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"You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" was written by Phil Spector, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil (husband and wife). Bill Medley recalled, "We had no idea if it would be a hit. It was too slow, too long, and right in the middle of The Beatles and the British Invasion." The following is from the Rolling Stone's Top 500 songs: "Spector was conducting the musicians for a Ronettes show in San Francisco when he decided to sign the Righteous Brothers, who were on the bill. He then asked Mann and Weil to come up with a hit for them. Bill Medley's impossibly deep intro was the first thing that grabbed listeners. 'When Phil played it for me over the phone,' Mann recalled, 'I said, "Phil, you have it on the wrong speed!"'

It was first recorded by the Righteous Brothers in 1964, and was produced by Phil Spector. Their recording is considered by some music critics to be the ultimate expression and illustration of Spector's "Wall of Sound" recording technique. It has also been described by various music writers as "one of the best records ever made" and "the ultimate pop record". Phil Spector was determined to make this his finest production to date, and wanted it to be better than anything released by current top producers like Berry Gordy, George Martin, Andrew Loog Oldham and Brian Wilson. He chose the Righteous Brothers for their tremendous vocal talents, and enlisted his old Jazz guitar idol Barney Kessel to play on the song. Other musicians to play on the track included Los Angeles session pros Carol Kaye (acoustic guitar), Earl Palmer (drums) and Ray Pohlman (bass). Cher, who did a lot of work with Spector early in her career, can also be heard on background vocals near the end of the song. Spector was the first major West Coast producer to make the musicians wear headphones, so when they heard the song, they heard it with all the processing he added, which in this case meant a lot of echo. This got the musicians out of their comfort zones and made them work together to get a sound that gelled. It took more time to record this way, but Spector didn't mind: while a typical 3-hour session would produce about four songs, Spector would spend an entire session working on one track, leaving a few minutes at the end to record a throwaway B-side jam. Phil Spector put a tremendous amount of effort (and about $35,000) into this production, but the final product was so unusual that he began to wonder if he had a hit. Seeking a second, third and fourth opinion, he played the song for the following people:

1) The song's co-writer Barry Mann, who was convinced the song was recorded at the wrong speed. Spector called his engineer Larry Levine to confirm that it was supposed to sound that way.

2) His publisher Don Kirshner, who Spector respected for his musical opinion. Kirshner thought it was great, but suggested changing the title to "Bring Back That Lovin' Feelin'."

3) The popular New York disc jockey Murray the K. Spector confided in Murray that the song was almost four minutes long (despite the label saying it was 3:05), and wanted to make sure he would play it. Murray thought the song was fantastic, but suggested moving the bass line in the middle to the beginning. Spector put the time on the single as 3:05 so that radio stations would play it. The actual length is 3:50, but stations at the time rarely played songs much longer than 3 minutes. It took radio station program directors a while to figure out why their playlists were running long, but by then the song was a hit. Billy Joel, who inducted The Righteous Brothers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, makes a sly reference to this in his song "The Entertainer" when he sings, "If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05."

Spector heard all three opinions as criticism, and got very nervous. "The co-writer, the co-publisher and the number-one disc jockey in America all killed me," Spector said in a 2003 interview with Telegraph Magazine. "I didn't sleep for a week when that record came out. I was so sick, I got a spastic colon; I had an ulcer." In December 1999, the performing-rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) ranked the song as the most-played song on American radio and television in the 20th century, having accumulated more than 8 million airplays by 1999, and nearly 15 million by 2011. Additionally, the song was chosen as one of the Songs of the Century by RIAA and ranked No. 34 on the list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone. In 2015, the single was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"