This Crystals hit made it cool for women to brag about dating bad boys, which is ironic because the record was produced by real-life bad boy, Phil Spector. Phil wanted to rush this Gene Pitney composition into the market, but the real Crystals, 3000 miles away in New York City, couldn’t get to L.A. quickly. So, he got his local girls, Darlene Love and The Blossoms, to cut the track, then released it credited to “The Crystals.” Did he know that Vikki Carr was also recording the song at the time? The Shirelles were first offered the song, but they turned it down because they didn’t like the theme. And now you know the “rest of the story!”

Is it my imagination, or do these girls look a bit uncomfortable here? Maybe that’s what happens when you try to lip sync a song that’s been recorded by someone else who was pretending to be you! This was one of those Grandma’s Diner juke box favorites for me. I had no clue that so many records were studio fabrications back then. I didn’t learn any of that until decades later. They’re not still doing stuff like this today, are they? 😉