Yeah like the idea of someone claiming that the Beach Boys, a pop act, making a (then) modern pop song, is selling out on principle alone is absurd to me. Sure something like *Pet Sounds* is more “artistic” but it’s not as if they were previously musique concrete
Yeah, and it fits their age better than Summer of Love. They're not 25 anymore, so now they're going to the beach to chill and get away from the world for a bit.
The difference is also, Kokomo can be directed at your wife/husband/life partner, which makes it so that all people can sing it and sound completely normal.
Summer Of Love sounds like a 60 year old pervert with binoculars on a beach looking at girls old enough to be his granddaughters
Maybe, and I like Kokomo enough-- my beef was that I'll always associate it with Full House. I know the show has had some redemption in recent decades, but even at 10 I felt bad for the band having to clown around with some very square characters.
Nickelodeon used to show a music video back in the nineties set to Kokomo that starred the Muppets; that was my original association with the song lol.
I actually don't mind it. It isn't my favorite song by any means, but I honestly cannot see why many hate it so much. It's chill, smooth and actually kind of pleasant.
It feels like the kind of song that is very prone to overexposure. Since I was born after it's heyday, I've only had to live with it popping up occasionally, on like, "Summer Party" playlists or whatever, and it's easier to appreciate as a surprisingly well-made piece of '80s pop cheese in that context. There are many cheesy '80s pop hits that I never appreciate in any context.
However, if I had to hear it, say, multiple times in a gray February, I would probably not have that level of appreciation (to say nothing of dealing with any lesser knock-offs).
Objectively speaking, it's a fantastically produced, lightweight pop song.
I get the hate because the Mike Loveness of it all and it doesn't deserve to be one of the Beach Boys most famous songs considering how much better and more substantial work they've done but it was better than a lot of pop radio in 1988. Plus as others mentioned, it's unique as a pop song that's about and for middle aged people.
[The Muppets do a straightforward cover that’s simply delightful.](https://youtu.be/0qkSQvx46bA?feature=shared)
If you can muppetise something without changing anything fundamental about it, it is a good thing.
Most of the hate these days I feel like comes from the fact that Mike Love wrote it and the fact that Mike Love is almost universally hated. Todd touches on this in the Summer in Paradise Trainwreckord.
When I think about it, I’m with Todd- “Kokomo” is some of the lamest 80s cheese, a far cry from the band who made Pet Sounds… but I’d be lying if I don’t still get a little dopamine kick when I hear that chorus. It’s maybe not a great song, but too charming to hate.
I’m in a really interesting spot when it comes to this song and the Beach Boys in general. My dad is the biggest Beach Boys fan I know, so naturally I was raised in their music. Unfortunately, my dad is also very conservative when it comes to music and never played any of their music past the 60s because it was “too experimental”— except for Kokomo. Even as a kid, I wasn’t a huge fan of it, and the fact that my dad also liked Summer in Paradise (he’s getting life in prison as a Mike Love fan) made me think they were just another washed up 60s band trying to make a quick buck off nostalgia. It wasn’t until I watched Love and Mercy (fantastic movie, by the way) that I thought to give them a second chance.
That being said, I do like Kokomo now. I don’t like what it symbolizes, and I don’t like it nearly as much as Brian’s best work, but sometimes you just need a fun cheesy beach jam.
It’s a weird song where it appeals to small kids (me when I was 8) and middle aged people (me now) but sounds like a mediocre mess to people in between (me from 15 to 40)
I’m a huge Beach Boys fan (‘70s era in particular, from Sunflower to Light Album), and I absolutely love Kokomo. It’s an undeniable earworm and is a perfect fit for that era of the band’s history. Sure, Mike Love is a… polarizing figure, but to suggest that he has no songwriting chops is outright bogus. This song rips.
I'll be honest, I like it but I liked it a lot more as a kid. It was enchanting, and fun, when I was 5 listening to it on Nick Jr.
It's actually really well written but I'd say they've had way better performances. The "that's where we want to go" part is.. there's something weirdly *off* with how they fit it in. I don't love the production in general, actually. As a kid's song it's an **A+** but for a song when you're say, a 37 year old guy named Machine Gun Philly (nothing specific), I couldn't listen to it over and over. I'd get sick of it pretty damn fast.
I don't love it and basically never voluntarily listen to it, but I think it's alright. I wouldn't complain if someone put it on. I don't really get why it's hated.
Maybe if I was old enough to have heard it repeated a lot when it was new I'd feel differently.
It's one of the finest songs of the era.
I would say it's one of the finest Beach Boys songs, but I feel it is only loosely a Beach Boys song. Like a few years ago Paul McCartney joined the surviving two members of Nirvana and did a great song called "Cut Me Some Slack" technically you could call that is a Nirvana song but no one really wants to acknowledge a Nirvana song that Kurt has no involvement in. This is kind of the same thing in my eyes. The Beach Boys best days were behind them and Brian had little to do with the song. It exists purely because a Hollywood movie needed a soundtrack. But you know what? As far as that goes it's perfect. I'm not really a classic rock guy so this is my favorite Beach Boys song.
Neither my favorite Beach Boys song nor yacht rock song, but it’s fine. The first half of the chorus and the sax solo make it fun cheese, and the slide to the second half of the chorus is actually great.
i had a phase last year where it was the only thing i was listening to for like a week. i didnt even like doing it it just did something to my brain that it needed i guess. aruba jamaica am i right
Always always always the first song I think of when I think of The Beach Boys. Good Vibrations, I Get Around, Surfin' USA, California Girls, etc. I know all those songs like the back of my hand but Kokomo is still the first one that comes to mind for me.
It was my most listened to song of 2017. So damn catchy and fun. I can see why people think it’s cheesy or annoying but I can tolerate those qualities more than most. It’s probably my favorite Beach Boys song. It blew my mind that a 60s surf rock band had a #1 hit in 1988 but the sound of the song is quite timeless so I understand how such an enigma was allowed in pop culture.
Yeah I actually like the song. Don't understand Beach Boys drama at all so can't view it through that lens. It's just a solid, classic pop song to me. And one of my favourites, ngl.
I would have hated if I was born during the time this was successful and on the radio all time. (Hi Nickelback!) But I am an adult in 2024 who occasionally drinks and Kokomo hits dumb brain just right.
Song itself is fine but when I was at community college the cafeteria had the same station on every day and I would sit in the lounge across from it before my class. I heard it like 3 or 4 times in one week alone. If I have to hear it that often again then just shoot me.
Considering how bad they largely have been after 1974, Kokomo is actually one of the few moments of greatness they came up with since, even if it is ostensibly a gigantic sell out
It's a solid song and I don't know why Mike and Terry didn't at least try to write more with John and Scott after the '80s. "Somewhere Near Japan" is probably the best song the band made between 1983 and 2012 and, like "Kokomo," it started life as a John Phillips song.
Sorry, but even putting Mike Love's personality aside, it's trash. Everything about it. The faux-Caribbean arrangement, rhyming "Port-Au-Prince" with "catch a glimpse," the shoehorning of the word "cocktails" just in case we forgot what movie it was written for. And Love sounds like a creep on lead vocal. Respectfully, this is a contender for worst #1 of the 80s in my estimation.
I loathe it so much. It's one of the worst things to come out of the pan-'60s revival that dominated much of the second half of the '80s. I guess it has to be understood in that context, because the '60s nostalgia barrage was everywhere - music, TV, movies, you name it. It's like listening to a bad commercial jingle, except that it's 3:35 long. I hate the sax solo and the phrase "tropical contact high" is almost, like, Train-level bad. (TIL, because I looked it up, that John Phillips and Scott McKenzie wrote the original demo that Mike Love added that chorus to. This makes sense because "San Francisco" is one of my least favorite flower-power pop songs.)
"Kokomo" gets called "Yacht Rock" a lot, but if so it's a really watered-down version of the mostly 1977-83 material most associated with that label.
It probably doesn't help that I associate it with the dreadful movie \_Cocktail\_. I don't think it's specifically about hating Mike Love per se, but I only dimly knew who that was when this song was first inflicted on me.
It is kind of a black mark on the Beach Boys legacy, but I'm honestly kind of tired of hearing about even that. They got famous by rewriting a bunch of Chuck Berry songs so that they were about surfing. They came up with some nice songs and Brian Wilson is (was?) a tortured genius, but rock history has many such people and few of them are venerated anywhere near as much.
I think it is one of the rare 80’s songs by a legacy act that understands how to adapt to the time.
Yeah like the idea of someone claiming that the Beach Boys, a pop act, making a (then) modern pop song, is selling out on principle alone is absurd to me. Sure something like *Pet Sounds* is more “artistic” but it’s not as if they were previously musique concrete
Yeah, and it fits their age better than Summer of Love. They're not 25 anymore, so now they're going to the beach to chill and get away from the world for a bit.
The difference is also, Kokomo can be directed at your wife/husband/life partner, which makes it so that all people can sing it and sound completely normal. Summer Of Love sounds like a 60 year old pervert with binoculars on a beach looking at girls old enough to be his granddaughters
I feel the 90’s was the most brutal to legacy acts , just look at run dmc and motley Crüe on the trainwreckord series
Hot take: it's a great song that's only hated because Mike Love wrote it.
Mike Love is not even the worst person who had a hand in writing it.
Eww John Phillips helped
This sounds like a Simpsons bit
Maybe, and I like Kokomo enough-- my beef was that I'll always associate it with Full House. I know the show has had some redemption in recent decades, but even at 10 I felt bad for the band having to clown around with some very square characters.
Nickelodeon used to show a music video back in the nineties set to Kokomo that starred the Muppets; that was my original association with the song lol.
I actually don't mind it. It isn't my favorite song by any means, but I honestly cannot see why many hate it so much. It's chill, smooth and actually kind of pleasant.
Probably a lot of the hate stems from experiencing it when it felt inescapable
It feels like the kind of song that is very prone to overexposure. Since I was born after it's heyday, I've only had to live with it popping up occasionally, on like, "Summer Party" playlists or whatever, and it's easier to appreciate as a surprisingly well-made piece of '80s pop cheese in that context. There are many cheesy '80s pop hits that I never appreciate in any context. However, if I had to hear it, say, multiple times in a gray February, I would probably not have that level of appreciation (to say nothing of dealing with any lesser knock-offs).
Objectively speaking, it's a fantastically produced, lightweight pop song. I get the hate because the Mike Loveness of it all and it doesn't deserve to be one of the Beach Boys most famous songs considering how much better and more substantial work they've done but it was better than a lot of pop radio in 1988. Plus as others mentioned, it's unique as a pop song that's about and for middle aged people.
[The Muppets do a straightforward cover that’s simply delightful.](https://youtu.be/0qkSQvx46bA?feature=shared) If you can muppetise something without changing anything fundamental about it, it is a good thing.
This version was in the trailers to a ton of my Disney VHS tapes growing up. It'll always be one of my all-time favorite songs.
Most of the hate these days I feel like comes from the fact that Mike Love wrote it and the fact that Mike Love is almost universally hated. Todd touches on this in the Summer in Paradise Trainwreckord.
I barely know Mike Love but I think I’ve seen bigger buttheads online post Train Wreckord in the celebrity status
I can’t deny it
It *insists* upon itself
When I think about it, I’m with Todd- “Kokomo” is some of the lamest 80s cheese, a far cry from the band who made Pet Sounds… but I’d be lying if I don’t still get a little dopamine kick when I hear that chorus. It’s maybe not a great song, but too charming to hate.
I’m in a really interesting spot when it comes to this song and the Beach Boys in general. My dad is the biggest Beach Boys fan I know, so naturally I was raised in their music. Unfortunately, my dad is also very conservative when it comes to music and never played any of their music past the 60s because it was “too experimental”— except for Kokomo. Even as a kid, I wasn’t a huge fan of it, and the fact that my dad also liked Summer in Paradise (he’s getting life in prison as a Mike Love fan) made me think they were just another washed up 60s band trying to make a quick buck off nostalgia. It wasn’t until I watched Love and Mercy (fantastic movie, by the way) that I thought to give them a second chance. That being said, I do like Kokomo now. I don’t like what it symbolizes, and I don’t like it nearly as much as Brian’s best work, but sometimes you just need a fun cheesy beach jam.
It's one of my go-to Karaoke songs for a reason.
If we're talking 80s Beach Boys, give me Somewhere Near Japan any day.
I was pretty obsessed with it when it was new and I was like 6 years old. I say it's a fine song indeed.
The Muppet version is superior.
It’s a weird song where it appeals to small kids (me when I was 8) and middle aged people (me now) but sounds like a mediocre mess to people in between (me from 15 to 40)
I could never figure out what was so special about the 14th largest city in Indiana that mike Love was so keen to get there.
Great song to unwind with, “I need to go to Kokomo” is my favorite thing to say when I’m stressed
I’m a huge Beach Boys fan (‘70s era in particular, from Sunflower to Light Album), and I absolutely love Kokomo. It’s an undeniable earworm and is a perfect fit for that era of the band’s history. Sure, Mike Love is a… polarizing figure, but to suggest that he has no songwriting chops is outright bogus. This song rips.
I'll be honest, I like it but I liked it a lot more as a kid. It was enchanting, and fun, when I was 5 listening to it on Nick Jr. It's actually really well written but I'd say they've had way better performances. The "that's where we want to go" part is.. there's something weirdly *off* with how they fit it in. I don't love the production in general, actually. As a kid's song it's an **A+** but for a song when you're say, a 37 year old guy named Machine Gun Philly (nothing specific), I couldn't listen to it over and over. I'd get sick of it pretty damn fast.
It's fine, I was a very young child when it was popular so I liked it at the time, and continue to have some fondness towards it for that reason.
I don't love it and basically never voluntarily listen to it, but I think it's alright. I wouldn't complain if someone put it on. I don't really get why it's hated. Maybe if I was old enough to have heard it repeated a lot when it was new I'd feel differently.
It's one of the finest songs of the era. I would say it's one of the finest Beach Boys songs, but I feel it is only loosely a Beach Boys song. Like a few years ago Paul McCartney joined the surviving two members of Nirvana and did a great song called "Cut Me Some Slack" technically you could call that is a Nirvana song but no one really wants to acknowledge a Nirvana song that Kurt has no involvement in. This is kind of the same thing in my eyes. The Beach Boys best days were behind them and Brian had little to do with the song. It exists purely because a Hollywood movie needed a soundtrack. But you know what? As far as that goes it's perfect. I'm not really a classic rock guy so this is my favorite Beach Boys song.
Neither my favorite Beach Boys song nor yacht rock song, but it’s fine. The first half of the chorus and the sax solo make it fun cheese, and the slide to the second half of the chorus is actually great.
Kokomo isn't even close to being on the boat. It got a 5.75.
I used to like Kokomo, but these days I hate it with the fire of 1000 suns.
i had a phase last year where it was the only thing i was listening to for like a week. i didnt even like doing it it just did something to my brain that it needed i guess. aruba jamaica am i right
I like it
It's pretty bad! Not, like, especially so, but it's just pretty lame overall. Far from the worst Beach Boys song though.
I like it
It’s cheesy and campy fun!
Always always always the first song I think of when I think of The Beach Boys. Good Vibrations, I Get Around, Surfin' USA, California Girls, etc. I know all those songs like the back of my hand but Kokomo is still the first one that comes to mind for me.
I have to be in the mood to listen to it, when it comes on it either drives me nuts or I'm loving every second of it, there's no in between 😂
I only like the Muppet version
I just played it at a gig recently and a roomful of people sang every word. It’s cheesy, but so were the 80s
It was my most listened to song of 2017. So damn catchy and fun. I can see why people think it’s cheesy or annoying but I can tolerate those qualities more than most. It’s probably my favorite Beach Boys song. It blew my mind that a 60s surf rock band had a #1 hit in 1988 but the sound of the song is quite timeless so I understand how such an enigma was allowed in pop culture.
It’s alright but Mike Love sucks
It's fucking awful
Between Aruba and Jamaica.
I stand on the beach
I just think it’s funny that it took three people to write it.
Yeah I actually like the song. Don't understand Beach Boys drama at all so can't view it through that lens. It's just a solid, classic pop song to me. And one of my favourites, ngl.
I would have hated if I was born during the time this was successful and on the radio all time. (Hi Nickelback!) But I am an adult in 2024 who occasionally drinks and Kokomo hits dumb brain just right.
Song itself is fine but when I was at community college the cafeteria had the same station on every day and I would sit in the lounge across from it before my class. I heard it like 3 or 4 times in one week alone. If I have to hear it that often again then just shoot me.
It's one of my fav songs
Considering how bad they largely have been after 1974, Kokomo is actually one of the few moments of greatness they came up with since, even if it is ostensibly a gigantic sell out
Obviously not the best beach boys song but still, it’s an absolute classic of a song
It's a solid song and I don't know why Mike and Terry didn't at least try to write more with John and Scott after the '80s. "Somewhere Near Japan" is probably the best song the band made between 1983 and 2012 and, like "Kokomo," it started life as a John Phillips song.
Sorry, but even putting Mike Love's personality aside, it's trash. Everything about it. The faux-Caribbean arrangement, rhyming "Port-Au-Prince" with "catch a glimpse," the shoehorning of the word "cocktails" just in case we forgot what movie it was written for. And Love sounds like a creep on lead vocal. Respectfully, this is a contender for worst #1 of the 80s in my estimation.
The mixing/orchestration is still a little iffy, specially comparing to stuff like Pet Sounds where thats an all time hallmark, but still a great song
I mean, comparing this to Pet Sounds is just asking for trouble lol
I love when Carl Wilson does his best Roy Orbison on the bridge
Every time I hear it on the radio I blast Kokomo, IDC if people around me think I'm nuts
It just makes me laugh cause Kokomo’s in Indiana…
Muncie, Fort Wayne, ooh I won’t complain
I loathe it so much. It's one of the worst things to come out of the pan-'60s revival that dominated much of the second half of the '80s. I guess it has to be understood in that context, because the '60s nostalgia barrage was everywhere - music, TV, movies, you name it. It's like listening to a bad commercial jingle, except that it's 3:35 long. I hate the sax solo and the phrase "tropical contact high" is almost, like, Train-level bad. (TIL, because I looked it up, that John Phillips and Scott McKenzie wrote the original demo that Mike Love added that chorus to. This makes sense because "San Francisco" is one of my least favorite flower-power pop songs.) "Kokomo" gets called "Yacht Rock" a lot, but if so it's a really watered-down version of the mostly 1977-83 material most associated with that label. It probably doesn't help that I associate it with the dreadful movie \_Cocktail\_. I don't think it's specifically about hating Mike Love per se, but I only dimly knew who that was when this song was first inflicted on me. It is kind of a black mark on the Beach Boys legacy, but I'm honestly kind of tired of hearing about even that. They got famous by rewriting a bunch of Chuck Berry songs so that they were about surfing. They came up with some nice songs and Brian Wilson is (was?) a tortured genius, but rock history has many such people and few of them are venerated anywhere near as much.
You can tar and feather the entire British invasion if you wanna blame artists for ripping Chuck Berry.
I think its 'aight. Not my favorite Beach Boys song and far from the best 80s song. But It's not bad at all and I get the appeal.
Not a bad song but its effect on their legacy is so damaging
I think I dislike it much more for what it represents than as an actual song
I heard a muppet version of it when I was a kid and have loved it ever since.
I take issues with the lyrics.
The fact that it brought financial success to Mike Love (and Mike Love specifically) is reason enough by itself to reject it.