Peter Criss is setting the record straight—again—about “Beth,” the biggest chart hit from the band KISS. The song, which Criss co-wrote and performed lead vocals on, reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976 and later won the People’s Choice Award for favorite New Song.
But the origins of the beloved rock ballad have long been in dispute by the other KISS bandmates.
In 2014, frontman Paul Stanley told Rolling Stone that Criss couldn’t have written the song “because if you write one hit song, you should be able to write two.”
Most recently, founding member Gene Simmons, told the Professor of Rock” podcast that Criss “had nothing to do with that song” except for singing it. Simmons alleged that Criss was “lucky enough to be in the same place at the same time as a guy who wrote a song called ‘Beth.’”
In January 2026, Criss, 80, defended his part in the success of “Beth,” telling Billboard that Simmons’ account of the song’s history was “not correct.” “My name was credited to that song before it was a hit,” he added. “I would not put my name on a song I had nothing to do with. That is not who I am. I would not do that.”
Peter Criss Explained How He Collaborated on ‘Beth’ With Two Other Songwriters
The writing credits for “Beth” are listed as Criss, Stan Penridge, and music producer Bob Ezrin. Criss explained to Billboard that in the late 1960s, he wrote the melody and created the ”phrasing” for a demo titled “Beck” with Penridge, his bandmate in the group Chelsea, years before he joined KISS.
“Out of Stan’s little black book, what remained on the reworked version of ‘Beth’ is Stan’s original verse and chorus, and my core melody remains on the reworked composition,” he explained. “The core melody was expanded with Bob’s orchestration and musical genius. Bob and I sat at the piano at the Record Plant studio working out the song. Bob Ezrin changed the tempo and made it slower, and I worked on changing some of the second verse and the phrasing with the slower tempo.”
Criss added that it was Ezrin’s idea to change the title of the song from “Beck”—as in Becky—to “Beth”, and he agreed the new name was “much better.”
“Stan’s input, my input, my voice, and mostly Bob’s absolute musical genius is responsible for the success of ‘Beth,’” the KISS Catman added.
“Gene wouldn’t know how the song was originally written because Gene wasn’t there from the conception of the song in the late ‘60s and he wasn’t there for the completion of the song with Bob Ezrin,” Criss further explained.
Bob Ezrin Explained Why KISS Needed a Ballad
Ezrin, who produced the KISS album “Destroyer” which featured “Beth,” told Guitar Player that after noticing that there were no girls in the audience at KISS concerts at the time, he told the band they needed to appeal as vulnerable bad boys to females.
He also noted that Criss deserved to get a song. “The story about ‘Beth’ is that, politically, it was always important that the drummer gets at least one song,” he said in June 2025. “So we went through a bunch of songs that Peter Criss had.”
Ezrin added that he felt “a real opportunity” with Criss’s song and decided to center it around a beautiful piano arrangement. “I slowed the song way down, and it just felt like suddenly it was almost like a lullaby,” he shared. “It became this gentle sweet thing. And I tweaked the lyrics because I wanted it to be about the singer being the one that was hurt.”
