The Stargazers, Don Cornell, The Johnston Brothers, The Dream Weavers, Jerry Keller…? Nope, me neither. But they’ve all had the honour of topping the UK singles chart.

How well a single performs in the charts can be influenced by various things… promotion, star power, tastes and trends, time of year… pure luck. And that most fickle, unpredictable of  factors: the general public. Do enough of them like your song to make it a smash? Or will they ignore it, and let it fall by the wayside?

I’m taking a short break from the regular countdown to feature five discs that really should have topped the charts. Be it for their long-reaching influence, their enduring popularity or for the simple fact that, had they peaked a week earlier or later, they might have made it. (I’ll only be covering songs released before 1964, as that’s where I’m up to on the usual countdown.)

Last up…? Why, if it isn’t the best pop song of all time!

Be My Baby, by The Ronettes

Reached #4 in November 1963

Not sure I have to write much more than that… But I’ll try.

Why is it such a classic? Well… There’s the intro, THE crashing, smashing Wall of Sound, the cascading drums, the melodramatic handclaps, the horns, the over-dubbing, the full-on orchestra in the background, the lyrics that range from girlishly submissive (I’ll make you happy, baby…) to flirty ( …just wait and see) in the space of one line…

Phil Spector may be a terrible person; yet against the backdrop of his crimes, and his truly messed-up relationship with Ronette’s lead singer Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Bennett (the only member of the group to actually sing on this song – every voice in the record is hers) ‘Be My Baby’ shines out even more brightly as a slice of pop perfection. Beauty out of something, or someone, awful.

Put simply, this is an amazing song, and it is a crime that it never topped the charts. I’ll end this mini-countdown imagining a parallel universe, where ‘Be My Baby’ sat astride the UK singles chart for a good month or two…

The usual #1s countdown will resume in a couple of days…