All Summer Long

Album: All Summer Long (1964)
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Songfacts®:

  • This sunny tune written by Beach Boys Brian Wilson and Mike Love finds the narrator in a blissful summer romance, enjoying miniature golf and cruising Hondas in the hills with his girl. He knows the season is coming to an end and wants to spend as much time together as he can. Musically, the song is built on a boogie-woogie piano line with a bouncy marimba hook.
  • In a 1992 interview with Goldmine magazine, Mike Love - who sang lead vocals on the tune - estimated he wrote about half of the song's lyrics including the line, "Remember when you spilled Coke all over your blouse."

    But Wilson claimed he wrote the line in reference to meeting his first wife, Marilyn, and accidentally spilling hot chocolate on her. He recalled in his 2016 memoir, I Am Brian Wilson: "I changed this around a little. I changed hot chocolate to Coke because it fit the lyrics better, and I changed it so that she spilled it on herself because that seemed funnier."
  • The bittersweet sentiment that the good times can't last forever made the song a near-perfect fit for George Lucas' '60s nostalgia movie American Graffiti (1973), about a group of teenagers enjoying their last summer together after graduating from high school. The only flaw was that the film was set in 1962 and the song, which plays over the end credits, didn't come out until 1964.
  • Dennis Wilson, the band's troubled drummer who would drown in 1983 at 39, also knew that time was fleeting and he wanted to enjoy every moment. "They say I live a fast life," he wrote on the album's sleeve notes. "Maybe I just like a fast life. I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world. It won't last forever, either. But the memories will."
  • All Summer Long peaked at #4 on the US albums chart and stayed in the Top 40 for over nine months. The title track was released as a single in the UK (and didn't chart), but not in the US. The big hit was "I Get Around," the band's first #1.
  • This was used on The Simpsons in the 1996 episode "Summer of 4 Ft. 2."

Comments: 1

  • Nick Brady from York, PaGood song! It was the final song played in the movie "American Graffiti as Richard Dreyfus looks out the airplane window and sees the white Thunderbird following the plane. Suzanne Summers was the mystery driver in the T-Bird.
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