User:Jean-de-Nivelle/sandbox

Background and composition
Sonny Bono, a songwriter and record producer for Phil Spector, wrote the lyrics and composed the music of the song for himself and his then-wife, Cher, late at night in their living room. When Cher was woken up to sing the lyrics, she hated the song, not thinking it would be a hit, and immediately went back to bed.

The recording session for the song was held on June 7, 1965, at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood and lasted between 2 and 5 PM. Harold Battiste provided the instrumental arrangement, and session musicians The Wrecking Crew performed the instrumental track. Richard Niles quotes Battiste as saying the prominent instrumental figure in the song is actually played on an oboe rather than an ocarina.

"I Got You Babe" became the duo's biggest single, their signature song, and a defining recording of the early hippie countercultural movement. Billboard said of the song "using the successful combination of folk and rock, this one has the performance and production of a smash." Record World called it "a meandering, funky piece of rock that will hit the top."

AllMusic critic William Ruhlmann praised the song: "Recalling Dylan's bitter 1964 song 'It Ain't Me Babe' (soon to be a folk-rock hit for the Turtles), Bono wrote his own opposite sentiment: 'I Got You Babe.' Where Dylan was lyrically complex, Bono was simple: His lyrics began with the ominous youth-versus-grownups theme of 'they' who set up barriers to romance, but soon gave way to a dialogue of teenage romantic platitudes. Where Dylan was musically simple, however, Bono, without fully rebuilding Spector's Wall of Sound, was more structurally ambitious, following the song's standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus form with an ascending coda that built to a climax, then started building again before the fadeout, all in only a little over three minutes. Set to waltz time, the tune retained a light feel despite the sometimes busy instrumentation, led by a prominent ocarina [sic], and the alternating vocals of the two singers. If neither were interesting singers, their plodding, matter-of-fact performances gave the song a common-man appeal."

In the United States, the song had sold more than 1 million copies in 1965 being certified Gold by the RIAA. As of November 2011, Billboard reported the digital sales of "I Got You Babe" to be 372,000 in the US.

In 2011, the song was named as one of the greatest duets of all time by both Billboard and Rolling Stone magazines. It was also listed at #444 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004. But in a 2011 poll Rolling Stone readers ranked "I Got You Babe" the eighth-worst song of the 1960s. In early 2017 the song has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.