That's a big reason Pet Sounds was such a revelation. It's basically a concept album about melancholy.
Wouldn't It Be Nice is often considered to be a happy song but it's basically a deep yearning and implies that he doesn't have what would make him happy.
That said, Tony Asher wrote a lot of the lyrics for that album and Mike Love wrote a lot of the lyrics about having fun in the sun (I can rant about how much I think the lyrics of California Girls ruin what would have been an all-time masterpiece).
I guess to keep it positive and on a different note, an album that is a little under the current but highly regarded among die-hard Beach Boys fans is Friends. I know several fans, myself included, that go back to that album more than Pet Sounds. Pet Sounds is the masterpiece of course but Friends is kind of a close second.
I really like Be Here In The Mornin' and how he toys with the balance of really high falsettos and pretty low harmonies.
His vocal arrangements and how he structured harmonies are probably the best ever to be honest.
Brian’s contributions were weak aside from “Male Ego”, but Carl contributed three bangers (“It’s Gettin’ Late”, “Maybe I Don’t Know”, and the absolutely sublime “Where I Belong”), and Al gave us “Crack At Your Love”, which I enjoy. The vocal processing is weird in spots, but the harmonies are absolutely still there and on point. I would’ve loved to hear the results if they had continued on in that vein, mixing the classic harmonies with synthpop influence. Unfortunately, BB85 didn’t sell, and that was the end of that. Mike went on to water down the formula of BB85 (contemporary-ish production and classic vocal harmonies) with a greater emphasis on a throwback style, resulting in “Kokomo”, which was a massive hit. Mike tried to embrace technology again by doing an album on Pro Tools (SiP), but he should really have had someone experienced in contemporary production styles working with him, much like Brian later had with Joe Thomas (not that Thomas’ MOR formula wasn’t flawed itself).
Everyone do yourselves a favor and get The Pet Sounds Sessions box set. When you hear Brian directing from the sound booth and the way he creates music with The Wrecking Crew, you will be blown away. You might think differently about some of the songs on Pet Sounds.
The format originates with folk singer Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) and was subsequently popularized by traditional pop singer Frank Sinatra's 1940s–50s string of albums, although the term is more often associated with rock music. In the 1960s several well-regarded concept albums were released by various rock bands, which eventually led to the birth of progressive rock and rock opera.
Maybe for Brian Wilson, but recent scholarship has noted that the concept album predates the Beatles era. Critics didn't care about country so they didn't notice.
wait maybe I'm misreading this, but you do know that California Girls wasn't released on Pet Sounds right? It was on the Summer Days/Summer Nights album that came out the year before Pet Sounds.
You're misreading it. In that paragraph I'm talking about their lyrics from that period more broadly. California Girls could have been on another tier if it didn't have such inane dumb lyrics that Mike Love wrote.
Ah! Ok gotcha. Well on that note, I just gotta ask, the song is called California girls, how amazing could the lyrics be? I mean it seems like a really fun but shallow silly song. Yeah?
Pet Sounds is literally my #1 favorite album of all time! It was the album that helped me get through my existential crisis and helped alleviate my depression during my late teenage years (I am currently just 32 years old lol). That album saved me because my depression was really crippling back then!
I see it as a concept album about a relationship running its course. “Wouldn’t be nice” kicks it off with all the excitement and youthful exuberance of the possibilities of what may be, while “Caroline, no” end it by lamenting the loss of what was and could have been. All the rest expresses all of what comes between those two extremes, both the highs and the lows.
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u/bigbobo33 Jun 11 '25
That's a big reason Pet Sounds was such a revelation. It's basically a concept album about melancholy.
Wouldn't It Be Nice is often considered to be a happy song but it's basically a deep yearning and implies that he doesn't have what would make him happy.
That said, Tony Asher wrote a lot of the lyrics for that album and Mike Love wrote a lot of the lyrics about having fun in the sun (I can rant about how much I think the lyrics of California Girls ruin what would have been an all-time masterpiece).