The Crystals - He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)
He hit me and I knew he loved me.
If he didn't care for me,
I could have never made him mad,
But he hit me and I was glad.
Who can say what strange flight of fancy led the great husband and wife songwriting team, Gerry Goffin and Carole King down this particular rabbit trail? Hearing the song for the first time, like discovering a sonnet by Shakespeare devoted to lighting farts, the dissonance between form and content is mind-bogglingly absurd. According to the CD's liner notes, the song was "withdrawn by Spector before it reached the top 100 because he felt the lyrics were too sensitive for pop radio." It took some thirty-five years and a courageous young woman named Britney Spears to overcome this prejudice with her debut single "Hit Me Baby One More Time."
Comments
I've had a severe distaste for this track ever since I picked up the Back to Mono box set. In Gillian Gaar's "She's a Rebel", Barbara Alston is quoted as saying that she despised this song from the get-go. I can understand creepy Phil Spector being involved with such a song, but Carole King? Was America this backwards in the early '60s?