Then He Kissed Me

By July 1963, Phil Spector had already made the Hot 100 with seven chart hits that he produced. He successfully ended his partnership with Lester Sill and began his marriage to Annette Merar. Shortly after his marriage, Spector traveled to New York looking for a song to follow up on The Crystals success with "Da Doo Ron Ron." "Then He Kissed Me" was the perfect song for the group and Phil put together one of his most extravagant productions for the record.

Dolores "La La" Brooks is the only Crystal to perform on this song. Spector recorded the group's first recordings in New York City, where they were from. When he relocated to Los Angeles, he had a group called The Blossoms (with Darlene Love singing lead) record the songs "He's A Rebel" and "He's Sure the Boy I Love," which he issued as The Crystals. On all subsequent Crystals recordings, Spector flew Brooks from New York to Los Angeles to perform the lead vocals, but the other Crystals never made the trip, as Spector preferred to use local backup singers. This was also around the time when the group shrunk from five members to four, losing Mary Thomas, who left to get married.

Phil Spector produced this using his "Wall Of Sound" technique, which meant long hours in the studio for the musicians, as Spector was notoriously stingy allowing breaks. His engineer Larry Levine recalled: "He didn’t want to give them a bathroom break. Not because he wanted to work them to death, but because he didn’t want them to move microphones or bodies or anything. He wanted everything to stay as it was in the studio. But he would work for three hours or more before we ever put anything on tape. And I think the reason was he wanted to tire these great musicians so that they weren’t playing individualistic; they were too tired. And so they just melded into this wall of sound."