“Girls” by Beastie Boys

"Girls" is the shortest song on Beastie Boys' 1986 debut Licensed to Ill, clocking in at a little over two minutes, and it went out in 1987 as the album's seventh and final single. It's a bratty joke, and nobody in the room can keep a straight face. Rick Rubin produced it with the band co-producing and Steve Ett engineering, and he wrote the music; Ad-Rock shares the lyric credit with him.

The backing is almost nothing: a drum machine and a simple, sing-song melody picked out on an electronic keyboard. Over it, Ad-Rock lays out his fixation with women and spins a little shaggy-dog story: a girl from two years back who liked MCA, MCA waving him through, a walk by the bay, a flat rejection, then her moving far away and turning up back in town with her eye on Mike D. Mike D and MCA supply wordless doo-wop backing vocals and keep cracking up at the lyrics and at Ad-Rock's hammy delivery, and you can hear the giggles on the record. It's filed under comedy hip-hop, and it wears the tag without apology.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.