Be My Baby!

(on Shindig, 1965)

An interesting Wikipedia factoid: In Bret Easton Ellis' novel, American Psycho, Timothy Price offers to pay the cab driver five dollars if he would turn up the volume of the radio playing "Be My Baby".

I haven't read the novel, but I can relate to his actions because in my mind, 'Be My Baby' is the perfect pop song. Definitely worth paying to turn up its volume. It's got it all - the foot-tapper melody, sing-along lyrics, and sugar-coated harmonies. Plus, in The Ronnette's case, there's Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound production to take the song to far heights. How can anyone not melt from the opening drum crescendoes?

In celebration of this fabulous song (that Rolling Stone magazine names the 22nd greatest song of all time), here are some brilliant covers. I'm trying to collect more of these covers, so if you know of any other good covers to recommend (I'm sure there must be plenty!) please leave a comment!

Les Surfs - Tú serás mi baby
Les Surfs were six siblings from Madagascar. Although they mostly sang in French, this is a Spanish cover. This is taken from the singles compilation, 'Les Surfs en español', unavailable online, but there is a cheap French compilationavailable.
Visit their official site here (in French).


Jacques Denjean - Be My Baby
An instrumental cover by Jacques Denjean and his orchestral. Unfortunately, there's a dearth of biographical information on him online (in English), but he and his orchestral has recorded with numerous big names including Francoise Hardy!


Travis - Be My Baby
A lovely acoustic slow version, very in line with Travis' style circa their second album 'The Man Who'. They've always been strong lyrically, but the band adopted a much more harder sound with their last album. Still, what I love about Travis is vocalist Fran Healy's voice. It's just sounds so pure.
Visit their official site here.




Ivy - Be My BabyDominique Durand's soft, accented vocals (she's native Parisian) turns this cover version into a beautiful yet haunting lullaby. My favourite track of Ivy's fourth album, Guestroom - an album consisting entirely of covers, but reworked into loungey masterpieces. The band has a knack for writing (or arranging, in the case of Be My Baby) strong melodies that stick in your head.
Available on the album 'Guestroom'.
Visit Ivy's official site here.

AND... I found another video of The Ronnettes performing 'Be My Baby' on Youtube:


(Live at the TAMI TNT show, 1964.. includes performance of 'Shout')
Thanks to Pokie82 and Wil9839 for uploading these clips.