Some songs have a longer history than the version most people remember. A familiar pop moment from a 1990 film felt fresh and new to millions of moviegoers, but the song had already traveled through two decades and two remarkable women before it arrived on screen. The roots go all the way back to 1963, when a songwriter sat down and wrote something that would not reach its full audience for nearly thirty years.

The later version is Cher’s cover of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss),” recorded for the 1990 film Mermaids. But before Cher ever stepped into a recording booth for this song, it had already been released by Merry Clayton in 1963 and turned into a genuine chart hit by Betty Everett in 1964.

Rudy Clark Writes the Song

The story begins with a songwriter named Rudy Clark. Born in Brooklyn, Clark had a gift for melody and a feel for the kind of simple, direct question that could carry an entire song. In the early 1960s, he was working in a music industry that was hungry for new material, and he delivered something that answered its own question before the chorus was finished.

The central idea behind “The Shoop Shoop Song” is deceptively simple. How do you know if someone truly cares for you? Clark’s answer was built into the melody and the rhythm — you find out from the kiss. It was a playful, confident, and deeply romantic premise, and it fit the sound of early 1960s pop-soul perfectly. Clark was also the writer behind “Good Lovin’,” which would later become a major rock hit for The Young Rascals, so he understood how to write songs with lasting energy. With “The Shoop Shoop Song,” he gave the world something that would outlast the decade he wrote it in.

What Clark may not have anticipated was just how many roads the song would travel before it finally reached the widest possible audience.

Merry Clayton Releases the Original

The first version of the song belonged to Merry Clayton, who recorded it in 1963. Clayton was a singer of genuine power and range, already known in gospel and soul circles in Los Angeles. She was only a teenager at the time of this recording, but her voice carried a maturity and warmth that suited Clark’s material well.

Clayton’s version was the original — the first time the song existed as a real recording in the world. It introduced the melody, the call-and-response feeling, and the cheerful certainty that a kiss tells you everything you need to know. But despite the quality of the performance, the record did not make a significant impact on the charts. It passed quietly, heard by some, remembered by fewer.

History would eventually be much kinder to Merry Clayton. Years later, she became widely known for her extraordinary backing vocal appearance on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” in 1969, a performance that has since been recognized as one of the most powerful moments in rock history. But in 1963, her version of “The Shoop Shoop Song” simply did not find the audience it deserved. That audience would arrive — but it would come to a different singer’s version.

Betty Everett Creates the First Hit

In 1964, Betty Everett recorded the song, and everything changed. Everett was a Chicago-based R&B and soul singer with a smooth, assured delivery that suited the song’s confident romantic message beautifully. Her version was released on Vee-Jay Records, and it climbed into the US Top 10, giving “The Shoop Shoop Song” its first real moment of widespread recognition.

For many people of a certain age, Betty Everett’s recording is the original — the one they grew up with, the one that played on AM radio in 1964, the one that came through the kitchen speakers or the car radio on a summer afternoon. It had a brightness and a bounce that connected immediately with listeners, and it gave the song a commercial identity it had lacked in Merry Clayton’s hands.

Everett’s version was later re-released and continued to find audiences through the 1960s and beyond. It charted again in the United Kingdom in 1968, introducing the song to a new generation of British listeners. The recording stood on its own as a piece of pop history — a genuine hit with staying power. And yet, even Betty Everett’s success turned out to be only one chapter in a longer story.

Two women, two recordings, two different outcomes — and still the song had more road ahead of it.

The Mermaids Recording

In 1990, Cher starred in the film Mermaids, a warm, sometimes bittersweet story set in the early 1960s. The period setting was deliberate, and the music chosen for the film reflected that era. When the soundtrack needed a centerpiece song, “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” was a natural fit — it captured exactly the sound and spirit of the early 1960s that the film was trying to evoke.

Cher’s version was released as a single and became a significant international hit. In the United Kingdom, it reached number one. In several other countries, it performed strongly, introducing the song to listeners who had never encountered either the Clayton or the Everett version. For a large part of the world, particularly younger audiences in Europe and beyond, Cher’s recording became the definitive version — the one that defined the song in their memory.

What made Cher’s performance work was not simply the star power behind it. Her version leaned into the playful confidence of the original material while adding a slightly fuller, more polished production that suited the era in which it was released. It honored the song’s roots while giving it new commercial energy. Rudy Clark’s melody, unchanged from what he had written nearly three decades earlier, proved that great songwriting does not expire.

The film itself gave the recording a visual and emotional context that helped it connect. Audiences were already emotionally engaged with the story by the time the song played, and that connection carried into how they remembered the music long after leaving the theater.

A Third Generation Discovers the Song

What the full story of “The Shoop Shoop Song” really tells us is something about how music travels through time in unexpected ways. Merry Clayton recorded the original without receiving the recognition it deserved. Betty Everett turned it into a genuine hit and gave it a lasting identity in American pop history. And then, twenty-six years later, Cher brought it to a generation that had not yet been born when Everett’s version climbed the charts.

Each version served a different moment. Each singer brought something real to the material. And Rudy Clark’s song — a deceptively simple idea about kisses and certainty and knowing how someone truly feels — proved strong enough to carry all three of them.

This is how some songs survive. Not by staying in one place, but by finding new voices and new audiences across the years. The listeners who fell in love with Cher’s version in 1990 were not wrong to feel that it was fresh and new, because for them, it was. And the listeners who still reach for Betty Everett’s version, or who know Merry Clayton as the original, are equally right. The song belongs to all of them.

There is something quietly remarkable about a melody written in 1963 that could still stop people in their tracks in 1990 — and still sounds like itself today. The answer to the song’s central question was built into Rudy Clark’s writing from the very beginning. Three extraordinary women proved, across three separate decades, that the song itself always knew what it was talking about.

Some things really do tell you everything. And some songs, it turns out, never really leave.