“Be My Baby” is a song by American girl group the Ronettes that was released as a single in August 1963 and later appeared as a track on their 1964 album Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes featuring Veronica.
The song was written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector. Spector also produced the Ronettes’ recording in what is now considered a quintessential example of his Wall of Sound production formula. It was recorded with a host of session musicians later known as the Wrecking Crew. Ronnie Spector is the only Ronette that appears on the track.
“Be My Baby” was the Ronettes’ biggest hit, reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It is considered one of the best songs of the 1960s by NME (2nd), Time, and Pitchfork (6th).
In 1999, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The song ranked 22nd on Rolling Stone‘s both 2004 and 2020 editions of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and described as a “Rosetta stone for studio pioneers such as the Beatles and Brian Wilson,” a notion supported by AllMusic who writes, “No less an authority than Brian Wilson has declared ‘Be My Baby’ the greatest pop record ever made—no arguments here.”
In 2006, the Library of Congress honored the Ronettes’ version by adding it to the United States National Recording Registry. In 2017, Billboard named the song number 1 on their list of the “100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time”.
