Annette Funicello: Beach Party Tonight
[purchase]
Most folks over the age of forty know that popular girl Annette parlayed her stint on the Mickey Mouse Club into a career in film. Fewer may realize just how many of Annette's own songs from those films, plus others designed to capture the same beach party playfulness, went on to hit the charts.
This 1963 song is typical: a fast-paced romp designed to prioritize party atmosphere and veiled bathing suit dreams over any particular vocal loveliness, its jangly surf guitar and tom toms punctuated by a Benny Hill sax and an angelic open-mouthed crowd chorus. It goes out tonight to all our dreams of summer, and to a generation of pubescent baby boomers still lusting after the Annettes of their youth.