Oh What She Does To Me

“Don’t Worry Baby,” The Beach Boys

Brian Wilson penned this 1964 tune to answer last week’s girl-go-get-him cut for the ages, “Be My Baby.”  Strangely though, rich yet worried, “Don’t Worry Baby” has little of the simmering aggression that characterized the song for which it was inspired.  Instead, it is reticent and passive, reluctant and even humbled at times, all while tendering a provocative take on the expected sugary ballad.  

“Don’t Worry Baby” captures both the contents that haunted many teen boys’ thoughts—racing cars, the pressures of fitting in with the cool crowd, learning how to be a man in the 1960s—and the kind of love that can withstand it all.  With refreshing honesty, the boy confides: “I guess I should’ve kept my mouth shut when I started to brag about my car | But I can’t back down now because I pushed the other guys too far.”  This act of confessing to his girlfriend cleanses the boy of his fears.  For every pain the boy must endure, the antidote is his sweetheart.  With each problem he encounters, she is there; Wilson spills, “And she says don’t worry baby…Everything will turn out alright.” 

Mike Love often sang the high parts, but here Wilson’s own falsetto is lead, winding above the lush harmonies.  From the outset, even the most troubled lyrics are juxtaposed by a sunny surf-sound accompaniment.  This can serve to undermine the seriousness of the subject matter after the first listen.  However, after more dedicated plays of this track, the contrast between form and content is revealed to delectably heighten the tension within the song.

In the lyrics, a boy speaks plainly to his girlfriend.  In “Be My Baby” there was a girl (Ronnie Bennett) singing to a boy, and she wanted him to be hers.  Here, the gender of the singer changes, but not that of “Baby.”  Even though the male is the voice of the recording, the girl seems to be the one who is in control, the one who the song is about.  The title, “Don’t Worry Baby,” is reflexive, for it is the boy who is “Baby,” not the girl he is singing to—it is she in whom he seeks solace.  Significantly, though, the boy already has won the girl; he is not in the heat of pursuit as in “Be My Baby.”  Or, as was the case in “Be My Baby,” perhaps he was the one who was pursued?