By the time Bikini Beach hit stores, the surf music fad had already begun its decline and Beatlemania was in full swing. As a result, the compositions in this album seem to have been written with more of a commercial objective - blending surf music with other genres in order to appeal to a wider audience. Consequently, Gary Usher and Roger Christian are nowhere to be found on this release (the exception being two Pyramids numbers in the film and not included here). With Jule Styne and Guy Hemric stepping in to fill the void, a new style of the music emerged resulting in 12 watered-down teen rock numbers resembling that of the mid-60s Elvis films.

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As precedented by her first two ‘Beach Party’ albums, the energetic title song is followed by a slow ballad, this time ‘Because You’re You.’ ‘Love’s A Secret Weapon’ fails to go anywhere while the dreamy ‘This Time It’s Love’ sounds like it was written in the late ’50s. Both ‘How About That’ and ‘Happy Feeling’ also feel contrived. While side one carries only the songs from the film, side two switches direction by covering as many dances as possible. Based on the Cameo-Parkway dances crazes, ‘The Clive,’ ‘Blame It on the Bossa Nova,’ ‘Jamaican Ska’ ‘Wah-Watusi’ and ‘Let’s Twist Again’ make up most of the material on the second side. The record concludes with ‘Monkeys Uncle’ from the sequel of Walt Disney's 1964 film 'Merlin Jones' by the same name. With backing by the Beach Boys (un-credited in this instance) and the Sherman Brothers’ signature lyrics, it is easily the strongest track on the album.

 

Despite its promising name, Bikini Beach is not as cheery and fun-filled as the first two Beach Party releases. Instead, the album is more of a mish-mash of substandard material assembled with little or no cohesion. The outcome is perhaps the weakest album from everyone’s favorite Disney brunette.