Sugar, Sugar

The Archies were the group that performed on the Saturday morning cartoon Archie. The group itself was never seen, just the cartoon characters. The song was written by Andy Kim and Jeff Barry, and was performed by session musicians including Kim, Toni Wine, Ron Dante and Ellie Greenwich. Kim had a hit in 1974 with "Rock Me Gently"; Dante produced "Mandy" for Barry Manilow and "Heartbreaker" for Pat Benatar. Greenwich and Barry, who were married from 1962-1965, wrote many famous songs, including "Be My Baby" and "Chapel Of Love"; Toni Wine wrote the hit songs "A Groovy Kind Of Love" and "Candida."

According to Jeff Barry, he and Andy Kim wrote this song with preschoolers in mind since that was the audience for the Archie TV show (Barry had children aged 3 and 4 at the time). The "You are my candy girl" line came from them thinking about what kids that age like (candy!). Still, they wanted the song to appeal to adults as well, so they included a line with some weight: "I just can't believe the loveliness of loving you."

In our interview with Toni Wine, she explained: "It just was a very easy session. Donnie Kirshner wanted to bring The Archies to life, which he did. And Jeff Barry was going to produce this fictitious animated group called The Archies. We went into the studio. Jeff and Andy Kim, who had hits on his own as a writer and singer, Jeff and Andy wrote 'Sugar, Sugar,' Ronnie was Archie, and I was Betty and Veronica. We went in, we did the record. It was a fun session, it was a blast, and at the session we just knew that this was something, and something huge was going to happen. We didn't really know how huge, but it was huge. In fact, a friend of mine had been in town, Ray Stevens, who's an incredible songwriter, singer, producer, musician, and we were going to just grab a bite to eat, so I told him to meet me at the studio, pick me up, and then we'll go eat. And he wound up handclapping on 'Sugar, Sugar.'"