Wilson and Love later disagreed over the extent of their lyrical contributions. Love said that he wrote "every syllable" of the song apart from "I wish they all could be California girls". In his recollection, he wrote the lyrics "in less than an hour" while he was in the hallway of the recording studio during the session for the backing track. Wilson disputed Love's assertion. "I wrote a lot of those lyrics too; it was line for line, back and forth between us. That's what happened." He said that he came up with the opening lines and subject matter, and that "Every other line was his or mine. ... Everybody loves girls, right? Everybody loves California and the sun. That’s what I wanted from the song. And to mention all the parts of the country, that’s fun, people will like that."