“Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals

"Then He Kissed Me" came out on Philles in the middle of 1963, with Phil Spector producing the Crystals and sharing the songwriting with Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, and it's Brill Building pop at its most swooning. It tells a whole romance in miniature: a young woman meets a young man, falls for him and ends up engaged.

It went to number six in the US, the Crystals' third top-ten hit there, and number two in the UK, their second top ten on that side of the Atlantic. The accolades kept coming long after: Rolling Stone ranked it 493rd of its 500 greatest songs in 2004, Pitchfork slotted it at 18 on its list of the 1960s' 200 greatest songs, and Billboard named it the eighth-best girl group song ever.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.