part of 'No' Don't You Understand?", as "forcefully relat ngthe anguish of a victim of sexual harassment."[William D. Evans Jr]
"What Part of ‘No’ Don’t You Understand?: Recent Developments in Workplace Sexual Harassment Law,"
''Tennessee Bar Journal'', Vol. 36, No. 5, May 2000
Chart positions
Year-end charts
References
External links
at The Phrase Finder
{{DEFAULTSORT:What Part Of No
1993 singles
Lorrie Morgan songs
Song recordings produced by Richard Landis
BNA Records singles
1992 songs
Songs written by Wayne Perry (country music)
Songs with feminist themes