Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor Brian Wilson, who died on Wednesday (June 11) at age 82, by looking at the first of The Beach Boys’ three Hot 100-toppers: the irresistible pop smash “I Get Around.”
The Beach Boys had racked up four consecutive top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 (discounting B sides) prior to “I Get Around,” but this ebullient song was their first single to reach No. 1. They recorded it in April 1964, making it the first song they recorded after The Beatles arrived in the U.S. that February.
If The Beach Boys felt threatened by the Fab Four’s explosive arrival, they were not going down without a fight. “I Get Around” is chock-full of hooks – great harmonies, handclaps, twangy guitar work and the inspired “round-round-getaround” hook.
In his liner notes for the 1990 reissue of Little Deuce Coupe and All Summer Long, Beach Boys expert David Leaf said the track represented “a major, revolutionary step in Brian’s use of dynamics.” He added: “From the opening note to the falsetto wail on the fade, this is one of the greatest tracks the Beach Boys ever cut. … Powered by the driving lead guitar break, the explosive harmonies and the handclaps, everything about this track was very spirited.”
The song runs a highly efficient 2:14, making it the second-shortest No. 1 hit of 1964. The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” was a couple of seconds shorter.
With this song, The Beach Boys continued to move away from the surf music fad that they rode in on, with such hits as 1962’s “Surfin” and “Surfin’ Safari” and 1963’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and “Surfer Girl.” Like its immediate predecessors “Be True to Your School” and “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “I Get Around” has nothing to do with catching a wave, but instead is more generally capturing teen life in early-’60s California. (And, when you think about it, driving songs played nearly as big a part of the early Beach Boys success as surfing songs, between “I Get Around,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” “409” and others.)
Mike Love sang lead vocals on “I Get Around,” with Brian Wilson contributing falsetto lead vocals on the chorus. All five members of the group – also including Al Jardine, Carl Wilson and Dennis Wilson – contributed harmony and backing vocals. The fabled Wrecking Crew of top Los Angeles session players, including Hal Blaine and Glen Campbell, played on the track.
The song has a line that seems autobiographical, given the group’s rising level of success over the previous two years: “My buddies and me are gettin’ real well-known.” The song also includes one of the most charming lines ever in a pop song: “None of the guys go steady ’cause it wouldn’t be right/ To leave your best girl home on a Saturday night.”
The group projects a strutting confidence throughout. Biographer Mark Dillon compared the lyrics to “the braggadocio of a modern-day rapper” — fitting that nearly 30 years later, one of the all-time most legendary MCs would recycle the title for his own cockiest hit.
The song entered the Hot 100 at No. 76 for the week ending May 23, 1964. It was the week’s fourth-highest new entry, behind hits by Elvis, Bobby Vinton and Lesley Gore, though it wound up eclipsing all of those. The song reached No. 1 in its seventh week, July 4, displacing Peter & Gordon’s “A World Without Love,” which was written by Paul McCartney (though officially credited to Lennon/McCartney.)
Billboard Hot 100
Billboard
McCartney and Wilson, two of the greatest songwriters of all time, spurred each other on to ever-greater heights for many years. The Beatles’ “Back in the U.S.S.R.” was clearly an homage to The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.”
“I Get Around” topped the Hot 100 for two weeks, before being displaced by The 4 Seasons’ “Rag Doll.” (These groups, representing the pinnacle of West Coast and the East Coast pop, respectively, were among the few American groups from the pre-Beatles era that continued to thrive after the British invasion.) “I Get Around” also put The Beach Boys on the map in the U.K., becoming their first top 10 hit in that country.
The B side of “I Get Around” was the equally great “Don’t Worry Baby,” making this one of the strongest double-sided singles in pop music history. It ranks with Elvis’ “Don’t Be Cruel”/ “Hound Dog,” The Beatles’ “Penny Lane”/“Strawberry Fields Forever,” The Beach Boys’ own “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”/“God Only Knows” and a handful of others.
The song was the opening track on (and only single released from) the group’s sixth album, All Summer Long, which reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 in August 1964. In his liner notes to the 1990 reissue, Leaf noted, “All Summer Long was the last regular studio album The Beach Boys recorded before Brian quit the touring band – the last complete Beach Boys album Brian cut before he suffered a nervous breakdown in late December of 1964.”
Incredibly, “I Get Around” didn’t receive a single Grammy nomination. The Beach Boys’ only songs to receive Grammy nods were “Good Vibrations” and the 1988 Brian-less hit “Kokomo.” The Recording Academy has since sought to make amends, awarding The Beach Boys a lifetime achievement award in 2001 and inducting five of their most classic works (including “I Get Around”) into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Wilson was initially the only songwriter credited on the song. In 1992, Mike Love sued to get a credit on this and many other songs. Love prevailed in December 1994, when he was awarded co-writing credits on 35 songs – as well as $13 million. In his series “The Number Ones,” Stereogum writer Tom Breihan wryly summarized the dispute: “Mike Love later sued Brian for a co-writer credit, and if he really did come up with the round round getaround part, he deserved it.”
While there is no improving on The Beach Boys’ recording of “I Get Around,” several artists have taken a stab at it over the years. Red Hot Chili Peppers performed it at the 2005 MusiCares Person of the Year gala where Brian Wilson was honored. My Morning Jacket performed it on the 2023 special A Grammy Salute to the Beach Boys (which CBS re-aired on Sunday night).
Billie Joe Armstrong posted his version of the song on Instagram on Wednesday (June 11), hours after the news of Wilson’s death broke. “Thank you Brian Wilson,” Armstrong wrote. “I recorded a cover of ‘I Get Around’ a few years ago. ..never got to share it. One of my all time favorite songs ever.”
Check back tomorrow and Wednesday for our Forever No. 1 reports on The Beach Boys’ second and third No. 1 hits, “Help Me Rhonda” and “Good Vibrations.”
