"The Beach Boys Medley" is a single containing amedley of popularBeach Boys songs from the 1960s, edited byJohn Palladino. Released in mid-1981, it capitalized on a medley craze begun by theStars on 45 medleys. "The Beach Boys Medley" reached number 12 on theBillboard Hot 100,[1] becoming the band's highest-charting hit in the United States in over five years. The single peaked at number 8 on the Cash Box sales chart. It also reached number 4 in New Zealand.[2] "The Beach Boys Medley" was first released on an album a year later in 1982 onSunshine Dream.
A Beach Boys medley entitled "Surf's Up", produced by South Florida musicians and engineer Chuck Kirkpatrick, was created months before the Palladino-produced medley and was actually submitted to Rupert Perry, head of A & R at Capitol (Kirkpatrick had been a Capitol artist himself in the late 70's). Perry's response was, "If we wanted to release a Beach Boys medley, we would simply use the original masters which we own". Kirkpatrick's medley began receiving heavy airplay on a Miami FM station, "Love 94", and that led to local and national TV coverage by "PM Magazine". Taking notice, Capitol quickly produced their own medley and launched a heavy promotional campaign entitled "Nothing is Better Than The Real Thing - The Beach Boys Medley on Capitol Records", effectively tanking Kirkpatrick's. The difference and uniqueness was that Kirkpatrick played every instrument and sang every vocal part himself, while Capitol's medley was simply tape edits of previous Beach Boys' studio masters. The similarity was in the sequencing of the songs in the two medleys - Capitol using very much the same as Kirkpatrick's.
