Vacation

Go-Go's bass player Kathy Valentine wrote this song in 1980 when she was a member of a Los Angeles band called The Textones. Kathy grew up in Austin, Texas, and on a trip back to the city, met a dreamy boy named Billy who sang in a band called Boy Problems. On the flight back to LA, she wrote these lines on a napkin: Now that I'm away, I wish I'd stayed Tomorrow's a day of mine you won't be in "The short romance had softened me, and the words, written from true-life longing, resonated forever," she wrote in her memoir, All I Ever Wanted. Valentine finished the song and recorded it with The Textones, which were comprised of two guys and two girls. Their version was released in the UK as the B-side of their first single, song written by Tom Petty called "I Can't Fight It." The Textones went to England to promote the single, but it went nowhere. Valentine left the group and got recruited into The Go-Go's, an all-girl band that was selling out shows at places like the Whiskey A Go Go. When The Go-Go's recorded their second album, Valentine reworked the song with the group's guitarists, Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey. In a Songfacts interview with Wiedlin, she said, "We really loved the song, but it didn't really have a chorus, so Charlotte and I ended up working with Kathy a little bit more on the song, and sort of Go-Go-fying it, basically adding the chorus. But that storyline was one about having a summer romance, thinking that it was all just for fun and games, and then later realizing that you are actually in love."

The original Textones version of this song runs just 1:45 and starts with the line, "I've thought a lot of things about you." Jane Wiedlin came up with the idea of changing that line to "Can't seem to get my mind off of you."

The guy who inspired this song knows it is about him. When Songfacts asked Kathy Valentine if she has seen him since, she replied: "A few times, yes, and he knows I wrote about him in the book!"