May 10, 2020 —– Chart #28
Hello Musical Friends,
Today we are going back to 1964. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” is a song written by Phil Spector, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil. It was first recorded by the Righteous Brothers in 1964, produced by Phil Spector. Their recording is considered by some music critics to be the ultimate expression and illustration of Spector’s “Wall of Sound” recording technique. It has also been described by various music writers as “one of the best records ever made” and “the ultimate pop record”.
The original Righteous Brothers version was a critical and commercial success on its release, becoming a number-one hit single in both the United States and the United Kingdom in February 1965. It was the fifth best selling song of 1965 in the US. It also entered the Top 10 in the UK chart on an unprecedented three separate occasions. In December 1999, the performing-rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) ranked the song as the most-played song on American radio and television in the 20th century, having accumulated more than 8 million airplays by 1999, and nearly 15 million by 2011. It held the distinction as the most-played song for 22 years until 2019.
In 1964, music producer Phil Spector conducted the band at a show in San Francisco where the Righteous Brothers was also appearing, and he was impressed enough with the duo to want them to record for his own label Philles Records. All the songs previously produced by Spector for Philles Records featured black singers, and the Righteous Brothers would become his first white vocal group. However they had a black vocal style, termed blue-eyed soul, that suited Spector.
Spector commissioned Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil to write a song for the group, bringing them over from New York to Los Angeles to stay at the Chateau Marmont so they could write the song. Taking a cue from “Baby I Need Your Loving” by The Four Tops that was then rising in the charts, Mann and Weil decided to write a ballad. Mann wrote the melody first, and came up with the opening line “You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips”, influenced by a line from the song “I Love How You Love Me” that was co-written by Mann – “I love how your eyes close whenever you kiss me”. Mann and Weil wrote the first two verses quickly, including the chorus line “you’ve lost that lovin’ feelin'”. When Spector joined in with the writing, he added “gone, gone, gone, whoa, whoa, whoa” to the end of the chorus, which Weil disliked. The line “you’ve lost that lovin’ feelin'” was originally only intended to be a dummy line that would be replaced later, but Spector liked it and decided to keep it. The form of the song is of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus or ABABCB form. Mann and Weil had problems writing the bridge and the ending, and asked Spector for help. Spector experimented on the piano with a “Hang On Sloopy” riff that they would then use to build on for the bridge.
The song was recorded at Studio A of Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles. When Hatfield and Medley went to record the vocals a few weeks after the song was written, all the instrumental tracks had already been recorded and overdubbed. They recorded the vocal many times – Medley would sing the opening verse over and over again until Spector was satisfied, and the process was then repeated with the next verse. The recording took over 39 takes, and around eight hours over a period of two days. The song would become one of the foremost examples of Spector’s “Wall of Sound” technique. It features the studio musicians the Wrecking Crew, included for this recording were Don Randi on piano, Tommy Tedesco on guitar, Carol Kaye and Ray Pohlman on bass, and Steve Douglas on sax. They were also joined by Barney Kessel on guitar and Earl Palmer on drums for this session.
And who can forget this scene from the movie Top Gun:
Keep Rockin’,
Stan