The Song of the Day, silly as it might be, explains a lot about the prudish sexual attitudes of the United States in 1960, the year the song debuted.
The world got its first glimpse of the bikini in Paris on July 5th, 1946, but it would take a couple of decades before it was a common site on America’s beaches.
French designer Louis Reard created the bikini using 30 inches of material, but when he was ready to introduce it at a poolside fashion show models were too intimidated to wear it. He found Michelle Bernardini, a 19-year-old dancer at a nude club, willing and able.
He got the idea for the name because the U.S. had been doing atomic bomb testing on the Bikini Atoll a few days before his show. He thought his event was “as momentous as the new bomb.”
Women, at the beginning of the 20th century, were fully dressed when going to the beach. They slowly began peeling off the layers and by the 1940s some women were wearing two-piece suits, but they never showed the naval.
The sexual revolution of the 1960s opened the dressing room for bikinis in the U.S. Time magazine, in a 1967 story, said 65 percent of young people wear them. They have never lost their popularity.
Our Song of the Day shows what the mindset was in 1960. The woman in the song is wearing a bikini for the first time and is afraid to come out of the locker, then out in the open and finally out of the water.
The song was a million-seller for Bryan Hyland, and it reached number one in August 1960 on the Billboard 100 chart. The song also reached number one in France and Germany.
Song of the Day is created by Sheldon Zoldan, and produced by Pam James for WGCU. To receive the Song of the Day in your inbox every day, email shzoldan@comcast.net with the subject line ADD ME TO SOTD.
