Kiss Me, Baby
1965 single by The Beach Boys
"Kiss Me, Baby" is a song by the American rock band the Beach Boys from their 1965 album The Beach Boys Today!. Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, it was issued as the B-side of the group's single, "Help Me, Rhonda," on April 5, 1965.
Overview
"Kiss Me, Baby" is about a quarrel between the narrator and his lover, and his attempt to repair their relationship. Wilson was inspired to write "Kiss Me, Baby" while walking around a red light district in Copenhagen. He composed it at his hotel room there on November 14, 1964, days after proposing to singer Marilyn Rovell. Love said that the "wistful bass line ... led to my lyrics about a guy who has a disagreement with his girlfriend, even though they can't even remember what they fought about, leaving them both brokenhearted."
The arrangement features basses, guitars, saxophone, pianos, vibraphone, drums, and temple blocks—the sound of the latter percussion soon became a signature for Wilson– as well as English horn and French horn. Doo-wop style background vocals sing "Kiss a little bit, fight a little bit" repetitively throughout the chorus and outro. Love described the "R&B, doo-wop, bass thing" as an "'In the Still of the Night' type vibe". Journalist Scott Interrante interpreted this part of the lyric as implying that the narrator "knows the on-again/off-again relationship should remain off.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6416960. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kiss Me, Baby” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.