1965 No. 1 Hit Ranked Among the ‘Greatest Duets of All Time' Became a Pop Culture Phenomenon-But Superstar Singer Hated It at First
In 1965, Sonny & Cher soared to the top of the charts with "I Got You Babe." The song, from the duo's debut album Look at Us, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on Aug. 14, 1965, and remained there for three weeks. Written by Bono, "I Got You Babe" became Sonny & Cher's signature song and biggest hit -the next closest would be in 1967 when "The Beat Goes On" peaked at No. 6.
Ultimate Classic Rock ranked "I Got You Babe" one of the greatest duets of all time. Describing the ode to love as an admittedly "polarizing track," the outlet highlighted how it beat the odds at a time when the music landscape was changing. "Of course, ‘I Got You Babe' became Sonny and Cher's biggest hit, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and becoming a pop culture phenomenon," UCR shared.
Cher didn't like ‘I Got You Babe' at first
Cher wasn't a fan when her then-partner presented her with "I Got You Babe" in the middle of the night more than 60 years ago. During an appearance on The Late Show With James Corden, Cher admitted she never thought the song would be a hit.
"No," she said. "I was sleeping. We bought a piano for about $82, and it had only a few broken keys. We had only furniture for the bedroom, and [Sonny] would write in the living room. He said, ‘Cher, I want you to come here and sing this.' I went, ‘Oh Sonny, I'm embarrassed.' He said, ‘Jesus, it's just me.' And it was ‘I Got you Babe.' I said, ‘I'm going back to bed, this is just not anything.' Sonny had such a bad voice, and it was on the piano, and it sounded like I don't even know, like not a hit song."
In an interview with Billboard, Cher admitted she didn't always know how to spot a hit. "With ‘I Got You Babe,' Sonny woke me up in the middle of the night to come in where the piano was, in the living room, and sing it. And I didn't like it and just said, 'OK, I'll sing it and then I'm going back to bed,'" she shared. "So I was never a very good barometer. I loved songs that weren't as big of hits."
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The song sparked massive fame for Sonny & Cher
Before "I Got You Babe," music fans didn't know what to make of Sonny & Cher.
"Sonny wore that bobcat, and I wore huge bell-bottoms," Cher told Elle magazine in 2018. "We didn't think, ‘Oh, we're breaking some taboo' or ‘We're going forward' or ‘We're avant-garde' or any of that. We just loved the way we looked. Kids liked it, but adults just hated us. I mean, really hated us. Fistfights hate."
Once "I Got You Babe" was released, everything changed. "It sounds so dumb, but everything happened so fast," Cher said. "I didn't even know where I was. One day we were poor. Two days, three days later, we were famous."
The success of "I Got You Babe" sparked a succession of hits for Sonny & Cher throughout the mid to late 1960s.
"We had solo songs, and we had [Sonny & Cher] songs," Cher told Billboard. "What happened was there were songs we made before, so when ‘I Got You Babe' became famous, they released the songs that we had done before ‘I Got You Babe.' So everything was just released at one time."
"It was everything that we were living for," she added of the duo's success. "It was what we were breathing for. It was our goal to do it. … We struggled. We had songs that didn't do anything, and then all of a sudden we had all these songs on the [chart] at one time."
Sonny and Cher's musical act was popular enough to score the couple a TV variety show. In 1971, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour premiered on CBS. The series aired for four seasons and ended each episode with Sonny and Cher singing "I Got You Babe" to each other.
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This story was originally published May 8, 2026 at 6:16 AM.