Year of the Surf: Annivyrsary 1963
ISSUE #262
It’s time for the first of our Annivyrsaries, my favorite history class, and we’re starting with the sounds of 1963—the year J.F.K. was assassinated, girl groups reigned supreme, and the Beatles saw the release of their first two albums. This was one of the biggest years, in almost every sphere, that I’ve ever had to cover for Earwyrms. Civil Rights. Vietnam. Did I mention the Beatles?
So naturally, I want to focus on something that hasn’t been touched as much by scholars—something that may have been covered before, but never with proper emphasis on its sheer absurdity. I’m talking, of course, about rise of the Surf Song.
Climbing through the mountains of archives for this year, I kept seeing one thing over and over—in the Billboard charts, in the albums of the year, in the popular images of 1963—that is the word “surf,” one of English’s strangest. I should know, because Jeffs are especially attuned to notice words that end in “F,” as they are fewer and farther between than you might think. The most extreme fricative, the “F” ending underlines the cruelty of the English language, all but forcing the speaker to spit a little on their audience accidentally.
But beyond its role as an English poltergeist, surfing as an activity is too flimsy to naturally catch the attention of a nation whose landlocked states total well over half. This was a clear push by the executives, those bourbon swilling, airheaded arbiters of “good taste” that have been marginalizing voices since the dawn of media. And in 1963, they forced white culture to be overrun by the board. There was “Wipe Out,” “Surfin’ Bird,” “Surf City,” and the dozens of songs by the Beach Boys—and if there’s one sign that this was all just a cash grab, it’s that Brian Wilson didn’t even know how to surf, that he was so bad at it he was arrested in 1976.
But this is nothing new. In 1963, typical of almost any year, the Billboard charts reflect almost nothing of the music that actually stuck with us, that had the heart and nerve to last through generations beyond inclusion in gameshows and Family Guy. With the exception of your excellent girl-group pop songs like “Then He Kissed Me” and “Be My Baby” (neither of which even reached #1), there’s virtually no presence in the charts from the eternal works: from Live at the Apollo, from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, even from Please Please Me or Meet the Beatles. Sam Cooke was probably the closest we get to the critical ideal—the king of croon was also the king of radio, and almost every single cut of Cooke’s still holds up as some of the decade’s best.
The Surf Song, however—this is a failed psyop on par with the swing revival of the 90s. To distract from the tumult of a society trying to bring justice to itself, the rich turned us, for once, toward the sea. “Go ride one of those,” said the carnival barkers—the same inventors of 24-hour news and the endless scroll—as they gestured away from protests to the waves.
So, join me in celebrating what is now a sideshow tent, a craze captured in time by radio waves: the Surf Song. This is why I love the Annivyrsaries. This is why I’ll see you in ‘73.
1984 has been called the greatest year in pop, and I think it might still be true. If 1974 was music’s fallow period, ten years later was its opposite. We danced in the dark beneath the killing moon and under purple rain—this was the year the critics and the people met in the Minneapolis streets.