September Gurls

Chilton wrote it alone, and Stephens said he brought it in finished. The title nods to the Beach Boys' California Girls. Biographer Holly George-Warren traces it to women in Chilton's life with September birthdays, among them his former wife, and Hummel remembered Chilton seeing several women at once. Stephens has explained that the line about Butch refers to a comic-book dog: the singer followed her around like a puppy.

It was produced by John Fry and the band at Ardent's Madison Avenue studio and cut live on the floor, never going past three takes. Chilton played the main rhythm guitar and his Rickenbacker 12-string, with an overdubbed mando-guitar on the high harmony line, over Hummel's Fender Precision bass and Stephens's drums. Fry told Sound On Sound it was the only song recorded in that session, and that he heard at once that it would work on radio. American Songwriter says it was the last song recorded for Radio City.

After

Issued as a single in 1974 with Mod Lang on the B-side, it did not chart. Michael Chabon later called it "the greatest number-one song that never charted," and Ken Barnes, in Rolling Stone, a virtually perfect pop number. Chilton was cooler: he said it still did not grab him, and that its structure worked better than its words.

It is one of Big Star's most played songs, logged 35 times on setlist.fm. It opened the 1974 WLIR session, and was played at the 1993 reunion, the filmed 1994 Memphis homecoming and has been a staple of the Quintet's Radio City anniversary shows. The Bangles' 1986 cover earned Chilton enough to buy his first new car since the Box Tops, and Katy Perry spelled California Gurls with a u as a tribute to him. The upload in the hypersongs web is an official lyric video carrying the Radio City studio version.