“Walking In The Rain” by The Ronettes

Phil Spector brought the weather into the studio for "Walking in the Rain", the Ronettes single Philles Records issued in November 1964, also found on Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica. Spector wrote it with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and produced it himself, Jack Nitzsche handled the arrangement, and engineer Larry Levine laced the record with sound effects of rolling thunder and cracking lightning, work that won him a Grammy nomination.

It's teen melodrama in widescreen, with a storm raging behind it. The Ronettes were the first to release the song, and their version climbed to 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964 and to 3 on the R&B chart in 1965. Decades on, Rolling Stone ranked it 266th among the 500 greatest songs of all time in 2004, and 269th when the list was revised in 2010.

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