Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’ Certified Platinum In UK

Bob Marley & The Wailers’ 1974 hit No Woman, No Cry was certified platinum in the United Kingdom on Friday, April 22, 2022.  According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the song was issued the Brit Certified Silver Award after it sold over 600,000 units in the UK, as measured by The Official Charts Company.

It is now one of five songs by the Reggae legend to be awarded a platinum certification in the UK.   Jamming  (1977),  Is This Love  (1978), and  Could You Be Loved  (1980) are all currently certified platinum, having sold more than 600,000 units each, while Three Little Birds was certified double platinum earlier this year after it sold more than 1,200,000 units in the country.

The song was first released on October 25, 1974, on the Natty Dread album.  A year later a live recording of the track from the album Live!, which took place at the Lyceum Theatre in London during Marley’s Natty Dread Tour, was released as a single.  It spent nine weeks on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at No. 22, and became the best-known version of the song.  It was included in several compilation albums, including the Diamond-selling Legend in 1984.

An official music video for the Lyceum recording was released in honor of International Reggae Day in July 2020.  It has since amassed over 27 million views on YouTube.

Another official live recording of the song, at London’s Rainbow Theatre in 1977, has over 24 million views on YouTube.

A 1979 live performance of the song at the Amandla Festival at Harvard Stadium in Boston, MA has over 165 million views on YouTube. 

No Woman, No Cry is currently ranked at No. 140 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  It’s been covered a whopping 74 times by artists including Nina Simone, Jimmy Cliff, The Fugees, Boney M, Hugh Masekela, Ken Boothe, PM Dawn, and sampled in 18 songs by artists such as Cocoa Tea, Public Enemy, Sanchez, and Alley Cat.

The song’s lyrics immortalized Georgie (real name George Headley Robinson), a friend of Marley, who passed away last year October at 84.

Songwriting credit for the lyrics was given to Vincent “Tata” Ford, the man who taught Bob how to play the guitar, after he moved from his native St. Ann to live with his mother in Trench Town.  The royalties helped to keep Tata’s Kingston soup kitchen running.

After his death, the Marley estate was sued by his former manager Danny Sims, who claimed that Bob Marley had actually written the song but assigned credit to Tata to avoid meeting contractual obligations.  While Marley reportedly acknowledged—in a 1975 Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation interview—that he had written the song as he was tuning a guitar in Tata’s yard, a court decision in 1987 sided with the estate.

Bob Marley died in 1981 of cancer at the age of 36.