I Wish They All Could Be Moscow Girls: “Back in the USSR” and “California Girls"

In the 1960s, the battle between American and Soviet ideals was not limited to the proxy-wars fought in Vietnam and Korea; it also took its form in music. Upon examining popular music produced at the time, we can begin to understand the cultural exchange of the American ideas of freedom and democracy and the Soviet ideas of collectivism and communism. Taken together, the lyrically similar Beatles’ 1965 song “Back in the USSR” and the Beach Boys’ 1963 song “California Girls,” reveal much about the differences between US culture and the culture in Eastern Europe in that decade. At the same time that “Back in the USSR” is a critique of American culture, it succeeds in invoking the same sense of tribe in its audience as in “California Girls” in the moments when it refers to women. These songs demonstrate that while there can be significant cultural differences between the US and the Soviet Union, there are cross-cultural similarities which cannot be ignored.

In the previous decade, the Beatles had already established themselves as unrivaled in their musical genius: a band with more reach than any other. But by the 1960s, they were not the only boy band that was popular. Indeed, pop-music sensation, the Beach Boys had their claim to fame in the US. Their music was the soundtrack to the counterculture of the 1960s.[1] The radical truth about the nature of society in the United States was brought to the surface by the political movements of the time. Many young adults grew disillusioned by American government and the lifestyle of their parents; they headed to the coasts in pursuit of the California lifestyle that was the subject of nearly every Beach Boys song.

The all-American Beach Boys’ and British Beatles songs are not only a dialogue with their audience. Their works are a dialogue between the musicians that write and perform them, and the cultural context in which they were written. The Beach Boys’ song “California Girls” quickly rose to the top of the charts when it was released on the album Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) in the summer of 1965. The song begins with an orchestral prelude which swings back and forth.[2] Finally, the downbeats get close together and Mike Love comes in on vocals, serenading listeners with his smooth voice. The song is slow and dreamy, with an energized chorus. It fits into the classic surf-rock sound of the Beach Boys’ other works.

Lyrically, the song mentions several different places in the US and describes the girls that might live there:

[Verse 1: Mike Love] Well, East coast girls are hip I really dig those styles they wear And the Southern girls with the way they talk They knock me out when I'm down there The Midwest farmer's daughters really make you feel alright And the Northern girls with the way they kiss They keep their boyfriends warm at night

These lyrics invoke a sense of belonging in audience members. Americans could bond over their love for women, no matter what part of the country they came from. While all of the girls have their distinguishing features, they are all special in their unique ways. In the album’s liner notes, Wilson wrote: “…I was sitting in my apartment, wondering how to write a song about girls, because I love girls. I mean, everybody loves girls…I got the notion, and I wrote California Girls”.[3] Perhaps the song also made women from different places feel seen too. On the surface, this is a ditsy, silly song in which Brian Wilson and Mike Love appreciate the women around them.

The mood could not be more different in the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR”. While both songs open with an instrumental prelude, the Beatles’ prelude is hyperbolized. As music scholar Allan W. Pollak describes, “the track leads in with a few seconds of jet plane noise and a stray lead guitar lick. We then have four measures of pounding on the V chord with increasing insistence that it be resolved”.[4] The Beatles’ song is intended to be dramatically more fast-paced and aggressive than the sluggish and swingy downbeats of “California Girls.” As Pollack puts it, the song is “Right-on, Hard-edged Rock-n-Roll Music,” a return from the dreamland of Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery tour.[5] Paul comes in with crisp vocals, and they hit hard. “Flew in from Miami Beach B.O.A.C. /Didn't get to bed last night” he sings, emphasizing the downbeats of the lead guitar.[6] In this moment, he is the antithesis of the gentle, warm, and inviting Mike Love. From the outset of the song, The Beatles create and cold and rigid image with their instrumentation and vocals. This is an image that perfectly encapsulates the way the USSR was perceived in the US: too much government regulation and citizens who were not free. The Beatles create an over exaggerated, grotesque image of the USSR. They mock the Beach Boys’ perfect and picturesque image of America.

The bridge of the Beatles’ song is a USSR version of what Mike Love wrote about the women in the US.

[Bridge: Paul McCartney]

Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out

They leave the West behind

And Moscow girls make me sing and shout

That Georgia’s always on my mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mind

Oh, come on![7]

Indeed, the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR” was written as a parody of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” and Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA” (Prof. Upton, Lecture). When the Beatles finally caught a break in their busy schedule, they returned to India in February 1968 and did some songwriting with Maharishi Yogi. Other musicians joined them at the retreat, including the Beach Boys’ Mike Love (Prof. Upton Lecture). Mike Love recalls a conversation he had with Paul McCartney about the song over breakfast one morning:

“I was sitting at the breakfast table and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar and he was playing ‘Back In The USSR’, and I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, the Ukraine and Georgia.… I think it was light-hearted and humorous of them to do a take on the Beach Boys[8]”.

The song is a cheeky spoof. It is as if the Beatles thought: if they can make America seem so great and wonderful, watch us do the same with the USSR. The Beatles used Chuck Berry’s intensely American sound and the Beach Boys’ lyrics to be intensely enthusiastic about the USSR (Prof. Upton, Lecture). By creating a parody of “California Girls,” the Beatles succeeded in showing that the Beach Boys’ intense enthusiasm about American culture was ridiculous and even laughable in-light of all that was going on in the country at the time.

Beyond invoking a sense of tribe in their prospective audiences on the very surface level in reference to different well-known locations, both songs’ lyrics objectify women. As Mike Love sings in “California Girls,” “I wish they all could be California girls/The west coast has the sunshine/And the girls all get so tanned....I been all around this great big world/And I seen all kinds of girls....Yeah, but I couldn't wait to get back in the States/Back to the cutest girls in the world”.[9] The “wish” for all girls to be “California girls”—“tanned” and “cute”—reflects the cultural expectations for how women had to fit an outdoorsy and young image to accentuate the ideal male surfer life. He especially likes California girls because of the way they look. This song is blatantly misogynistic. It does not describe women as anything more than a pretty face and a good body. The same can be said about verse three of the Beatles song. Paul sings “Oh show me round your snow-peaked mountains way down south/Take me to your daddy’s farm/Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out/Come and keep your comrade warm”.[10] Women are yet again described for their bodies and as objects for the use of men. While these songs reflect cross-cultural unity, it is a shame that the bond had to be forged through the objectification of women in both works.

Ultimately, the objectification of women in both songs begs the question of how great either culture really is. In Tommy O’Callaghan’s analysis of the cultural impact of the Beatles for Russia Beyond, he describes the song as a “parody that became a peace offering”. [11] At the expense of women, the Beatles highlight cross-cultural similarities between the US and the USSR. They suggest that Soviet girls are even better than American girls. But, as the Beatles allude to, it was not all sunshine and rainbows in the US. “The 1960s were one of the most tumultuous and divisive decades…marked by the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and antiwar protests”.[12] The notion of American exceptionalism crumbled as American citizens protested the violent and overzealous Vietnam war. Women and Black people made valiant strides to demand institutional rights. Many young people grew disillusioned with the society in which they were raised. The anti-war movement, black power movement, and women’s rights movements of the time demonstrated how American democracy was failing its own people. The New Left was the voice of all of the fissures in post-war America that had been swept under the rug for the past two decades.

Just as the US was facing political upheaval at the time, so was the USSR. In 1965, leader Nikita Khrushchev came to power and brought hope by implementing policies which reformed the Stalinist regime. Unfortunately, Khrushchev was “ousted” from power in 1968, the year the Beatles recorded the song, and he was quickly replaced by Brezhnev who invaded Czechoslovakia and brought it under collective control of the USSR.[13] Rock music like the Beatles was outlawed in the USSR because it was seen as a form of American propaganda. Nonetheless, Soviet fans “heard [the song] through tapes smuggled into the country”.[14] Similarly, the song was seen as Soviet propaganda by American conservatives who feared the spread of communism. According to the Beatles Bible, “the song caused an anti-Beatles conservative backlash in America…which charged the group with encouraging communism”. [15] While the song may have been viewed as a communist threat in the US, it simultaneously represented American freedom of expression in the USSR. Artistic freedom of expression was something that Americans took pride in. That said, the reality of artistic freedom in America is more nuanced.

It is critical to notice that, at the time, and even today, Black people and women cannot fully express themselves to the extent which white men like the Beatles and Beach Boys could in the US. The societal narrative of women as sex objects seems to have infiltrated the work of both the Beatles and the Beach Boys, cultural figures who many argue represent the New Left. Their white, male privilege is overwhelming. For instance, if Chuck Berry, a Black rock and roll musician, sang about white women the way both bands did, he could have been lynched. If he dared criticize America like the Beatles, he probably would have been put on trial by HUAC. It seems overall that the allegedly free American culture and the ostensibly harsh and Communist USSR were not all that different. Just as the USSR enveloped satellite states under the iron curtain, the US was policing the world and its own people cruelly in the name of democracy.

Bibliography

“Back in the USSR,” Genius. (n.d.) Retrieved March 4 2021 from: https://genius.com/The-beatles-back-in-the-ussr-lyrics

“Back in the USSR,” The Beatles Bible (2008) Retrieved January 29, 2021 from https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/back-in-the-ussr/

“California Girls,” lyrics.com (n.d.) Retrieved March 4 2021 from: https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/35253526/Royal+Philharmonic+Orchestra/California+Girls

Mike Love qtd. In “Back in the USSR,” The Beatles Bible (2008) Retrieved January 29, 2021 from https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/back-in-the-ussr/

“Music Propels the Counterculture: The Evolution of the Beach Boys,” The American Century. (N.d.) Accessed 4 March 2021. Retrieved from: https://omeka.wlu.edu/americancentury/exhibits/show/beachboysbeatlesandhippies/conclusion

Pollack, Alan W. “Notes on Back in the USSR,” Soundscapes (1997). Retrieved March 4 2021 from http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/bitu.shtml

“The 1960s History,” History.com (n.d.). Retrieved March 4 2021 from https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/1960s-history

Tommy O’Callaghan “The Beatles’ ‘Back in the USSR,’: The parody that became a peace offering” Russia Beyond(2018). Retrieved March 4 2021 from https://www.rbth.com/arts/329455-the-story-of-the-beatles-back-in-ussr

Wilson, Brian qtd. In “California Girls, the Beach Boys,” Genius. (n.d.) Retrieved March 4 2021 from: https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/35253526/Royal+Philharmonic+Orchestra/California+Girls

[1]

[1] “Music Propels the Counterculture: The Evolution of the Beach Boys,” The American Century. (N.d.) Accessed 4 March 2021. Retrieved from: https://omeka.wlu.edu/americancentury/exhibits/show/beachboysbeatlesandhippies/conclusion [2] “California Girls,” lyrics.com (n.d.) Retrieved March 4 2021 from: https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/35253526/Royal+Philharmonic+Orchestra/California+Girls [3] Wilson, Brian qtd. In “California Girls, the Beach Boys,” Genius. (n.d.) Retrieved March 4 2021 from: https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/35253526/Royal+Philharmonic+Orchestra/California+Girls [4] Pollack, Alan W. “Notes on Back in the USSR,” Soundscapes (1997). Retrieved March 4 2021 from http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/bitu.shtml [5] See note 4 above. [6] “Back in the USSR,” Genius. (n.d.) Retrieved March 4 2021 from: https://g enius.com/The-beatles-back-in-the-ussr-lyrics [7] See note 6 above. [8] Mike Love qtd. In “Back in the USSR,” The Beatles Bible (2008) Retrieved January 29, 2021 from https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/back-in-the-ussr/ [9] “California Girls,” lyrics.com (n.d.) Retrieved March 4 2021 from: https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/35253526/Royal+Philharmonic+Orchestra/California+Girls [10] “Back in the USSR,” Genius. (n.d.) Retrieved March 4 2021 from: https://g enius.com/The-beatles-back-in-the-ussr-lyrics [11] Tommy O’Callaghan “The Beatles’ ‘Back in the USSR,’: The parody that became a peace offering” Russia Beyond (2018). Retrieved March 4 2021 from https://www.rbth.com/arts/329455-the-story-of-the-beatles-back-in-ussr [12] “The 1960s History,” History.com (n.d.). Retrieved March 4 2021 from https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/1960s-history [13] “Back in the USSR,” Genius. (n.d.) Retrieved March 4 2021 from: https://genius.com/The-beatles-back-in-the-ussr-lyrics [14] “Back in the USSR,” The Beatles Bible (2008) Retrieved January 29, 2021 from https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/back-in-the-ussr/ [15] See note 12 above.