1964 No. 1 Hit Was Recorded 62 Years Ago Today

I Get Around by The Beach Boys was recorded on this day in 1964.

The legendary American rock band recorded the opening track to their album All Summer Long on April 2, 1964.

The song, written by Brian Wilsonand Mike Love, was inspired by the group’s rapid rise to fame and pressure to adhere to the status quo. The single was the band’s first chart-topping hit in the United States. On June 6, 1964, the song debuted on the Billboard Top 40 chart at 17.

The success of the song started an unofficial professional rivalry between The Beach Boys and The Beatles. After Wilson’s death in 2025, Paul McCartney shared a heartfelt tribute to the late musician.

“Brian had that mysterious sense of musical genius that made his songs so achingly special. The notes he heard in his head and passed to us were simple and brilliant at the same time,” he wrote on Instagram.

The song’s impact was formidable to the legacy of The Beach Boys, with Rolling Stone critic Anthony DeCurtis writing the track was an example of Wilson’s ability to be, “very complex and have every single thing you do have an emotional impact, and have the listener not even be aware of it—just hear it the first time and get it. That’s hard.”

In 2017, I Get Around was formally inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

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