'70s Superstar Scored His Biggest Hit With 1978 Song He Never Wanted to Record
Leif Garrett was one of the biggest teen idols of the 1970s, but it wasn't a title he had aspired to.
The young star started out as a child actor in films and TV shows such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Macon County Line, The Odd Couple, Family Affair, and more before he was eyed to be the next teen music idol.
In the late ‘70s, Garrett began recording music on the Scotti Brothers record label, starting with covers of Dion's "Run Around Sue" and The Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA." His biggest hit came in 1978, with "I Was Made for Dancin'." Written by Michael Lloyd, the disco-infused pop song peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and made Garrett a bona fide radio star and Tiger Beat cover idol.
But by that time, the teen was already checked out.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Garrett recalled, "Nobody ever came up to me and said, ‘Hey kid, can you sing?'... They already had their marketing down. I was the full California image of blond, somewhat androgynous looking pretty boy, full-on skateboarder and surfer actually living that life lifestyle."
Garrett admitted that he "never really paid attention to" teen pop music because it wasn't his style.
"I like the British invasion stuff, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones and all that sort of stuff," he shared, noting that he felt pressure to be the next Andy Gibb or Shaun Cassidy.
"I just didn't like the music and what I was doing," he added.
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Garrett also knew there was no future as a bubble gum pop star.
"Even when I was in it and it seemed enormous, I knew that there was no longevity to the teen idol business," he said. "The kids that are digging your music-and I was the age of the people buying it-it's a pubescent thing. … It's a short period of someone's life."
Garrett once told Smashing Interviews that he was never allowed to make the music he wanted as a teen and would have stayed an actor had he known.
"I would've stuck with acting," he admitted. "I was asked if I wanted to make a record, not if you make this record with us, that's all you're going to be doing for the next five years and not really doing anything in the acting genre."
"I had to learn trial by fire. I was not a born singer," he added.
Garrett also shared that while he became a decent singer, some of the music he recorded didn't even sound like him, as his career was tightly micromanaged by the Scotti brothers.
"I think I was a good performer from the get-go, but I wish they had offered me singing lessons before ever making a record," he told Glide magazine in 2019. "There's a particular track ['I Was Looking For Someone To Love'] that doesn't even sound like me at all. I would even possibly say I wasn't even on that track. And to me, that IS fraud. That's like a Milli Vanilli situation, the difference being, of course, mine was blended many times with myself and somebody else."
Garrett struggled for decades with the after-effects of his fame, but in recent years, he has logged new music and TV projects. In 2019, he published his memoir, Idol Truth.
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This story was originally published June 12, 2026 at 7:36 AM.