“He’s a Rebel” is not my favorite Phil Spector record. I prefer The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” which peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 and thus will not be discussed in depth here. But “He’s a Rebel” – recorded by The Blossoms but released under the Crystals nameplate, much to the surprise of The Crystals – is the ultimate girl group record. Condensed into this one song is everything the genre had stood for so far – adolescent love stories, harmonies both playful and powerful, striking (though not always technically proficient) lead vocalists – as well as a blueprint that would set the tone for the rest of the decade. “He’s a Rebel” may not have been the first song about a good girl in love with a bad boy, but it made that the de facto girl group relationship. Of course he’s never really a bad boy, that’s just what “they” say because of how he dresses and rejects society’s norms. But Darlene Love (and all the singers following in her wake) knows the truth: “He’s always good to me, always treats me tenderly / ‘Cause he’s not a rebel … to me.”
And yes, there’s that Wall of Sound. Spector may have employed the first stirrings of his densely layered soundscapes on “To Know Him is to Love Him,” but it was here that his production techniques flowered into the defining sound of early ’60s pop. Spector’s sound was ripped off by everyone from fly-by-night cash-in labels to Brian Wilson, and for good reason. The Wall of Sound is perhaps the preeminent example of the capacity music has to make us empathize on a visceral level. Not only does the record sound beautiful as a piece of musical art, but the orchestral swirl makes the banal subject matter – nothing that wouldn’t appear as filler on a Miley Cyrus album – sound like the most important thing on the planet. The struggle between our teenage lovers and those nay-saying “them” is epic. The romance, like the tune, feels like one for the ages. 9
Hit #1 on November 3, 1962; total of 2 weeks at #1
80 of 976 #1’s reviewed; 8.20% through the Hot 100
No Hard Chords 