“I Got You, Babe” Turns 60 Today — Do You Remember These Surprising Covers?
n 1965, 30-year-old Sonny Bono worked as a jack of all trades for music producer Phil Spector, writing songs whenever he had some time. Bono was also trying to get Cherilyn “Cher” Sarkisian, his teenage protege-turned-second wife, in front of his boss for a possible session singer gig. He decided to kill two birds with one stone and created a song they could perform together; the result was ‘I Got You Babe.’
Roger Prigent/TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection
Bono knew he wasn’t much of a singer, but that wasn’t really the point; he loved his new wife and wanted to put his feelings to music. And he liked the song — a sort of anti-“It Ain’t Me Babe” — and knew it would showcase Cher’s voice for Spector and anybody else who heard it. In fact, Bono was so excited about his new composition that he woke his bride up so they could give the tune a go.
Cher wasn’t having it. She thought the song was dopey, proclaimed it a surefire bust, and took herself back to bed. Undeterred, Sonny fiddled with the key a bit and tried again. This time, Cher gave in … but their record company, Atco Records, wasn’t so sure.
Bono went over their heads, marching off to Los Angeles radio station KHJ and making a deal with its program director. If his jocks would play “I Got You Babe” once an hour, the song was theirs exclusively. That partnership quickly made the song a hit, and it was released to the public on July 9, 1965. A few weeks later, on August 14, “I Got You Babe” hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart where it would stay for three weeks, launching its path to music history and Cher into the pop culture stratosphere.
Sonny and Cher weren’t the only ones to sing the timeless, infectious duet. Read on to find out who else had a hit (or just some good fun) with “I Got You Babe” — including Cher herself.
R&B queen Etta James (1968)
In 1968, blues goddess Etta James released a solo, funked-up “I Got You Babe” cover, and scored a minor hit in her own right. Recorded at the famed Muscle Shoals studio as part of James’ Tell Mama LP, the track turned Bono’s lilting love tune into a sexy, swinging dance number that helped lift “Tell Mama” to No. 21 on the Billboard R & B chart.
Decades later, the cover would enjoy a renaissance of sort of when Sony Computer Entertainment and video game producer Naughty Dog used it in their 2014 offering “The Last of Us.” The HBO miniseries based on the game also used the track in the seventh episode of it’s first season in 2023
In 2021, mega-retailer Walmart also used the feel-good track for their holiday ad campaign.
Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki (1968 and onward)
In the mid ’60s, Herbert Butros Khaury — AKA the Singing Canary and then Tiny Tim — warbled his way into the mainstream courtesy of his birdlike performances of such old-timey hits as “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and “On the Good Ship Lollipop” on the wildly popular Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Tiny Tim was often accompanied by his wife “Miss Vicky” Budinger, who married him on The Tonight Show when she was 17 and he 37. But Tim also sang “I Got You Babe” solo and in the 1968 experimental film You Are What You Eat as a duet with the Cake singer Eleanor Barooshian.
In 2023, the FX series Fargo used Tiny Tim’s solo version in its Season 5 episode “Isolubilia.”
David Bowie and Marianne Faithfull (1973)
In 1973, The Midnight Special producer Burt Sugarman tried to convince music’s Ziggy Stardust to appear on the late-night music hour. Bowie agreed only if he could take over the entire episode and Sugarman said yes.
The result, recorded at London’s Marquee Club, was a spectacle start to finish. And what a finish it was. For the final performance of the hour, Bowie was joined by his fellow Brit, Marianne Faithfull for an impromptu, theatrical take on “I Got You Babe.”
For the weirdly charming number, Faithfull dressed herself as a sort of mod nun, while Bowie donned shiny black and tomato red spandex pants and furry black wings worn on his chest instead of his back. No word on what Bono thought of the act.
Chrissie Hynde and UB40 (1985)
As a college kid in the mid-’80s, nothing could propel me to the dance floor like The Pretenders front woman Chrissie Hynde and English reggae band UB40’s deliciously ya-mon “I Got You Babe” collaboration.
Though the song only reached No. 28 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 after its July 1985 release, my friends and I got our Dancehall on long after summer was over.
Cher … with Beavis and Butt-head (1993)
Come for the trippy graphics. Stay for a leather-clad Cher schooling MTV’s animated dim-bulb duo on the song’s metalhead cred.
This unlikely pairing came about in 1993 when the network asked Cher — ever the master of keeping herself current, and not exactly a shrinking violet — to record “I Got You Babe” with Beavis and Butt-head taking Sonny’s place. The pop icon admitted she’d never seen the lowbrow MTV hit prior to the ask. But once she got the gist, she was in on the joke, totally game and an avid promoter of the video.
So how do you prefer your “I Got You Babe”? Are you a fan of the original? Something a little more out-there? Or anyway you can get your flowers in the spring? Tell us in the comments below.
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