Sexual innuendo in Beach Boys songs

[petsoundsnola]

"A boy bumped into her wonderful" ?

[CenturyDeprived]

"And I ate the wrapper" sounds phonetically like "And I ate the rapper", a.k.a. going down on a rap singer gal. 

[The_Beach]

Dont Worry Baby "When she makes love to me"

[Jay]

Rollin' Up To Heaven. 

[Rick5150]

I am not sure if anyone else hears the slight snicker in the delivery of these lyrics.

I, I only looked in her eyes
But I picked up something I just can't explain

about 12 seconds in...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C__qH2HsWM8

Clearly talking about an STD

[GhostyTMRS]

Dont Worry Baby "When she makes love to me"

I don't know exactly when it happened, but somewhere between the late 60's and early 70's the expression "making love" took on an entirely different meaning. As an Old Time Radio buff I'm always hearing characters on radio shows from the 40's talking about "making love" and when they say it they're referring to kissing/petting (later on the expression for kissing morphed into "making out" and then "making love" became something else). I think in the context of 1964, Roger Christian is using "making love" in the vernacular of the times, meaning kissing/petting. By the time we get to "Roller Skating Child" I believe the expression had become synonymous with sex.

In an unrelated note, I hope the old expression "pitching woo" comes back into the parlance. It sounds pretty graphic and yet isn't at all. God knows how it would be interpreted by kids in 2016.     

[Lonely Summer]

Dont Worry Baby "When she makes love to me"

I don't know exactly when it happened, but somewhere between the late 60's and early 70's the expression "making love" took on an entirely different meaning. As an Old Time Radio buff I'm always hearing characters on radio shows from the 40's talking about "making love" and when they say it they're referring to kissing/petting (later on the expression for kissing morphed into "making out" and then "making love" became something else). I think in the context of 1964, Roger Christian is using "making love" in the vernacular of the times, meaning kissing/petting. By the time we get to "Roller Skating Child" I believe the expression had become synonymous with sex.

In an unrelated note, I hope the old expression "pitching woo" comes back into the parlance. It sounds pretty graphic and yet isn't at all. God knows how it would be interpreted by kids in 2016.     

There are quite a few old songs from the 40's 50's 60's that speak of "making love", or "making romance" ("each time we make romance i'll be thankful for a second chance"). Similarly, in the 50's, there were songs like Little Richard's "Rip It Up" ("gonna shake it up, gonna rock it up, gonna ball it up") or "Good Golly Miss Molly" ("you sure like to ball"). Back then, ballin' meant dancing, but these days you don't know what you're gonna bounce home with!

[HeyJude]

The "Don't Worry Baby" lyrics are questionable; a quick bit of research shows that while the general etymology stated above is accurate as to the term's progression, there are examples going all the way back to the 1920s of a usage of "making love" that connotes actual sex rather than kissing, etc.

If Christian and Brian meant the lyric to connote the older, archaic meaning of the term, it was a pretty late example, especially for someone who was very young at that time, as it was apparently younger folk in the 50s and 60s that started using the term to connote sex.

It is often pointed out that Brian was a "child of the 50s" and in some ways socially was rather old fashioned; so a pretty late, arguably naïve usage of that term by Brian seems plausible.

Apparently, some radio stations banned "Under the Boardwalk" in the very same year, 1964, for one of its lines "We'll be making love", substituting an alternate version/edit without the line. So, on the one hand, it makes me think another contemporary usage ("Don't Worry Baby") was likely to have the same, later meaning. On the other hand, "Don't Worry Baby" didn't have any issues with being banned, so either there was possibly some weird double standard, or radio stations assumed the BBs meant the more innocent, archaic meaning.

[joshferrell]

what about doing it at the park all day?  and of course "Fun Fun Fun" is one of the most obvious..

[GhostyTMRS]

The "Don't Worry Baby" lyrics are questionable; a quick bit of research shows that while the general etymology stated above is accurate as to the term's progression, there are examples going all the way back to the 1920s of a usage of "making love" that connotes actual sex rather than kissing, etc.

If Christian and Brian meant the lyric to connote the older, archaic meaning of the term, it was a pretty late example, especially for someone who was very young at that time, as it was apparently younger folk in the 50s and 60s that started using the term to connote sex.

It is often pointed out that Brian was a "child of the 50s" and in some ways socially was rather old fashioned; so a pretty late, arguably naïve usage of that term by Brian seems plausible.

Apparently, some radio stations banned "Under the Boardwalk" in the very same year, 1964, for one of its lines "We'll be making love", substituting an alternate version/edit without the line. So, on the one hand, it makes me think another contemporary usage ("Don't Worry Baby") was likely to have the same, later meaning. On the other hand, "Don't Worry Baby" didn't have any issues with being banned, so either there was possibly some weird double standard, or radio stations assumed the BBs meant the more innocent, archaic meaning.

I wouldn't go so far as to call the expression "archaic" as early as 1964. Bobby Rydell put out "Let's Make Love Tonight" in 1963 and it wasn't about sex and the Marilyn Monroe film "Let's Make Love" came out in 1960. If the slang translation of that title (based on a song) had been "Let's F#@k" I doubt it would have been released in any capacity.
As you say, I don't think it was like a light switched on and suddenly it was considered a euphemism for sex. I don't think it was widely used in that way in 1964, and I doubt Roger Christian, as a radio man, would purposely write a lyric that would threaten his lyric getting airplay.
I'm wondering if just the very act of kissing/petting under the boardwalk out of the watchful eyes of adults was something that was more frowned upon at the time, hence the lyric change. Perhaps it was tied into juvenile delinquency in some way.

[Custom Machine]

I'm of the mind that the "when she makes love to me" line in Don't Worry Baby is a reflection of the more innocent meaning of the term that was in still in common use at the time of the release of DWB. But today I'd say that just about anyone who wasn't around when the song was released, upon hearing that line in the song these days, would presume it was a reference to full fledged sex.

In the summer of 1959, when I was in elementary school, Floyd Robinson released the song "Makin' Love" and to me it referred to a mild to heavy duty kissing session, although most kids that I knew back then, and through my high school years, would use the term "making out," rather than "making love". And at some point the term "make love" became a reference to sex in just about everyone's mind.

Here's Floyd Robinson's "Makin' Love" from 1959, a cute song from a more innocent age. The song was less than five years old when Don't Worry Baby was written and was one that both Brian and Roger Christian would have been quite familiar with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iokPeIWWE.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

I'm of the mind that the "when she makes love to me" line in Don't Worry Baby is a reflection of the more innocent meaning of the term that was in still in common use at the time of the release of DWB. But today I'd say that just about anyone who wasn't around when the song was released, upon hearing that line in the song these days, would presume it was a reference to full fledged sex.

In the summer of 1959, when I was in elementary school, Floyd Robinson released the song "Makin' Love" and to me it referred to a mild to heavy duty kissing session, although most kids that I knew back then, and through my high school years, would use the term "making out," rather than "making love". And at some point the term "make love" became a reference to sex in just about everyone's mind.

Thank you for the context...I thought it referred to sex as well.

[Lonely Summer]

If Mike had been the co-writer on DWB - in 1992 - it definitely would have had some references to "doin' it"; I think the Beach Boys of 1964 - publicly, anyway - were a bit more innocent than that.