"Palisades Park"

I listened to 15 Big Ones (and Love You) last week because it was the fiftieth anniversary of its release (on 5 July 1976), and I noticed a couple points in "Palisades Park."  I wanted to compare the Beach Boys' version to the original by Freddy Cannon before writing about it, though, and it took me a while to track down my copy of Cannon's recording.

The lines "You never know how great a kiss can feel / Until you stop at the top of a Ferris wheel" contain the highest pitches in the lead vocal (Es), giving a sense of the height of "at the top."

Cannon's version is a half step higher (Ab major), so the pitches there are Fs, but the feeling is the same.  Unless I'm mistaken, the lyric is a bit different, though:  "You'll never know how great a kiss can feel / When you stop at the top of a Ferris wheel."

In the line "And around like a merry-go-round," "around" is sung with a melisma (D E D), giving a slight sense of this movement.  This articulation isn't in Cannon's version.