The song was rejected by the Shirelles, the premier girl group of the early 1960s,[3] and was first recorded in Los Angeles by Merry Clayton as her first credited single.
Clayton's recording of the song was produced by Jack Nitzsche and featured Hal Blaine on drums and the Blossoms as chorus.
Clayton performed the song again in the 1987 film Maid to Order in which she, as the character Audrey James, sang the song in the film's climactic scene accompanied by the fictional band Loaded Blanks, played by Jack Russell, Lorne Black, Audie Desbrow, Mark Kendall and Michael Lardie of rock band Great White.
Dave Marsh in his book The Heart of Rock and Soul opines that Betty Everett's version, "while [credited] as a solo performance is one of the finest girl group hits, undoubtedly the best one made outside the genre's New York City/Philadelphia/Los Angeles "axis"".
[7] The next recording of "It's in His Kiss" was made in Los Angeles by Ramona King, an R&B singer from San Francisco: this version was produced by Joe Saraceno and former Phil Spector associate Jerry Riopelle and released on Warner Brothers in February 1964, the week prior to the release of Everett's version.
Although Everett's single was more likely to receive airplay due to her being an established hitmaker (with "You're No Good"), Vee-Jay feared losing sales to the King version and opted to distinguish Everett's version by issuing it under the title "The Shoop Shoop Song" referring to the song's background vocals.
"The Shoop Shoop Song" first became a major UK hit in 1975 via a disco version entitled "It's in His Kiss" by British vocalist Linda Lewis recorded at Mediasound Studios in New York City with producers Bert de Couteaux and Tony Silvester in a session which also yielded Lewis' recording of her own composition "Rock and Roller Coaster".
Lewis would recall: "Clive [Davis]" - Arista Records founder and president - "sent me over to New York [City] to work with Bert DeCoteaux, who’d [produced] Sister Sledge and people like that...And I had all these amazing backing vocalists, like Deniece Williams and Luther Vandross in the studio.
The success of the single in the United Kingdom and Continental Europe was reflected in its addition to Love Hurts, her subsequent album, as released in those parts of the world, Australia and New Zealand.
Larry Flick from Billboard wrote, "Fun and faithful cover of Betty Everett's pop nugget is lifted from the soundtrack to Cher's new film, 'Mermaids'.
Near the end, the video switches from black-and-white to color and Cher and the girls are shown in jeans and leather jackets spray-painting a wall in an alley.