On Nov. 5, 1988, The Beach Boys did something few bands ever manage: they returned to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 more than two decades after their last No. 1.
That week, “Kokomo” knocked Phil Collins’ “Groovy Kind of Love” out of the No. 1 spot. It was The Beach Boys’ first chart-topper since “Good Vibrations” in December 1966, a gap of about 22 years. At the time, it was the longest stretch between No. 1 hits in the chart’s history, a record that stood until Cher’s “Believe” in 1999, according to Songfacts.
The band had come a long way from its start in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. Brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson formed the group with their cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. Most of them were still teenagers; Carl was only 14 or 15, and Love, at 20, was the oldest. Hits like “I Get Around” and “Help Me Rhonda” followed in the mid-’60s.
By 1988, however, the hits had dried up, and Dennis Wilson had died in 1983. Then came Cocktail, the Tom Cruise movie about a bartender in Jamaica. “Kokomo” played during a beach scene, and the song took off.
Surprisingly, Brian Wilson, the band’s longtime creative leader, had no part in it. “Kokomo” was written by Mike Love, Terry Melcher, who also produced it, John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, and Scott McKenzie, the singer behind “San Francisco.” Phillips came up with the title and the idea of a dreamy island off the Florida Keys. Kokomo isn’t a real place, though bars and resorts later borrowed the name.
The music video featured actor John Stamos, a friend of the band, playing congas and steel drums. A few weeks after the song hit No. 1, the band, with Brian, performed it on Stamos’ sitcom Full House.
“Kokomo” spent one week at the top before The Escape Club’s “Wild, Wild West” replaced it. It remains The Beach Boys’ last No. 1.
Brian Wilson died in June 2025, and Carl Wilson died in 1998. Thirty-eight years later, the song that brought them back is still a summertime staple.