The night we met I knew I needed you so

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.  

1963 : Be My Baby - The Ronettes

A track I know, love and have already mentioned in passing as part of their 1964 album - it's very "Wall Of Sound" and definitely represents a step-up in production effort from previous tracks on this list.  I'm happy to take one more listen for the team though...

"So won't you..." - oh yes, it's a fine song indeed.  Short and sweet at the usual-ish (for this decade) length of 2:41 - just about perfect I reckon!  Wikipedia has (unsurprisingly) quite a lot on it, but the content is not necessarily what you're expecting.  Whilst it's billed as The Ronettes, only one of them is on it - Veronica Bennett, who would become Ronnie Spector later in the decade when she married the man who produced her on this.  The backing track was provided by The Wrecking Crew and Phil made them record forty-ish takes before he was happy with it - the backing vocals were provided by, amongst others, Sonny & Cher mainly because they were there, it appears.  And that, as they say, was that - "only" #2 in the US and #4 in the UK, but it's estimated it's been played four million times on radio and TV over the years, which is a few I guess.

Somewhat unusually (probably uniquely) the Wikipedia entry includes a section entitled "Effect On Brian Wilson".  Although, it's fair to say it sounds like it had enough of an effect to warrant an entire Wikipedia entry.  You don't really need to read it though - you can pretty much guess how Brian took hearing "the greatest record he had ever heard".  Yes, he had copies all over the house.  And in the car.  Obviously.

So - one of the best songs ever is gonna have some great covers right?  Or maybe not, because who's going to take on perfection?  Well, according to Wikipedia, it's been attempted by Andy Kim, Jody Taylor, Shaun Cassidy, Teen Queens and Leslie Grace.  Yes.  Quite.  secondhandsongs.com comes up with some slightly better known names - Cissy Houston, Bay City Rollers, Gary Glitter, Lightning Seeds, Travis, Twiggy, Blue Oyster Cult, Jason Donovan, Mari Wilson and Yo La Tengo.  I'm trying to decide which version will be the worst - I reckon Travis will be giving it a good go, but are unlikely to beat Gary.

Two more interesting facts before we leave Wikipedia - Martin Scorsese used the song in the opening credits scene for Mean Streets, but, quite bizarrely didn't get legal clearance first which cost him big time.  And it's also used in the opening credit sequence of Dirty Dancing - I wonder if we'll see any more tracks from that film later in the list?

So, I'm perfectly happy to give this year to Ronnie, but we should mention the competition anyway - the UKs top selling track of the year was "She Loves You" by a little-known group called The Beatles.  Other tracks that jumped out of the charts for me were a couple more Beatles tracks, Andy Williams' "Can't Get Used To Losing You", The Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron" (a track I love) and "And Then He Kissed Me" and Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want To Be With You".  Tracks from the US charts include The Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA", Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" and The Drifters' "Up On The Roof".  Bizarrely, #85 in the US end of year chart was Rolf Harris's "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport", which we saw in the UK charts back in 1960.

I'm quite happy for The Ronettes to have the year, but I'm quite surprised it's not a Beatles track - they feel like they'll have got more UK streams, but one thing I'm beginning to understand is that this list isn't going to seem to make a lot of sense in many places and I'm just going to have to live with it.  And for this year, I've got no problems with that!

1962 - Another one I don't know
1964 - Not an entirely expected winner