The Foundations – Baby Now That I’ve Found You

I first heard this song on an oldies station in the 80s. This song peaked at #11 in the Billboard 100 and #1 in the UK  in 1968. The Foundations were a British Soul band that was active between 1967 to 1970.

When this was first released there appeared to be little enthusiasm for the single until BBC’s newly founded Radio 1 began to play it. The song got onto the station’s playlist mainly because they wanted to avoid any records being played by the pirate radio broadcasters, so they looked back at recent releases that the pirates had missed.

From Songfacts

 The song’s co-writer Tony Macaulay recalls in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh: “I woke up that morning with a stinking headache and when I got to the studio and heard The Foundations, I thought they were pretty terrible. I decided my hangover was to blame, and so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. The only song I could think of was something John McLeod and I had had for some time, ‘Baby Now That I’ve Found You.’ I didn’t have a lot of faith in the song but they recorded it with a lot of energy and I learned a lot from making that record.” It went on to become an international hit.

Clem Curtis, the lead vocalist of The Foundations recalls in the same book “Tony Macaulay gave us 2 songs. One was ‘Let The Heartaches Begin’ and the other was ‘Baby Now That I’ve Found You’ and we chose ‘Baby Now That I’ve Found You.’ Long John Baldry recorded the other one and that knocked us off the top.”

This was used in the 2001 film Shallow Hal. 

This was the first song by a multiracial band to top the UK singles chart.

A cover version by Alison Krauss was featured in the 1997 Australian comedy, The Castle.

 

Baby Now That I’ve Found You

[Chorus]
Baby, now that I’ve found you
I can’t let you go
I’ll build my world around you

I need you so
Baby, even though you don’t need me
You don’t need me.

[Chorus]

Baby, baby, since first we met (doot-doot)
I knew in this heart of mine (I want to tell you, doot-doot)
The love we had could not be bad (doot-doot)
Play it right and bide my time

Spent a lifetime looking for somebody
To give me love like you
Now you’ve told me that you want to leave me
Darling, I just can’t let you.

[Chorus: x2]

Spent a lifetime looking for somebody
To give me love like you
Now you’ve told me that you want to leave me
Darling, I just can’t let you.

[Repeat Chorus]