The long history of pop’s most controversial recurring lyric: “He hit me and it felt like a kiss”
The Crystals were the defining American girl group of the early 1960s, wheeling out bubble-gum hits that spoke to romantic sensibilities at the time, the poppy soundtrack to sickly sweet high-school dances. But in 1962, they released a commercial dud which wheezed its way to the 114th spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Airplay was quietly pulled, and listeners were appalled. ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)’ was too sharp a stylistic turn, setting out a horrific cycle of domestic abuse in only nine words. As a result, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss” was a lyric destined to disappear into the ether. Instead, it formed the undercurrent of challenging contemporary pop tracks conceived by the likes of Amy Winehouse and Lana Del Rey, themselves the modern-day guardians of contentious songwriting about unhealthy relationships.
The line itself cannot be interpreted as shorthand for anything. There’s no metaphor or irony, just the tragic logic of: “He hit me, and I knew he loved me / If he didn’t care for me / I could have never made him mad / But he hit me, and I was glad.” Inspired by actual events, it’s searingly true to the cycle of abuse. Co-written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, it was written for The Crystals after they discovered their babysitter, singer Little Eva Boyd, was being abused by her boyfriend. When they asked Boyd, a talented musician they had written ‘The Loco-Motion’ for, why she’d stand for that, she replied earnestly. She thought his actions meant he cared.
Phil Spector’s hand in the track’s production makes it somehow even more uncomfortable, given the abuse Ronnie Spector endured throughout their marriage. But before a language was even constructed around the many forms of abuse, the writers seemed to understand them. Crucially, in that the female protagonist in the song doesn’t leave, and beyond that, isn’t given a triumphant moment of realisation more associated with ’60s lovesongs. Unlike popular break-up tracks at the time, such as Kitty Wells’ ‘Release Me (and Let Me Love Again)’ and Brenda Lee’s ‘I’m Sorry’, there’s never a moment of clarity.
This narrative is more sympathetic to the victim than it seems because it announces their thoughts without judgment or explanation. If it was more delicately put, the line might have challenged listeners’ perceptions that people were free to leave such relationships, which would have been a seismic achievement in the early ’60s. As Women’s Aid write: “We need to stop blaming survivors for staying and start supporting them to enable them to leave,” and we need to do this not only by understanding the many barriers that stand in the way of that but ultimately by “holding abusers solely accountable for their behaviour”. The refusal to do so within the song only adds to its accuracy.
The song’s harshest critics often point out the flaws in the woman’s thinking instead of questioning what might have conditioned her to interpret violence as love in the first place, willfully misinterpreting it as glamorising domestic violence. Modern critics of Lana Del Rey have done much the same. When she referenced the song in ‘Ultraviolence’ with the lyric, “I can hear sirens, sirens / He hit me and it felt like a kiss / I can hear violins, violins / Give me all of that ultraviolence,” she was hounded for it so much she apologised before singing the lyric during her Hyde Park show.
It’s symptomatic of the cultural tendency to take exploration as an endorsement. Del Rey’s discography often treads that uneasy balance because she doesn’t shy away from the agony and chaos of toxic relationships. By nature, it’s uncomfortable, but it needs to be, and it practically made her the patron saint of emotional ugliness – an ugliness that doesn’t go away if you ignore it. In her infamous ‘Question for the culture‘ Instagram post, she wrote: “I’m fed up with female writers and alt singers saying that I glamorise abuse when in reality I’m just a glamorous person singing about the realities of what we are all now seeing are very prevalent emotionally abusive relationships all around the world.”
Potentially, the only woman capable of matching the intensity of Del Rey’s lyrics was Amy Winehouse, who shared her love of the divisive lyrics. Winehouse was once interviewed about her love of the song because she often named it a key inspiration for writing Back to Black. “‘He hit me, and it felt like a kiss, like, that’s messed up,” she said. “There’s only a certain percentage of people that would understand what that’s about; most people would be like: ‘How dare you promote domestic violence,’ but to me, I’m like: ‘I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean’.”
Underneath a video of the interview posted on TikTok, Del Rey echoed her thought: “I know what you mean, I know exactly what you mean.” Whether she was amplifying Winehouse’s words or agreeing with her isn’t the point. The fact is that a pop hit from the ’60s inspired their particular lyricism. Despite being banned from the radio and the regret the writers expressed afterwards, it’s a surviving artefact of emotional writing that’s so raw that it’s painful and is often as misunderstood as it was when it was released. When Hole covered it on MTV Unplugged, Courtney Love declared it “a really sick song”, quipping: “Nice feminist anthem!”
But the fact she was aware of the low-performing song highlights its importance. ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)’ should have languished in obscurity, but it inspired similarly brave artists to reckon with their own ideas of what unhealthy relationships genuinely look like.
For help, advice or more information regarding domestic violence in the UK, visit the Refuge website. In the US, visit The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
