A family group in an indoor setting; children wearing similar floral-patterned dresses against a plain background 2:37
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The Crystals hit that Darlene Love really sang

The record says The Crystals. The voice out front belongs to Darlene Love. more

Gene Pitney wrote "He's a Rebel" with The Crystals in mind. He had heard their song "Uptown," produced by Phil Spector, and he set out to write something in the same spirit.

Spector heard Pitney's demo, quit his job at Liberty Records and decided to produce the song himself. There was one problem. The Crystals were not available.

So Spector hired a group called The Blossoms, made up of Darlene Love, Fanita James and Gracia Nitzsche. Love sang lead. The single still came out as a Crystals record. It went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number 19 in the UK.

That makes it one of pop's odder success stories. The woman singing lead on a number one hit got no credit on the record. Fans know it now, and many make a point of crediting Love and The Blossoms by name.

A family group in an indoor setting; children wearing similar floral-patterned dresses against a plain background. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
The record says The Crystals.

None of that slows the song down. It's quick and bright, and the melody sticks. One fan wants it ten times longer.

This stereo version plays over old film of crowds clapping and smiling along. One fan says seeing how into it the crowd was brought tears and a smile at the same time.

A woman with glasses smiles while standing next to another person who is partly out of view. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
A woman smiles along as the song plays.

For some fans, the song comes with a memory of a car radio. Two of them, one in a Ford and one in an Oldsmobile, recall the same move, reaching to turn it up. The label still says The Crystals, but these fans know whose voice it is.

#singing