Songfacts®:

• Rock music is filled with songs where guys get lusty for 16-year-old girls. There's "Sweet Little Sixteen" by Chuck Berry, "You're Sixteen" by Ringo Starr, and "Only Sixteen" by Sam Cooke. "Christine Sixteen" is the lustiest, but like all these songs, it's in character. Gene Simmons, who handles the vocal, was 27 when it was released, but we can assume he's singing from the perspective of someone younger (although clearly older than Christine). We picture him as a 19-year-old kid who graduated high school but still hangs around town, scoping out the girls. Kind of like Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) in the movie Dazed and Confused, which was set in 1976. "That's what I love about these high school girls," he says. "I get older, they stay the same age."
• Gene Simmons wrote this song and sang lead. He came up with the title after ribbing Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley for writing songs about girls and love. "All you ever do is write girl songs like 'Christine Sixteen,'" he told him. Realizing the song title he made up to tease Stanley was actually pretty good, he wrote an actual song called "Christine Sixteen."
• Released ahead of the title track, "Christine Sixteen" was the first single from the 1977 Love Gun album. Kiss had a breakthrough with their 1975 live album Alive! in 1975, then in 1976 they found their footing in the studio with the Destroyer album, which was produced by Bob Ezrin and boosted their fanbase. Love Gun was produced by Eddie Kramer, who also worked on their previous album, Rock And Roll Over. Kramer played piano on "Christine Sixteen."
• They've never surfaced, but Eddie Van Halen said that he and his brother Alex played on the demos of this song, with Ace Frehley modeling his guitar solo on what Eddie played. In 1976, Gene Simmons financed and produced the first Van Halen demo tape.