"Mean to Me" is a 1929 popular song with music by Fred E. Ahlert and lyrics by Roy Turk, published the same year. Ruth Etting and Helen Morgan had hit versions with it in 1929, and it charted several times that year. Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra, with a vocal chorus by Scrappy Lambert, recorded it for Brunswick on 10 February 1929, probably the first recording by a male vocalist. Ruth Etting is also reported to have recorded it first, and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Red Nichols and Annette Hanshaw also recorded it in 1929.
The song became a jazz standard and has been recorded by many artists, including Billie Holiday (1937), the Andrews Sisters (1940), Sarah Vaughan, Julie London, Judy Garland, Dean Martin with Nelson Riddle (1960), Ella Fitzgerald with Nelson Riddle (1962), Chet Baker, Anita O'Day and Linda Ronstadt (1984). Doris Day's version features in the 1955 film Love Me or Leave Me. The song also appears in films as an instrumental in the Krazy Kat cartoon Ratskin (1929), as a violin instrumental in Betty Boop's Minnie the Moocher (1932), and as Annette Hanshaw's recording in Sita Sings the Blues (2008).
