According to songwriter Bob Gaudio, the recording was inspired by an occasion involving the homeless children who, at stop lights in the city, would run into the street and clean windshields for spare change.

In the Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan neighborhood, a young girl with a dirty face and wearing ragged clothes approached Gaudio's automobile.

)[4] "The image of her stuck in my head until I wrote 'Rag Doll'", Gaudio recalled in a 2009 interview.

[9] In 2010, radio station WCBS-FM in New York City rated the Four Seasons' "Rag Doll" as the No.

[10] The B-side was the original version of "Silence Is Golden", also written by Crewe and Gaudio.