“Short Shorts” is a song written and performed by Tom Austin, Bill Crandell, Bill Dalton, and Bob Gaudio, members of The Royal Teens. The song became an anthem of the late 1950s, epitomizing the era’s youth culture and fashion. It reached #2 on the U.S. R&B chart and #3 on the U.S. pop chart in 1958. The group originally released the track on the small New York label Power Records in 1957.
The term “short shorts” in the song referred specifically to very short cutoff jeans as worn by teenage girls. The term appears to have originated with Bob Gaudio and Tom Austin. According to the group, they coined the term in 1957, and hit on using it as a song theme and title that summer when they saw two girls in cutoffs leaving a local teen spot.
“We were practicing one night at my house, and one guy started putting some notes together,” Dalton explained in an interview with Newsweek. “Another guy picked it up and added some more. Before we knew it we had a tune. During the next three weeks we added and changed and polished until we had it the way we wanted it. Later, the four of us were riding down the street in Bergenfield ... It was a warm day and we saw this girl in shorts walking down the street. That gave us the idea for the lyrics.”
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