Why Does This Exist?: "All Dressed Up For School" by the Beach Boys

Hand-colored plate from G.B. Sowerby's Thesaurus Conchyliorum, 1847

The Beach Boys released four albums in 1964, and there were still some songs recorded that year that didn't see the light of day until years later. One of these songs is "All Dressed Up for School" a Brian Wilson tune that is excellent in some ways but also begs the question, "Why does this exist?" "All Dressed Up for School" is not the most creepy, child-molestery Beach Boys song - that distinction goes to "Hey Little Tomboy", a song Brian Wilson wrote in 1974. It is a little disturbing, though, that Brian Wilson was writing the same kind of song ten years earlier at the age of 22. "All Dressed Up for School" is about seeing the neighborhood tomboy in her girly school clothes for the first time. The theme itself isn't overtly salacious (unlike the outright disturbing "Hey Little Tomboy"), but the lyrics go a little too far.

The chorus of "Dressed up for school - Ooooh what a turn-on" answers the question of why the song was not cleared for release, but you have to wonder what Brian Wilson was thinking. It's unfortunate too, because the song has some interesting musical ideas in it - ones that Wilson would reuse later in songs like "Heroes and Villians" and "I Just Got My Pay". You've got to love that a capella intro.

"All Dressed Up For School" by the Beach Boys