I never had much interest in The Beach Boys. I didn’t know their songs (or rather, I didn’t know that they made their songs; everybody knows Surfin’ USA and Wouldn’t It Be Nice), I didn’t know their story, I didn’t care to - they were just a weird relic I never felt compelled to investigate like I had felt compelled to investigate artists like Queen or Rage Against The Machine (Bands I like songs by, but wanted to listen to more of - i have not done that for either of these bands)... Then, that changed.
I’m fascinated by the journey, so let me tell you mine - It’s not terribly long or interesting, but it sets the scene pretty well. I’m not a music enjoyer; I like music, I like the music that I like, but in terms of exploring new genres and different sounds, or even new acts within sounds I enjoy, I am very much not an explorer. I think it’s a symptom of autism/aspergers/whatever I Was diagnosed with when I was 15 that I have recently realized I fit the bill for, almost to the letter - I am very satisfied with routine and repetition, and if there is no prompting, I will do the same thing again and again if I Feel like it works. I have my same bunch of albums and I play them on repeat and that’s all I do - that isn’t to say i’m opposed to breaking that routine, i’m not SO autistic that I reject sequence breaking, just that I Won’t seek it out. If I take a path to work, and it gets me there, I will not explore other options, but if someone asks why I Don’t try another way, and explains that I Will encounter fewer lights and stops, i’ll say huh, i’ll give that a shot, and if it works, i’ll adapt - same thing with music. I’m thankful to have some friends who suggest things to me that very much are of my temperament; The Minstrel Show by Little Brother was one that was suggested because of my love for the sounds of mid 2000’s hip hop production, and it’s one of my favorite rap albums. All of this is to say that I can have my interest piqued, and if that interest is piqued, I will investigate.
Some weeks ago (At the time of writing this. the exact dates are June 17th and 18th 2023), I was going out to the beach with some friends, and decided I Would play some summer-y music, and landed on Kokomo by The Beach Boys. The reason for this was because I had recently gotten back into Todd In The Shadows, a music review youtuber who feels like a relic himself having been molded in the fires of Channel Awesome, but has actually settled into a really good niche of respectable review work outside of his very late 2000’s aesthetic. He does a series, Trainwreckords, about disaster albums by once prominent bands, choosing to highlight The Beach Boys’s “Summer in Paradise”, the 1992 disaster that saw the band essentially retire from the studio for 20 years - In the intro, he highlights Kokomo, the crossover pop hit that put the legendary band back into the limelight, and the sounds of Kokomo are just undeniably infectious - It is the pinnacle of cheesy and fun 80s music that isn’t drowned in synths and other tropes of hair metal and cock rock that has it’s place in good bad music listening, but does not fit with the joy that Kokomo brings. I watched this video some 20 times (It’s very good - probably not good enough to watch 20 times, but, you know, watching something that I like repeatedly, you get it), and not only did the video put Kokomo in my head, it also put The Beach Boys in my head. Todd in the shadows is a more successful youtuber than i’d ever been, so far be it from me to talk about what I think he did wrong in this video, but one of my main criticisms (or rather, main distinctions from myself and others when I would make videos) is that while he touches on aspects of The Beach Boys and their storied history (He mentions Brian Wilson’s therapist Eugene Landy, Charles Manson, how they were one of the greatest bands of the 60’s), he doesn’t explain any of it. I understand that would take a video that is otherwise a tight 20 minutes to being an hour long explanation of ultimately irrelevant information (Brian Wilson was not involved in Summer in Paradise at all), but all it did was pique my interest. In the video (and in another talking about Closing Time by Semisonic), he mentions their masterpiece, Pet Sounds - I was curious, what is it about Pet Sounds, this 1966 album with a very silly name, that is so special? He had mentioned that Kokomo was contentious amongst Beach Boys fans for being a ridiculous sellout song, but what were they drifting away from? So I decided that I would listen to Pet Sounds… What the fuck is going on with Pet Sounds?
Reader, I cannot express to you the confusion I had when listening to Pet Sounds. After the intro song, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, which I already knew and got to listen to and appreciate for the first time, I heard You Still Believe In Me, and I can’t really describe the feelings I had, hearing that song for the first time. It sounds kind of Christmas-y, with bells and chimes - it’s technically a ballad, but it’s not sad, it’s just very relaxed, but every time I took a moment and tried to absorb it, something else would happen - the vocal arrangement, another instrument would stick out, how perfect it sounded… and then the outro, oh my god, the outro is like an ethereal dream. It’s just vocalizing, layered a million times, or not at all… it’s perfect. I was floored. I just couldn’t fathom what it was that I was hearing. I knew that i’d heard music that was special before, but, I don’t know, something about this song broke through any thought I could have, and while I don’t believe this is true, it’s one of the first times I feel like I FELT music - deep down in my entire body, I could feel what I Was listening to, and it was an unbelievable feeling of euphoria that I’m still struggling to put into words. The rest of the album is incredible - Sloop John B and I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times are my personal favorites for reasons i’ll talk about in a moment - but, shockingly, it still hadn’t fully clicked for me… and it wasn’t even the best Beach Boys experience I had that day.
I made a tweet saying “Why didn’t anybody tell me Pet Sounds was like that”, essentially expressing my awe over how it sounded, which was seen by a friend of mine. This friend is from Australia and grew up around Surfers, and as such, grew up around The Beach Boys as his dad’s favorite band, so he had heard them, and some years ago had listened back to them and had a similar experience. We were talking, and I said something to the effect of “what are teh chances the 2012 album is good”, referring to their 2012 reunion album, That’s Why God Made The Radio, the first collection of original Beach Boys music since Summer in Paradise, coinciding with their 50th anniversary as a band, and the album is unreal levels of good. In terms of artistry, it’s no Pet Sounds, but in terms of catchy earworm hooks and bright poppy arrangements, it’s the perfect album. Every single song, the vibes could not have been better - By the time I got to track 5, The Private Life of Bill and Sue, I Was about ready to cry because it had just been big, booming choruses filled with immaculate vibes for 5 songs in a row, and it doesn’t let up for the entire thing. I was on a high for the rest of the afternoon into the night - it was about as special a day of listening to music as one could have. I was in - I was fully ready to investigate The Beach Boys.
I made a post on the blog previously around this time, talking about what it is about music that I like and how little I understand it, and in that post, I talked a little bit about the beach boys as that was what prompted me to wonder what it was about Pet Sounds that scratched the same itch as other, very different songs. I had the conversation with this Australian friend of mine, and before I came to the conclusion I did in that post, we talked about what spoke to us from Pet Sounds, and while we both agreed that the richness and the depth of creation was incredible, something about it was it’s undeniable aura of sadness. I think that my friend sees sadness in happy music more than I do - a clear projection of being trapped in a fake life of only being able to express one emotion because nobody is that happy all the time - but with Pet Sounds, it’s almost barely projection. There are clear lyrics, such as the entirety of I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times (the chorus in particular, repeating “Sometimes I Feel Very Sad”), but then there is just the kind of bleak hopelessness that permeates You Still Believe In Me (Something about those bells - I think this about christmas music too, but just the music, not the words), the repetition of “I want to go home” on Sloop John B (famous cover song, but still, it’s there). It betrays an emotional depth to match its production depth, and it’s why, whenever I would hear other Beach Boys albums (There are a lot of those, more on that shortly), I would return to Pet Sounds, and I would enjoy it even more. Maybe it was just repeated listens, maybe it was hearing more parts of the beach boys that I would like and that ear unlocking something else in Pet Sounds, but every listen just fleshed the album out more and more - that album is every single thing that music critics and pop historians say about it; masterpiece, pioneering in production and the creation of albums as a whole, timeless, all of it.
What followed my day of Beach Boys listening was a week of exploration and research. The Beach Boys are a band that, for 30 straight years, made albums what seems to be every 3 months - It makes sense, that’s the way music was made in the 60’s; you record singles year round, get a few of them on an album, record some cover songs, put out a record, you have 3 records a year - it’s why acts like Creedence Clearwater Revival or Elvis Presley have so many albums for how many years they were active (Elvis made music for 19 years and has 24 studio albums and, like, 15 soundtrack albums. You might think this is stupid to include, but Blue Hawaii has “Can’t Help Falling In Love”, which is a great song. Also CCR has 7 albums and 6 of them were made between 1968 and 1970). The Beach Boys, from 1962 to 1980, recorded near constantly, releasing 24 studio albums, after which they became a nostalgia touring act, only releasing a handful of albums since. Among their decades of work, I found no less than 8 albums that I think are good to great;
Today! (1965) - One of the first albums recorded post Brian Wilson’s retirement from touring. It is the departure from their basic and note note “surfer” image, singing less about bikini babes and surfing and cars. Also kind of a thematic concept album, with side 1 of the record being uptempo pop songs and side 2 being slower paced ballads. Gorgeous album, also demonstrates how fucking good The Beach Boys (Brian) do with ballads. Standout Songs: I’m So Young, Kiss Me Baby
Summers Days (And Summer Nights) (1965) - Today kind of spooked the record company because it was different from what they’d released and also sold less good, so this is Brian’s merging of their old imagery and subject matter with his artistic exploration. It’s good, but it was kind of robbed of its impact because it was one of the last ones I listened to. Standout songs: California Girls, Help Me Rhonda
Pet Sounds (1966) - A perfect album. Reading about this album is amazing - one of the first albums that demonstrated albums as art, used the studio as an instrument, demonstrated the effect that time can take on creation instead of a constant output, incorporating techniques from Phil Specter and inspirations from The Beatles, and ended up inspiring The Beatles to stop touring so they could put out a masterpiece like Pet Sounds. Standout Songs: All of them, but more specifically Sloop John B, You Still Believe In Me, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times
Sunflower (1970) - After Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson got to work on Smile, a famously unreleased album that he described as “A teenage symphony to God”, but eventually the album collapsed under the weight of his own genius and perfectionism giving way to his mental illnesses. After a few albums (that might be fine, i’ve just not heard them), the group returned to the studio with Sunflower, one of the last albums that is a collaborative effort between Brian and The Beach Boys, with Brian fully invested in its success and production. It sold poorly which crushed Brian, but it’s since been revered as their best album post Pet Sounds. Standout Songs: Add Some Music To Your Day, Forever.
Surf’s Up (1971) - Originally titled “Landlocked” with a cover that references End Of The Trail, this album is meant to signify the death of the original Beach Boys, with their new manager wanting to portray them as a more serious band in wake of the music landscape shifting so dramatically. I think that these things might have been too isolating and a downer for people who were fans of The Beach Boys, so the cowards behind them moved off of “Landlocked” and went with “Surf’s Up”, the name of one of the songs from “Smile”. Unlike Sunflower, Brian is not involved in production, so there is much less big booming vocals and melodies, but it’s also just a really good rock record. It doesn’t always sound like The Beach Boys, but it’s very good. Standout songs: Don’t Go Near The Water, Long Promised Road
Love You (1977) - This was originally going to be a Brian Wilson solo album, and as such Brian wrote everything and played every instrument and produced everything. Brian had become more stable following therapy with Eugene Landy, resulting in the creation of 15 Big Ones (Album preceding this), and while Wilson wanted to have this be a solo album, it was repurposed into a Beach Boys album, with some additions from other members. This album is probably the best album post Pet Sounds, but it’s also a bizarre mess, appropriate for the eclectic genius of Brian Wilson. Writing wise, it’s borderline childish, a feat that was criticized at the time, but production wise, it’s a masterpiece, pioneering sounds that would be seen in 80’s synthpop. All told, it’s a remarkable album. Standout songs: Roller Skating Child, Mona, Let’s Put Our Hearts Together
That’s Why God Made The Radio (2012) - Brian had been recording and touring solo for years, creating his own version of Smile in 2004. Since then, it seemed like Brian had stablized and become a much more functional person, resulting in a reunion for the 50th anniversary of the beach boys and a new album. While the general build of it is more simplistic than any of the 60’s albums i’ve mentioned, advancements in studio technology make this the cleanest non Pet Sounds album i’ve heard from them. Standout Songs: Spring Vacation, Beaches In Mind, Strange World
No Pier Pressure (2015) - Kind of hte opposite of Love You, this was originally a follow up to That’s Why God Made The Radio, but ended up being repurposed into a Brian Wilson solo album. The title’s very pointed jab aside, this album is filled with absolutely gorgeous pop hook after absolutely gorgeous pop hook. The album was reviewed okay, with people getting upset about Wilson collaborating with other singers, saying that it was him chasing chart hits, but critics are stupid, this album is incredible. It’s going to end up as the last original work from Brian Wilson as I understand he is in poor health, and it’s a beautiful collection of work from one of the great pop geniuses. Standout songs: Sail Away, Saturday Night.
I could not have expected in a million years to find 8 FULL ALBUMS worth of material that is as good as it is, especially not from a band who is absolutely not revered as an amazing album band. Even their great 60’s contemporary, The Beatles, have some contention of them as an Album Band, citing that their strength was in their songwriting which made their songs pop, but they are still a pop band with endless great singles, not a bunch of great full albums. The Beach Boys have an absurd catalog of full great albums, and if there’s one thing you walk away from this read with, i hope that it’s some level of interest in taking a look at The Beach Boys. I know that my life is significantly better having done so.
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