Jerry Fuller's "Young Girl": A Sweet Spot Song Between Romance and Out of Line Desire?

Alex Traub posted on the New York Times “Jerry Fuller, Songwriter of ‘Young Girl’ and ‘Travelin’ Man,’ Is Dead at 85” (Aug. 16, 2024). Interestingly, the subtitle of the post related that Fuller: “[...] found a musical sweet spot between romance and “out of line” desire [...]”

In the piece, Traub wrote that Fuller wrote songs “about lustful desire”, which provided a soundtrack for the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Traub wrote:

Jerry Fuller, [was] a songwriter who helped give the sexual revolution a Top 40 soundtrack [...]

He specialized in love songs, and in songs about lustful desire that sounded like love songs.

Traub related that while working as a music producer at Columbia Records, Fuller saw Gary Puckett perform at a bowling alley. Consequently, Fuller signed Gary Puckett and the Union Gap to Columbia Records. Subsequently, Fuller produced four singles for the American pop rock band, which had a combined sales of over a million copies; however, unsurprisingly, the single that had the most “staying power” was “Young Girl”. Fuller not only produced “Young Girl”, but he wrote the song as well. Traub wrote:

[Fuller] he oversaw the rise to fame of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.

[...] as a producer for Columbia Records, Mr. Fuller was charged with finding new talent, and he succeeded with Mr. Puckett, whom he came across performing in a San Diego bowling alley [...] he offered to sign Mr. Puckett to Columbia that night.

From the end of 1967 to the end of 1968, Mr. Fuller produced four singles that sold a million or more copies for the band: “Woman, Woman” and three songs he himself wrote — “Young Girl,” “Lady Willpower” and “Over You.”

But none of those songs had the staying power of “Young Girl.”

The “out of line” desire related in the subtitle must be in reference to “Young Girl” (1968). Here’s Traub’s synopsis of the “Young Girl” 

The song tells the story of an older man realizing, in the midst of an intensifying flirtation, that he is with an underage girl. She is “a baby in disguise” — with “perfume and makeup,” she pretends to be “old enough to give me love.” He admonishes her, “Better run, girl,” worried that he will give in to an attraction that is “way out of line.”

In the chorus, the man sings that his love is “way out of line”, because the girl is “much too young”; therefore, he urges her to leave. 

[Chorus]

Young girl, get out of my mind

My love for you is way out of line

Better run, girl

You're much too young, girl

Listeners learned in verse 1 that the girl intentionally misled the man by strategically using the “charms of a woman” to keep her (under) age a secret. Consequently, after learning the truth, the older man was crushed. 

[Verse 1]

With all the charms of a woman

You've kept the secret of your youth

You led me to believe you're old enough

To give me love

And now it hurts to know the truth

Verse 2 revealed that the girl used “perfume and make-up” to keep the secret of her youth. And despite the fact that she knew that it was wrong to be alone with the man, she beckoned him with her young eyes. 

[Verse 2]

Beneath your perfume and make-up

You're just a baby in disguise

And though you know that it's wrong to be

Alone with me

That come-on look is in your eyes

One can infer from verse 3 why the young girl was attracted to the man. The man was powerful. In other words, the man possessed self-control (i.e., power over himself), which, no matter the age, is attractive; however, in the end, he confessed that the allure of a nymphet is powerful as well.

[Verse 3]

So hurry home to your mama

I'm sure she wonders where you are

Get out of here before I have the time

To change my mind

'Cause I'm afraid we'll go too far

Per Genius, Fuller shared that “Young Girl” is based on interactions he had with “14-year-olds [whom] look[ed] like 20-year-olds”. 

The song’s Wikipedia page shows that “Young Girl” “is a RIAA million-selling Gold-certified single” that “hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks”. Interestingly, CBS Records re-released the song in 1974 in the UK. Thereby, inducting the “Young Girl” into the "Hall of Fame Hits". 

However, Traub reported that years after its release “Young Girl” and Fuller “drew scorn for its upbeat treatment of a potentially criminal situation.” Consequently, the song “appeared on lists like “10 Songs That Just Aren’t OK Anymore” and [Paste magazine’s] “Secretly Horrifying Song Lyrics”. 

Yet, Traub related that the song drew praise from other listeners. For example, the song has over 19 million views on YouTube, accompanied by a number of “heartfelt tributes” in the comments section, like:

Met a guy in 1971 when I was 17, he was 26. This was our song. Married the guy in 1982. In two weeks we will celebrate our 34th anniversary.

Lastly, Traub shared that in 2018, Puckett and Fuller performed “Young Girl” at a venue near L.A., while the “crowd sang along with them, word for word, during their duet of “Young Girl,” and then gave them a standing ovation.” 

HBO Max's I LOVE LA: An 8th Grader's 28-Year-Old Married Boyfriend!

Here’s HBO Max’s synopsis for I Love LA:

A codependent, ambitious friend group navigates life and love in Los Angeles [...]

One of the members of the friend group is Alani Marcus (True Whitaker). Alani’s dad owns Darcy Avenue Productions, a television production company, where Alani is the VP of Creative Projects; however, Alani confessed that the title was fake and was given to her by her dad. 

On season 01 episode 02 (2025), while visiting her dad's production company, Alani accidentally walked into a meeting, where ideas for a new TV show, “kinda like a Gen Z Clueless” “about growing up in LA [...] set in a private school”, were being discussed. 

Alani stated that she went to Crossroads, a private school in LA, and that she had, “[...] so many amazing stories.” 

Alani was asked to share, “Any specific stories you have about [...] your first kiss in a convertible.” Consequently, Alani shared that when she was an (approximately 13-year-old) 8th-grade private school student, she had a 28-year-old boyfriend named Ryan. Apparently, Alani’s classmates knew about Ryan, because they were jealous of Alani, because Ryan was “so cute”. Not only did Ryan possess jealously inducing good looks, he had a wife and an exhausting child. However, to Alani’s dismay, her age-gap affair ended after Ryan’s wife discovered Alani’s texts, but to console Alani, her father gifted her a convertible. 

Alanis said, “I had my first boyfriend in eighth grade. His name was Ryan. He was so cute. Everyone was, like, so jealous. Yeah, so for our first date, we went to Katsuya Brentwood and got the Omakase [...] Ryan drove us. He was 28. He was a really good driver, but he was always so exhausted ‘cause of his newborn [...] but then his wife, like, found our texts and, like, made him move back to the east coast with her family. That was so sad, because he had to go. My dad got me a convertible! So that's, that's our convertible story, right there.”

Alani reminded me of Joshua Gaylor's Hummingbirds. In the novel, Mrs. Landry, the headmistress at Carmine-Casey, a prep school in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue and Central Park, shared with Mr. Binhammer, an English teacher, that she: “[...] got a call from a parent just two weeks ago giving her ninth-grade daughter permission to leave school when her boyfriend, who is a freshman in college, came to pick her up in his car.”

And the photo in the HBO Max app for I Love LA reminded me of the photo that was posted in the app for Pretty Little Liars: Summer School.

Lastly, critics gave I Love LA an 84% average Tomatometer score. And Nicholas Quah, a Vulture, opined in his post "I Love LA Is Young, Dumb, and Full of Fun" (Nov. 2, 2025) that the series is: "[...] a comedy that’s both precise and unhinged, absurdly funny yet emotionally true [...]" And per Rick Porter of the Hollywood Reporter (Nov. 20, 2025), I Love LA scored a renewal at HBO.

Famous Age-Gap Relationships: Brad Pitt (24) and Shalane McCall (15) | Pitt (26) and Juliette Lewis (16)

Here's IMDb's plot summary for Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (2019):

A faded television actor [Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio)] and his stunt double [Cliff Booth] strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry during the final years of Hollywood's Golden Age in 1969 Los Angeles.

In the film, the infamous Manson Family played a bloody role. In one scene, Cliff, who was played by 56-year-old Brad Pitt, gave Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), an underage teen member of the Manson Family, a ride to the Spahn Ranch, which was where the Manson Family resided. 

During the ride, possibly as a means of paying her fare, Pussycat asked Cliff , “Want me to suck your cock while driving?” However, Cliff refused Pussycat’s offer, because he didn’t believe that she was, at least, 18. Thereby, Cliff implied that if Pussycat were, at least, 18, he would have allowed her to perform oral while he drove. Interestingly, Pussycat implied that, in general, men didn’t bother to inquire about her age. Here's the dialogue:

Pussycat, “Want me to suck your cock while driving?”

Cliff Booth, “How old are you?”

Pussycat, “What?”

Cliff Booth, “How old are you?”

Pussycat, “Wow, man. First time anybody asked that in a long time.”

Cliff Booth, “What's the answer?”

Pussycat, “Okay, we gonna play kiddie games? Eighteen. Feel better?”

Cliff Booth, “You got some I.D., you know, like, a driver's license or something?”

Pussycat, “Are you joking?”

Cliff Booth, “No, I'm not. I need to see something official that verifies that you're eighteen, which you don't have because you're not.”

Subsequently, in response to having her oral offered refused, Pussycat stated that she was not “too young to fuck” Cliff but that Cliff was “too old to fuck” her. 

Pussycat, “Obviously. I’m not too young to fuck you. But you’re too old to fuck me.”

Shalane McCall and Brad Pitt

In a double bit of art imitating life, back in 1987, 24-year-old Brad Pitt played Randy and 15-year-old Shalane McCall played Charlotte on the prime time soap opera Dallas, where Randy and Charlotte had an age-gap relationship in which they shared an age-gap kiss and love scene. 

In terms of the kiss, Charlotte had Randy over to her house while her parents were away, but to Charlotte’s dismay, her mother and Ray, her step-father, returned home a day early and, consequently, witnessed Charlotte and Randy kissing passionately.

Later, a furious Ray caught Charlotte and Randy making out on the floor of the barn, but Charlotte didn’t understand why Ray was furious, because, as she opined, they were just “fooling around”. 

Reportedly, McCall shared with People magazine (1988) that filming romantic scenes with Pitt (i.e., a much older man) wasn’t awkward. McCall reportedly shared:

“I met him an hour before shooting. But it wasn't awkward. We were laughing and kidding around.”

However, Cherie Holton, McCall’s mother, reportedly related to People that her daughter felt some “anxiety” about kissing Pitt, because McCall was inexperienced. Cherie Holton shared:

“I can tell you there was anxiety on Chellain's part. It's not cool at her age to admit how inexperienced you are. She's only kissed about three boys in her life.”

In the W Magazine piece “Brad Pitt Tries to Find the Music in Each Day” (Jan. 9, 2023), Pitt reminisced over his age-gap love scene with McCall, which he referred to as “frolicking” “in the hay in a barn”.

W Magazine: What was your first love scene?

Pitt: It would have been in the show Dallas. I had to roll around in the hay in a barn. I don’t think I had a line. I was just rolling and frolicking.

Juliette Lewis and Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt and Shalane McCall had an age-gap affair off-screen as well. They openly dated for about a year until, at the age of 17, McCall married the musician Trent Valladares. And in 1989, 26-year-old Pitt started dating 16-year-old Juliette Lewis. 

Amanda (Juliette Lewis) "Too Young to Die?"

Pitt and Lewis met on the set of Too Young to Die?. In the film, Lewis played Amanda, a 15-year-old sex worker, who had an age-gap relationship with her pimp Billy (Pitt) and with Mike (≈ 34-year-old Michael O'Keefe). 

Rain (Juliette Lewis) "Husbands and Wives"

Interestingly, a year before Lewis and Pitt ended their age-gap affair, Lewis played Rain in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives (1992). In the film, Rain had an age-gap affair with Gabe Roth (Woody Allen), her Columbia College literature professor. And she had age-gap affairs with her friend’s father, her father's business partner, and with her analyst. 

Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) and Louis (Pitt) "Interview with the Vampire"

Lastly, a year after Pitt and Lewis broke up, Pitt played Louis in Interview with the Vampire (1994) In the film, Louis and Lestat (Tom Cruise) conspired to turn Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) into a vampire. While Lestat and Claudia’s relationship was platonic, Louis and Claudia's relationship was physical. So much so that in a scene, which is controversial to this day, Claudia (i.e., 11-year-old Dunst) passionately kissed Louis (i.e., ≈ 30-year-old Pitt). 

THE CUT and WALL STREET JOURNAL: How Young Is Too Young for a Crop Top?

Whitney Friedlander shared in The Cut piece “The Dread of Your Kid Asking to Wear a Crop Top” (N.D. 2025) that her 5-year-old daughter is “obsessed with crop tops”! Consequently, Friedlander is “queasy”, because, in her opinion, crop tops represent vulnerability. Friedlander:

For the past six months, ever since she saw a friend wear one at school, my daughter has been obsessed with crop tops. She’s 5.

The whole idea of my young daughter wearing a midriff-baring tee makes me queasy. It’s not the shirt itself but what it represents. ​​I cannot explain to her why simply wearing some trendy item of clothing makes her vulnerable in ways I never want her to understand 

Friedlander reiterated that her daughter desires to wear crop tops only because her daughter’s friends wear crop tops.  Friedlander:

And the reason she wants them is simple and glaringly unoriginal: Her friends get to do it.

Friedlander asked Lyndon and Carla, her “daughter’s crop-top-wearing friends’ parents”, about their daughter’s crop top, but they claimed that they had no idea how their daughter got a crop top. Really? Friedlander:

I asked my daughter’s crop-top-wearing friends’ parents, Lyndon and Carla, if they recall the impetus for what was clearly a life-changing moment for at least one person. Nope. In fact, they don’t even know how she ended up wearing it [...]

[...] In any case, they said they’d never knowingly put their kids in a crop top and wouldn’t have bought one — not that they’re judging parents who do.

In addition, Friedlander wrote that her daughter became attracted to crop tops because crop tops are a part of the zeitgeist, which hit a “fever pitch” at day camp, where her daughter observed “real teenagers [in crop tops] out in the wild”. [GIF deli]

Even asking my daughter how she learned the term “crop top” came with a blank stare. They’re simply an ingrained part of her world [...] They also hit a fever pitch this summer when she went to a day camp held at the neighborhood high school and saw real teenagers out in the wild.

Casey Lewis, the After School Substacker, shared with Friedlander that, in addition to crop tops, tube tops, and spaghetti-strap tops worn with midriff baring super-low rise jeans are popular with teens. Friedlander:

Casey Lewis, who runs the popular After School Substack, has watched a lot of back-to-school hauls the past few months from middle-school- to college-aged kids, which is the sweet spot for my daughter’s adulation. Lewis says “it’s all about tube tops and girls are wearing these super-low jeans and they’re showing their bellies and spaghetti-strap tops.”

Friedlander wrote that another reason her daughter wants to wear crop tops is that wearing crop tops gives her 5-year-old daughter the confidence to “hang with the cool teenager who was the assistant in her ballet class.”

Even though my daughter doesn’t own a phone or have her own app log-ins for mine, the abundance of content on TikTok or Snapchat inevitably trickles down. Somehow she instinctively knows what kind of wardrobe choices will make her feel like she can hang with the cool teenager who was the assistant in her ballet class.

Friedlander related that at a sleepover, matching crop tops were distributed by a parent to schoolgirls, and that “a kid [was seen] wearing one that said “Little Devil.” Friedlander:

One of the Reddit posters I reached out to said her daughter was given one at a sleepover by a friend’s mom who’d bought all the kids matching tops.

In my defense, the crop tops don’t always make it easy for us to take their side. My friend Cybil [...] has no qualms with most crop tops but even admitted to giving the side-eye to a kid wearing one that said “Little Devil.”

Unlike Lyndon and Carla, Friedlander openly condones (pre) tween crop tops; however, Friedlander bought her daughter some camisoles to be worn under her crop tops, which will be promptly restyled by her daughter on the school bus and/or at sleepovers. Friedlander:

In either case, I bought my daughter some camisoles to wear under her shirts. Let’s see if she keeps them on at school.

[However] [s]he’s already figured out the time-honored tradition of restyling her outfit once she jumps on the school bus or goes to a friend’s house.

Dear Hannah Prep

Back in 2023, Rory Satran asked on The Wall Street Journal “How Young Is Too Young for a Crop Top?” (Oct. 27, 2023) Before attempting to answer the question, Satran wrote that Dear Hannah Prep, a Dallas-based boutique, stocks “[...] crop tops. Lots and lots of crop tops” for “mini Swifties and Alabama sorority girls-to-be”. Satran wrote:

For mini Swifties and Alabama sorority girls-to-be, the Dallas boutique Dear Hannah Prep [...] is chock-full of everything a tween girl might want to wear for home games, slumber parties, screenings of the “Barbie” movie, or a school dance. Arranged in rainbow-colored stacks are: [...] crop tops. Lots and lots of crop tops. 

In a very interesting paragraph, Satran related that for “many” tweens crop tops don’t represent vulnerability, because they’re cute, innocent, and are worn to express body positivity; however, “others” find them “inappropriate”; therefore, in a bit of vindictiveness, stores like Dear Hannah Prep stock lots of crop tops despite or due to their divisiveness. Satran:

For many tweens—and their parents—crop tops are a cute, innocent way to express their burgeoning interest in fashion, and their body positivity. For others, they are inappropriate. [...] Despite, or perhaps because of, their divisiveness, crop tops for tweens have become big business.

Satran shared that Dear Hannah Prep has over 300,000 followers on TikTok and that in “almost every video, the tweens are wearing crop tops, some showing more midriff than others.” #marketing

Satran wrote that tween crop tops are “omnipresent” and are sold in “almost any store that carries kidswear these days”. For example, “from Walmart to Saks Fifth Avenue”, Zara, Shein, and “from Fendi to Stella McCartney to Versace”. Satran:

Walk into almost any store that carries kidswear these days, from Walmart to Saks Fifth Avenue, and you’ll see at least one crop top. [...] Zara has made them a mainstay of its children’s collections. On Chinese fast-fashion site Shein there are over 1,000 tween-size crop top styles [..] high-end designers from Fendi to Stella McCartney to Versace offer crop tops for tweens.

Crop tops are so omnipresent, it can be hard to find a non-cropped top for tweens and teens these days.

Satran attributed the recent rise of tweens in crop tops and their demand for more and more crop tops to tweens emulating beloved pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo, Emma Chamberlain, and Taylor Swift. Satran:

While crop tops emerged for teens and women in the groovy 1970s [...] they’ve only trickled down to the tween market in a big way in the past few years. [...] Tween-beloved stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Emma Chamberlain appear to live in crop tops. Taylor Swift wore one to the Grammys this year. It is no wonder tweens want in. Stores are scrambling to keep up with the demand.

Kelly Dowdy, of the high-end kids’ boutique English Rabbit in Beverly Hills, shared with Satran that some of her high-end prep school-attending customers only purchase crop tops. Dowdy shared,

“We have [high-end] customers who won’t buy anything if it’s not a crop top. They wear [private school] uniforms at school, and when they’re not at school they’re in a crop top.” 

And Sylvana Ward Durrett, of the “chic” website Maisonette, shared with Satran that crop tops “do well” on Maisonette. So much so that searches for the controversial attire doubled in a year. 

Interestingly, one can correctly infer from Friedlander and Satran’s reporting that crop tops are de rigueur for teens. For example, I previously wrote about the Blumarine by Marc Jacobs collab, which featured best-selling signature pieces like ultra-mini skirts, baby tees, and cropped sweatshirts. [Emphasis added] Consequently, one can expect that crop tops will eventually become de rigueur for tweens too. 

Lastly, in terms of the question: How young is too young for a crop top? Durrett opined: “[...]  I would say it’s somewhere between seven and eight.”