Songfacts®:

• Brian Wilson wrote this in 1963 as "Thinkin' 'Bout You Baby," a record the Beach Boys mastermind produced for Sharon Marie, a girlfriend of Mike Love's. Marie was a previously unrecorded teenager who had informally auditioned for Wilson and Love by singing opera standards stageside after a Sacramento Beach Boys concert.
  
  When the Beach Boys formed Brother Records in 1967, the plan was that everybody would produce outside artists. Brian's first signing was Redwood, a group formed by his friend Danny Hutton, who, up until that time, was best known for the 1965 hit, "Roses And Rainbows." Wilson resurrected this song, re-wrote it and named it "Darlin'," for Redwood. They cut the track, which Wilson produced but it and other Redwood recordings were never released. Soon after, Redwood changed their name to Three Dog Night, and went on to become one of the most commercially successful American bands of its time.
  
  The other Beach Boys members insisted that they should record the song. It was produced by the band and featured Carl Wilson on lead vocals. The tune was included on their 1967 album Wild Honey and also released as a single, peaking at #19 in the United States and #11 in the United Kingdom.
• Brian Wilson said in a 2011 interview with Goldmine: "I was writing more in a soul/R&B bag. The horns were conceived as a Phil Spector kind of a horn thing. 'Darlin' was for Three Dog Night (known as Redwood at the time). They recorded it and said, 'No, you can have it' so I gave it to Carl to sing. That song took about a week to write.
• David Cassidy covered the song for his 1975 album, The Higher They Climb. The LP was produced by Beach Boys member Bruce Johnston and the then teen idol's version of "Darlin'" was released as a single peaking at #16 in the UK.
• Brian Wilson told American Songwriter this is his favorite of all the songs he's written. "I just like the melody," he said."
• This was a plot point in the 2015 episode of The Big Bang Theory, "The Earworm Reverberation." In the episode, Sheldon (Jim Parsons), gets the tune from this song stuck in his head, but can't identify it. After a while he believes he is losing his mind, but when he starts ruminating on artistic geniuses who have also gone crazy (putting him in good company), he thinks of Van Gogh, Bobby Fisher, Jackson Pollack... and Brian Wilson. This triggers the memory and he remembers the song.
  
  He later realizes he was thinking about the song because the lyrics reminded him of his ex-girlfriend, Amy, so he makes a play to get her back.