About The Song
Paul Anka wrote “(You’re) Having My Baby” in 1974 during a stretch of steady work on the road, and he later described it as something he put together with his wife and their young family in mind while he was appearing in Lake Tahoe. The lyric is framed as a direct address—one person speaking to another in plain language—so it reads less like a “scene” and more like a private message that happened to be turned into a single.
The record was cut in Alabama with producer Rick Hall, the founder of FAME Studios, whose productions had already shaped a long list of pop, soul, and country hits. That Muscle Shoals connection mattered: Hall’s studio was known for turning straightforward songs into radio records without clutter, and “(You’re) Having My Baby” is built exactly that way—short, clean, and vocal-forward, landing at about two and a half minutes.
Originally, Anka planned to record it alone, but the session took a turn because Odia Coates—an unknown singer he had met while touring—was present at the studio. According to the commonly repeated account, a United Artists executive (Bob Skaff) suggested turning it into a duet, and Coates ended up sharing the vocal, giving the record a call-and-response feel that changes how the lyric lands. Some discographies note that her contribution wasn’t always emphasized in early credits, even though the performance is clearly a duet.
United Artists released the single in the U.S. in late June 1974 with “Papa” on the B-side, and it later appeared on Anka’s album Anka (released the same summer). The single’s chart story is the headline: it hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 beginning with the chart dated August 24, 1974, and Billboard’s chart data shows it held the top spot for three weeks. It also crossed to Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart (peaking in the Top 5) and performed strongly outside the U.S., including a Top 10 run in the U.K. and a No. 1 peak in Canada.
For Anka, that success was also a public “comeback” marker. Billboard and other summaries regularly frame it as his first Hot 100 No. 1 since “Lonely Boy” in 1959—about fifteen years without a chart-topper under his own name. The song effectively reset how the industry talked about him in the mid-1970s: not just a former teen idol and songwriter-for-hire, but still a front-line pop singer who could dominate radio again.
The record’s second life, though, is tied to backlash as much as sales. The lyric’s possessive phrasing and a line implying that the woman could have “swept it from [her] life” (often interpreted as a reference to abortion, shortly after Roe v. Wade) triggered heavy criticism from feminist writers and organizations. Contemporary reporting and later retrospectives note that the National Organization for Women singled it out with a mocking “Keep Her in Her Place” award, and Ms. magazine also targeted Anka with a “male chauvinistic” label. Anka’s public response at the time was essentially that he viewed it as a love song and that the lyric was describing a choice rather than a command.
So “(You’re) Having My Baby” ends up being two things at once: a carefully manufactured 1974 pop single made in the Muscle Shoals production world, and a cultural flashpoint whose reception changed depending on who was listening. On paper it’s simple—one writer, one producer, a tight runtime, and a No. 1 chart peak. In practice, it became one of Anka’s most commercially important records and one of his most debated, precisely because it sits at the intersection of private sentiment, public language, and the politics of that moment.
Video
Lyric
You’re havin’ my baby
What a lovely way of sayin’ how much you love me
Havin’ my baby
What a lovely way of sayin’ what you’re thinkin’ of me
I can see it, your face is glowin’
I can see it in your eyes, I’m happy you know it
That you’re havin’ my baby
You’re the woman I love and I love what it’s doin’ to ya
Havin’ my baby
You’re a woman in love and I love what’s goin’ through ya
The need inside you, I see it showin’
Whoa, the seed inside ya, baby, do you feel it growin’?
Are you happy you know it?
That you’re havin’ my baby
I’m a woman in love and I love what it’s doin’ to me
Havin’ my baby
I’m a woman in love and I love what’s goin’ through me
Didn’t have to keep it
Wouldn’t put you through it
You could have swept it from your life
But you wouldn’t do it, no, you wouldn’t do it
And you’re havin’ my baby
I’m a woman in love and I love what it’s doin’ to me
Havin’ my baby
I’m a woman in love and I love what’s goin’ through me
Havin’ my baby (havin’ my baby)
What a lovely way of sayin’ how much you love me
Havin’ my baby (havin’ my baby)
I’m a woman in love and I love what’s goin’ through me