100 Best Albums
- 16 MAY 1966
- 13 Songs
- The Beach Boys' Christmas Album · 1964
- Smiley Smile (Mono & Stereo) · 1966
- Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) (Mono & Stereo) [2001 Remaster] · 1965
- The Very Best of The Beach Boys: Sounds of Summer · 1963
- Greatest Hits · 1988
- Pet Sounds · 1966
- The Very Best of The Beach Boys: Sounds of Summer · 1964
- Pet Sounds (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) [2016 Remaster] · 1966
- Pet Sounds (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) [2016 Remaster] · 1997
- Wild Honey · 1967
Essential Albums
- The Beach Boys had to rely on their U.K. fans for praise and support through much of the early 1970s. In the U.S., it would take a few years before the true beauty and worth of their post-Pet Sounds material would be properly appreciated. Surf's Up is a series of eclectic moments that reaches transcendence in the final songs, where three of Brian Wilson's finest spread their harmonies around. The title track had been kicking around since the Smile sessions and is the album's most ambitious—and successful—moment. "A Day In the Life Of A Tree" allows Al Jardine, Van Dyke Parks and the song's co-writer, Jack Rieley, to voice Brian's powerful sentiments. "'Til I Die" is simply haunting. The band's "pop" material had become so artful and sophisticated that it confused listeners looking for the group's famous quick hooks and bouncy grooves. Even the more immediately accessible material here has an undertow of high concept and weirdness. Bruce Johnston's "Disney Girls" is luscious. "Don't Go Near The Water" gets crazy. And Mike Love's "Student Demonstration Time" is a freaky jam.
- Though the Beach Boys are best-known for their classic summer-fun hits, the band's resident genius, Brian Wilson, sculpted several underrated albums of complex, inspired orchestrated pop. 1970's Sunflower represents a true group effort, with each member pitching in. Harmonies flourish, co-writings are strong, and Dennis Wilson and Bruce Johnston emerge with some of the album's most touching moments. Bruce Johnston's "Deirdre" evokes memories of the old days, while updating the sound and groove with a smart yet elaborate arrangement. His "Tears In the Morning" takes the Beach Boys' classic sound and gives it an early-70s feel. "At My Window" retains a psychedelic flavour. Dennis' "Got To Know The Woman" provides an upbeat, vintage rock 'n' roll sound, while "Forever" ranks among the group's finest ballads. Brian and Mike Love join forces for the vocal weave of "All I Wanna Do," while Carl Wilson and Brian are in fine spirits for "This Whole World." The U.K. press and fans have always recognised the band's achievements, while, ironically, their U.S. counterparts were slower to discover the brilliance in their own backyard.
- 100 Best Albums No matter where you’re at in life, stepping into Pet Sounds can feel like stepping back into childhood. The colours are brighter, the scale bigger. There are moments of wonder and excitement (“Wouldn’t It Be Nice”) and moments of profound pain (“I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times”). Brian Wilson’s arrangements brought a complexity to rock music that nobody had heard before, but they also captured a simple, poetic point: When you’re young, everything hits with the weight of an orchestra. Wilson was a child of Southern California and Disney, of the great suburban myths that shaped America after World War II: The joke is that his brother Dennis was the only Beach Boy who actually surfed, while the rest just held boards to sell a story. At a mid-’60s moment when bands like The Velvet Underground were starting to use pop to explore rough, bracing realities, Pet Sounds reached back to the fantasies of ’30s pop and ’50s exotica, of old Hollywood and early television. And as sacred as the album’s mood is (Wilson called his next project, Smile, a “teenage symphony to God”), it makes sense that its co-lyricist, Tony Asher, had come from advertising: No matter how ambitious he got, he also knew he needed to project something neat, immediate and universal. Of all Pet Sounds’ legacies, the most profound is the idea that pop music—something accessible and extroverted—could be used to express deep, internal worlds. Wilson’s experiments with LSD aren’t obvious in any garish, cartoonish way. But you can hear him trying to excavate feelings buried so deep in the underbrush of shame and memory that seeking them out is an adventure on par with any. Pet Sounds is a reminder that the core of courage is innocence, and that just because you can’t change the past doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.
- The Beach Boys' second album of 1965 marries the melodic sophistication of its predecessor, The Beach Boys Today!, with the carefree spirit of their earlier singles. The results practically make for a greatest-hits album, featuring classic, upbeat pop tunes like "California Girls", "Help Me, Rhonda" and "Let Him Run Wild". The Beatlesesque rocker "Girl Don't Tell Me" and the lush, romantic ballad "Summer Means New Love" mark the poles of Brian Wilson's increasingly wide-ranging style, whilst the sardonic "I'm Bugged at My Ol’ Man" showcases his humorous side.
- On their first album after Brian Wilson stopped touring with the group, The Beach Boys made a clean break with their fun-in-the-sun past. The mature, questioning first single, "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)", sets Today!'s emotional tone, but it's the lovely string of ballads that showcase Wilson's ever-increasing melodic strength and self-confidence: "Please Let Me Wonder" and "She Knows Me Too Well" are among his finest songs. Elsewhere, the jubilant "Dance, Dance, Dance" proves that the innocent fun hadn't stopped.
- 1978
- 2022
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Artist Playlists
- These Californians transformed American pop into an art form.
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- Their sound didn't just spring from the ether.
- Follow the legacy left behind by one of the most influential bands ever.
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
Live Albums
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About The Beach Boys
In their early-’60s inception, The Beach Boys were nothing less than the sound of America. But over the next half-century, they’d come to symbolise its divided soul and the psychic tug-of-war between flag-waving optimism and darker truths. After forming in the L.A. suburb of Hawthorne in 1961, brothers Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and high-school pal Al Jardine defined the sunny California fantasy forevermore with wave-riding soundtracks like “Surfin’ U.S.A.” As the surf fad dried up, Brian expanded his primary-songwriter role to become the band’s all-knowing creative director and, on mid-’60s delights like “California Girls”, he refashioned The Beach Boys into the male equivalent of the girl groups ensconced within Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. Brian’s auterist vision—and his increasingly poignant songcraft—achieved peak clarity with 1966’s chamber-pop masterpiece Pet Sounds, the album that inspired The Beatles to venture into Pepperland and heralded rock’s elevation into high art. But Brian’s obsessive tendencies dovetailed with his worsening mental health (spurred by the lingering trauma of an abusive upbringing), resulting in the abandonment of Pet Sounds’ would-be grandiose follow-up, Smile (which was strip-mined for 1967’s loopy psych-pop pastiche Smiley Smile). As Brian entered an extended period of seclusion, the band took a more democratic approach in the studio, resulting in a series of irreverent, eclectic records—epitomized by 1971’s self-effacing Surf’s Up—that were proudly out of step with the dominant acid-rock trends of the day, but whose inspired fusion of soul, psychedelia, and orchestral pop would be later reclaimed by future generations of home-recording indie savants. The subsequent decades have seen a whirlwind procession of lineup changes, legal infighting, tragedies (the deaths of Dennis and Carl in 1983 and 1998, respectively), and surprise late-career novelty hits (1988’s Club Med perennial “Kokomo”). But the eternally youthful promise embedded in their music ensures that, when you hear a Beach Boys classic, the American Dream feels real all over again.
- ORIGIN
- Hawthorne, CA, United States
- FORMED
- 1961
- GENRE
- Pop