Girls! Girls! Girls! (soundtrack)

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By the early 1960s, Elvis Presley’s soundtrack albums were selling far better than his regular studio records—Blue Hawaii, for instance, outsold Pot Luck with Elvis by a factor of ten. This pushed him deeper into a lightweight formula of scenic backdrops and crowds of women, a strategy that ultimately hurt his career. Still, Presley never stopped recording non-movie singles, and he wasn’t completely trapped in film music. Even as popular music underwent a major transformation, Presley became somewhat lost in Hollywood, yet he still ranked as the second most-charted act on Billboard’s pop chart for the entire 1960s.

The sessions for this soundtrack took place in March, with sixteen songs recorded and thirteen making the final album. Because of a falling-out with Colonel Tom Parker, the songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller could only contribute material they had already written for other artists. The title track, for example, had been a hit for The Coasters in 1961 before being adapted for Presley’s movie.

In October 1962, one month before the soundtrack LP came out, the single “Return to Sender” backed with “Where Do You Come From” was released. “Return to Sender” reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, while its B-side peaked at number 99 on its own. Three songs performed onscreen by actress Stella Stevens—“Never Let Me Go,” “The Nearness of You,” and “Baby, Baby, Baby”—were actually lip-synced to the voice of Gilda Maiken and have never been commercially released. The track “The Walls Have Ears,” also known as “Vent hobn oyern,” references a Yiddish saying that warns someone is always listening.