This is another ingenious adaptation of the 12 bar blues format into a high energy pop song geared to teenagers. It tells the story of the class clown, Charlie Brown, and, rather than criticizing him, it celebrates his antics. Even though repeatedly it says "he's gonna get caught, just you wait and see", the high energy presentation along with the comic stop time "Why's everybody always picking on me?" hints that just maybe he will eventually get away with it.
Just as Little Richard bent the form to make the 4 bar B section a chorus, here the Coasters go further and have only the 4 bars of the first A statement change between repetitions with the remaining 8 bars (the second A and the B sections) function as a chorus. It also features a prominent use of call and response between the vocalists and the saxophone soloist.
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