About The Song
“Kickin’ Our Hearts Around” is an early-1960s Buck Owens single written by fellow Capitol artist Wanda Jackson. Session and discography sources indicate that Owens first recorded the song on December 6, 1961 at Capitol Recording Studio, 1750 North Vine Street in Hollywood, with longtime producer Ken Nelson in charge. Issued by Capitol as a 7-inch single in late 1962 (catalogue number 4826), it runs a little under two minutes and forty seconds and belongs to the run of formative Bakersfield records that turned Owens from a regional act into a national country name.
The song’s release history is somewhat unusual. Although Jackson wrote “Kickin’ Our Hearts Around” and later cut her own version for Capitol – it appears on her 1965 album Wanda Jackson Sings Country Songs and as a 1965 single – documentation from SecondHandSongs and chart summaries agree that Owens’ single came first, in 1962. Jackson’s LP liner notes explicitly mention that the track was “first released as a single by fellow country performer Buck Owens,” confirming that her later recording was effectively a writer’s version of a song already established on the country charts.
On album, “Kickin’ Our Hearts Around” is best known from Owens’ third Capitol LP, On the Bandstand, released in 1963. Track listings from Apple Music and later vinyl reissues place it on side one alongside cuts such as “I Can’t Stop (My Lovin’ You),” “King of Fools” and “Cotton Fields.” The album collects material recorded between December 1961 and March 1963 and shows Owens and his band, the Buckaroos, moving decisively toward the bright, electric Bakersfield sound that would define their mid-decade hits.
Lyrically, the song portrays a couple who are hurting each other through constant quarrels and break-ups. The narrator admits that both partners have been “kickin’ our hearts around” – saying things they do not mean, walking out, then coming back. The core idea is a plea to stop using love as a weapon before the relationship is damaged beyond repair. Rather than building a detailed story, the lyric circles around that central phrase, using it as a simple image for emotional carelessness and the need to change.
Musically, “Kickin’ Our Hearts Around” is a concise example of early Bakersfield country. Contemporary and retrospective accounts emphasize its bright 2/4 drive, crisp backbeat and Telecaster-style electric guitar lines, with Don Rich’s playing starting to come into focus. Compared with Owens’ earlier, more shuffling honky-tonk sides, the track feels tighter and more direct, with little ornamentation beyond steel-guitar and fiddle fills. The production keeps the vocal right on top of the rhythm section, a sound that contrasted sharply with the string-heavy Nashville records of the same period and helped define Owens’ West Coast identity.
Chart records show that the single performed strongly. In Billboard’s country listings for 1962 it reached No. 8 on the Hot Country & Western Singles chart, giving Owens another Top 10 hit following “Nobody’s Fool but Yours” and preceding “You’re for Me.” Year-based summaries of 1962 country hits also list “Kickin’ Our Hearts Around” among the notable titles of the year under the Capitol 4826 catalogue number. Although there is some disagreement in secondary sources about a possible low pop-chart showing, standard discographies treat it primarily as a country hit, with no confirmed U.S. Hot 100 entry.
Over time, the song has remained part of the core Buck Owens catalogue. It appears on archival sets such as The Complete Capitol Singles: 1957–1966 and Capitol Singles & Albums 1957–62, as well as on the box set The Buck Owens Collection 1959–1990 and various digital compilations. Cover versions by artists including Wanda Jackson, The Bottle Rockets and Justin Trevino show that the combination of a straightforward heartbreak idea and a driving early-’60s Bakersfield groove continues to appeal. Within Owens’ story, “Kickin’ Our Hearts Around” stands as a key Top 10 single from the period when he and the Buckaroos were sharpening the style that would soon take them to repeated No. 1 positions on the country chart.
Video
Lyric
Oh let’s stop kickin’ each others hearts around it’s not the thing to do
Let’s pick them up dust them off and start our love anew
Let’s be fair and let’s don’t dare to try to hurt the other
Let’s stop kickin’ our hearts around and let’s love one another
We’ve said goodbye a thousand times then made up again
Always coming back for more to see which one will win
I love you and you love me on this we can agree
Let’s stop kickin’ our hearts around and go on lovingly
Oh let’s stop kickin’…
You called me on the phone but I hang up on you
Then I called back up to apologize for doing things I do
You can’t understand the things I do or things I say
And I can’t accept the way you change from day to day
Oh let’s stop kickin’…