My favorite song about domestic abuse.

About a year and a half ago, when I had just seen Quadrophenia and was in my Mod phase, I downloaded a bunch of songs by Phil Spector's girl groups (The Crystals, The Ronettes, Darlene Love, etc.) and found this song called "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)." It's pretty amazing in a weird kind of way, especially when I discovered that Carole King wrote it and the man responsible for its production later shot a woman.

Here's a thirty-second preview of the song (damn copyright laws!), performed by The Crystals:


About a week ago, my friend John bought to my attention a cover of the song performed by Grizzly Bear. Since Grizzly Bear is playing Pitchfork and I've been preparing by downloading some of the bands I hadn't heard (I've been very bad at getting new music lately), I searched for the song. I'm pretty obsessed with it now, and it's one of the rare cases where a cover sounds as good - if not better - than the original. Plus, having a man taking over the vocals makes it sound even weirder, which is a good thing.