We Love the Ronettes: The "Be My Baby" Drum Intro

Detail of the promotional poster for the movie Soiled starring Vivian Martin, 1925

Because of Estelle Bennett's passing last week, I've been listening to the Ronettes a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that the group made one great contribution to the pop music canon - the "Be My Baby" drum intro. This is probably already the consensus opinion, but I just wanted an excuse to post a bunch of songs that use the "Be My Baby" intro. I'm also interested in how exactly it came to be de rigeur for indie pop bands to have a song that uses the intro.

I think you can probably blame 1985's Psychocandy by the Jesus and Mary Chain, which uses the intro three or four times over the course of the album. Since then, it's turned up in songs by artists like Talulah Gosh, Jens Lekman, Camera Obscura, Saturday Looks Good To Me, and Guided By Voices. I've picked three songs I like that put the intro to good use, the first being "The Weight of the Stars" by London band Hefner. It's hard not to hear the intro without expecting a Spector-esque wall of sound to follow, but Hefner use a spare arrangement with a pedal steel guitar to create a more "country" sound. Most songs that want to evoke "Be My Baby" feature faceless lyrics that serve the melody, but "The Weight of the Stars" is a story-driven song about a guy who cheats on his girl as a pre-emptive strike because he assumes his girl will cheat on him eventually.

"Windy", from the Ladybug Transistor's second album, uses the intro to evoke a '60s feeling for their retro-baroque pop. Trumpet flourishes and jangly guitar create an Arthur Lee vibe and make for a song that is more memorable than it's slight melody would suggest. The Magnetic Fields' "Candy" also uses the intro to evoke the girl group sound, but Stephin Merritt doesn't go for a retro vibe. Instead, he pairs the Spector pop approach with a '80s-ish synth sound, with toy-crank percussion and swaths of reverb-laden keyboard. "Candy" is one of several songs on The Wayward Bus that use the famous intro, and the album comes across as an attempt to make a Ronettes album using Band-in-a-Box software.

The "Be My Baby" drumbeat sits alongside the famous Bo Diddley beat (the one from "I Want Candy", "Never Fade Away", "Faith", etc.) as one of the great recognizable drumbeats in pop music, and I don't think it's a coincidence that I like just about every song that uses it.

UPDATE: More musings on the "Be My Baby" drum beat can be found in follow-up entries HERE and HERE.

"The Weight of the Stars" by Hefner

"Windy" by the Ladybug Transistor

"Candy" by the Magnetic Fields

"Be My Baby" by the Ronettes