He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)

Right before Christmas my husband discovered Darlene Love. He was listening to Christmas tunes on the radio in the car when her rocking version of Winter Wonderland came on. After hearing all the other sedate traditional Christmas songs that had been played before it, this one just blew him away. So I decide to get him a CD with the Darlene Love version of Winter Wonderland on it. What I found was A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector. Then I decide to see if anything else was out there and found the Phil Spector box set Back to Mono (1958-1969) and was blow away myself. Not only did it contain A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, it contained three other CD's that gave a musical history of Spector's record producing career.

The three CD's had great songs and great artists like: Spanish Harlem (Ben E King); River Deep Mountain High (Ike and Tina Turner); Then He Kissed Me (The Crystals); Be My Baby (The Ronettes); Black Pearl (Sonny Charles and the Checkmates) ; (Today I Met) The Boy I'm Going to Marry (Darlene Love); and You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin' (The Righteous Brothers).

When the CD's got here we played A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector right away. I enjoyed that so much I put one of the other CD's in and on the tenth cut heard The Crystals singing these words:

He hit me and it felt like a kiss
He hit me but it didn't hurt me
He couldn't stand to hear me say,
That I had been with someone new
And when I told him I had been untrue
He hit me and it felt like a kiss
He hit me and I knew he loved me
If he didn't care for me
I could have never made him mad
But he hit me and I was glad

Yes he hit me and it felt like a kiss
And then he took me in his arms
With all the tenderness there is
And when he kissed me
He made me his.

What the hell? The Crystals recorded a song that tells girls that it is OK for their boyfriends to smack them around because it proves that they (the boyfriends) love them?

The box set comes with a book and in the back of it all the songs are listed along with someone's brief remarks about each song. This is what is written about He Hit Me(It Felt Like A Kiss):

Barbara Alston sings lead on this early Goffin-King composition for The Crystals which was withdrawn by Spector before it reached the top 100 because he felt the lyrics were too sensitive for pop radio. Goffin admitted that the lyrics were "a little too radical" for their time. Many would agree with his comments today.

"To sensitive for pop radio" and "a little too radical?" What planet do these guys come from?

Oh, BTW, the "King" in Goffin-King is Carole King. She wrote the music and Goffin wrote the lyrics to this song. She was also married to (Gerry) Goffin at the time. Makes you wonder what kind of husband old "Ger" was, doesn't it?