Cherish--The Association: Ray Martino plays favorites on piano.

"Cherish" is a pop song written by Terry Kirkman and recorded by The Association.Released in 1966, the song reached number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in September of that year and remained in the top position for three weeks. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 7 song of 1966. In Canada, the song also reached number one.

In the recording, only two Association members played their instruments (Terry Kirkman on piano and Jules Alexander on guitar), the others sang backing vocals, which included them impersonating the sounds of church bells ringing "BONG-BONG", in the first two refrains and the second bridge. Kirkman and Russ Giguere did the lead vocals. Session musician Doug Rhodes, also member of The Music Machine, played the celesta on the recording. Studio player Ben Benay played a second guitar on the recording. Curt Boettcher added some vocals, most notably the high-pitched "told you" and "hold you" on the final verse.[citation needed] The track was recorded at a converted garage studio owned by Gary S. Paxton, who engineered the sessions along with Pete Romano. This song is noted for having two bridge sections, in which the second one leads to a transition where the key of the song goes up by a whole step.

The single release of the song was slightly edited by speeding up the song and removing one of the two "And I do cherish you" lines near the end of the song. This edit was done as a means of keeping the track from exceeding the three-minute mark, as radio programmers of the era frowned upon songs that went beyond three minutes. However, even with the edit, the song still ran over. Instead of editing further, producer Curt Boettcher intentionally listed "3:00" on the label as the song's running time. The song ends with the words: "Cherish is the word", where the guitar plays a passage on his guitar, ending on a vibrating guitar chord.

This song has been played a lot at wedding receptions.

When Terry Kirkman wrote this song, he envisioned it with a far different arrangement. He wanted to record in a far slower tempo to wring out the emotion in the song - similar to how The Righteous Brothers performed "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'".

In 2012, original Association member Jim Yester said the record label claimed the song sounded "too old and archaic", but quipped that the song's success "just showed we can have archaic and eat it, too."[3]