Are you familiar with Linda Ronstadt's "Be My Baby"?
It is overflowing with reverb. Like way too much. Her voice needs little "enforcement".
 
So the question is, is it a bad mix?
I'm not sure if it's ok, but here's a link to the song on youtube....
 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o1U3xiobHQ
 
 

It's perfect for the song.  I Love it.

I would agree that is the sound they were looking to achieve - so it worked for them on that song....

I wouldn't use nearly that much reverb.  It doesn't bother me, but it does sound a bit excessive and works against the intimate sound she's trying to achieve.  The way she is singing the song bothers me more: there is a bad pop early on, and there are some pitch issues.
 
I tried to find the year this was recorded and couldn't.  I was curious because in the early 1980s when studios started installing digital algorithmic reverbs like the Lexicon 224, a lot of engineers went crazy with the effect.  I could be wrong, but this sounds like a 224.  (I like 224s: just not this much of one.)
 
PS Not related to Ronstadt's version, but Brian Wilson was obsessed with the Ronettes' version and would play it over and over again, sometimes for days.  He even made a huge tape loop of it and had tape running all around the room so he could listen non-stop.  I do not get the attraction to this song or that track.

Too much for my ears, couldn't listen to it for too long.
 
Original sounds great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzhbGaCwBzs

Looks like Linda's version came out in 1996.

I agree there's too much reverb, but there's also hissy noise throughout that makes me wonder what the source of the YouTube audio was. I'd have to listen to Linda's original version.
 
-Susan

charlyg
So the question is, is it a bad mix?

Yep. It's a bad mix. Doesn't matter what they were "going for." It sux. I love Linda, but this is awful through no fault of hers.
 

konradh
PS Not related to Ronstadt's version, but Brian Wilson was obsessed with the Ronettes' version and would play it over and over again, sometimes for days.  He even made a huge tape loop of it and had tape running all around the room so he could listen non-stop.  I do not get the attraction to this song or that track.

That original recording of "Be My Baby" is a groundbreaking classic, one of the most iconic and honored pop music tracks ever recorded. It may seem like old hat now, the same way Alfred Hitchcock's weird camera angles do, but that's because it set the stage for so much of what came later, and what we are still hearing today. I'm not a big Phil Spector fan, but everything comes together in that record: orchestra used as rock'n'roll instrument, Hal Blaine's drums tuned to the key of the song, the all-star cast of rhythm players and background singers, the international percussion (maracas, castanets), the Gold Star reverb chamber, and floating above it all Ronnie Bennett's brazen-yet-plaintive voice (in the words of one reviewer, "...her voice radiates pure baby-doll sexuality.). It's just an incredible piece of music. In my opinion.

charlyg
So the question is, is it a bad mix?

No, the mix is fine, nothing is out of place. It's just the sound and feel she and her producer wanted to get. It's kind of icey, cold and distant, a contradiction of the original. I probably wouldn't do it like that but it's not my record. The listener experience is subjective and sensibilities change, it's the nature of the art. If I were producing Motown now, it would have a lot more bottom but that doesn't mean that the original production wasn't brilliant.

Spector wasn't Motown. I think the original was Motown, It would have had more of a bass focus, but not by modern terms