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Okay, this is just a weird personal obsession of mine, but you know that iconic opening to Hairspray? It's a reference to the 1963 song Be My Baby by The Ronettes. /1
The song begins with this drum phrase by Hal Blaine who dropped a stick during recording, which is why you only get the snare on beat 4. They liked it so much they kept it like that. /2
This one drum phrase was so influential that it has since become a cultural shorthand for 'the '60s' and is particularly useful for musicals set in that time period. /3
Here it is in the Prologue to Little Shop of Horrors,though the snare is replaced with a tom hit. /4
And here it is in Dogfight. /5
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend pastiched the song hilariously with Heinous Bitch. /6
And they must have liked the drum phrase because they also used it in their Frankie Valli pastiche, the Santa Ana Winds. /7
Speaking of which, the Four Seasons also used the beat in this song released a year after Be My Baby. /8
I love catching it when the drums appear in random pop songs, like at the very start of Taylor Swift's Hey Stephen. /9
But it's made its way across most musical genres. My absolute favourite example is this glorious bit in Kimbra's Cameo Lover. /10
Even when it appears with variations, it's undeniably recognisable. Here it is with that explosive snare delayed even more than usual. /11
And you can just about make it out in Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, even with swung rhythm and the snare missing. You can see in this photo just how much The Ronettes influenced Winehouse's aesthetic. /12
I could get into Brian Wilson's obsession with the song, or how the Wall of Sound influenced Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You, but I'll save that for another day... /end
