Brian Wilson's best songs exhibit his impact and influence on pop music and culture
It's difficult to accurately measure the impact that Brian Wilson had on music and pop culture. But the widespread tributes pouring in for the genius singer, songwriter and producer of The Beach Boys — who has died aged 82 — gives us a fair barometer.
Sir Elton John said Wilson was his "biggest influence". Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood said "anyone with a musical bone in their body" should be grateful for his music. Sean Lennon, son of The Beatles' John Lennon, hailed Wilson as "our American Mozart."
Indeed, there's a convincing case to be made that the Beach Boys brainchild's impact on pop music as we know it is as important and influential as classical masters like Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach. His friendly competition during the late 1960s with The Beatles alone cements his status as a founding sonic architect for contemporary music.
Wilson experienced a lot of tragedy in his life. He long struggled with mental health issues, depression, drug abuse, and dementia. But even at its strangest, his undeniable melodies and boundary-pushing production retained a clarity of craft, character and, frequently, sheer exuberance that many have striven to achieve.
There's a vast, compelling catalogue to discover and dig into, spanning feel-good sun n' surf singalongs to psychedelic, emotional opuses. But here are five songs to get you started and by which to remember the legendary Brian Wilson.
Besides middle brother Dennis Wilson, none of The Beach Boys could actually surf. But that was no obstacle to them moulding the surf-rock archetype.
The first in a string of US Top 10 hits for the group, 'Surfin' USA' weaponised doo-wop harmonies, youthful vigour and the structure of Chuck Berry's 'Sweet Little Sixteen' into a summertime anthem that mythologised their native California.
An album of the same name followed a few months after 'Surfin' U.S.A.' stormed American radio and charts, exhibiting Brian Wilson's rapidly developing skills as a producer and arranger of the Boys' signature voices.
The grand centrepiece of 1966 masterpiece Pet Sounds, this moving ballad makes complex structure and melodic and harmonic movement sound effortless.
French horns, sleigh bells, strings — the rich instrumentation enhances what is arguably Carl Wilson's most divine vocal performance on a tender yet unconventional love song. From the layered vocals to the closing choral loop, 'God Only Knows' reaches for the sonic heavens but is rooted in very human emotions.
The lyrics display Brian Wilson's growth, exhibiting a complexity and maturity nobody could've predicted from teenage songs about chasing girls and catching waves. In just two verses, the words convey how desperation and anguish can exist on the same spectrum as devotion, and euphoria.
The song is one of Paul McCartney's favourites, and the heartbreaking "choker" formed part of what inspired The Beatles 1967 opus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which, along with Pet Sounds, forever changed what was possible in pop and rock music. God only knows what we'd be without them.
A psychedelic orchestral odyssey disguised as a pocket-sized gem, 'Good Vibrations' was a monumental undertaking.
By the mid-60s, Wilson's increased substance abuse led to grander, weirder experimentation in the studio. He spent eight months, across multiple studios, cutting-and-pasting together sounds and ideas at the estimated cost of $US70,000. For years, it was the most expensive song ever recorded.
The process caused escalated friction within the Beach Boys, frustrated with Wilson's indulgent tinkering and recruiting The Wrecking Crew, a crack team of LA session musicians. The results were more than worth it.
For all its moving parts and shape-shifting movements, the concept is simple: love at first sight. The buzz of romance sparks a swirling sonic ecstasy of elements rarely heard in pop songs — the ghostly wobble of electro-theremin, throbbing cellos, and the sticky yet sacred web formed by the vocal "excitations".
There aren't many people who suffered so much bad mojo quite like Brian Wilson but, in 'Good Vibrations', he bottled bliss into a composition whose charm is as potent on the hundredth spin as the first.
1964's 'I Get Around', an impossible-to-resist ode to cruising on a Saturday night, might have been the first Beach Boys song to top the charts. But it was the single's B-side, 'Don't Worry Baby', that really demonstrated Brian Wilson's artistry; the vulnerable Yin to that song's macho Yang.
Wilson originally wrote 'Don't Worry Baby' for The Ronettes, as a follow-up to 'Be My Baby', their 1963 hit featuring Phil Spector's patented Wall of Sound technique. (He'd listened to it "more than 1,000 times" according to a 2013 interview). Ronnie Spector and co. turned it down. Her loss was the Beach Boys' gain.
Fronted by Wilson's sterling falsetto, the titular chorus forms the soothing words of a girlfriend consoling her boyfriend before a fateful drag race. There's a subtle undercurrent of anxiety mixed with longing, smoothed over by the timeless production: the springy rake of guitars against the warm rhythm section, and those honeyed vocal harmonies humming with longing.
There's a brilliant irony to the title track of The Beach Boys' 1971 album. It suggests a return to their sunny roots, but instead it's a melancholy, multi-movement number built on abstract lyrics with zero choruses to be found along its introspective shoreline.
One of the earliest songs Wilson wrote with long-term collaborator Van Dyke Parks, the self-aware 'Surf's Up' stitches literary references and a quote from an 1802 Wordsworth poem ("the child is father to the man") into an ambitious suite that pairs a delicate Carl Wilson vocal with a re-assembling of Brian's original 1966 take, recorded five years earlier.
Those latter, abandoned sessions formed part of a mythical follow-up to Pet Sounds, known as Smile, which Brian Wilson eventually finished and released as a solo album in 2004. The 1971 version is essential but there's a refined beauty to the 2004 rendition.
'Surf's Up' would come to symbolise the demise of both the 1960s 'Summer of Love' innocence and the Beach Boys' golden era, before their ringleader was lost to decades of personal turmoil. But it's easy to forget and forgive all that and lose yourself in the song's stunning, stark beauty — a reminder of how Brian Wilson deserves to be remembered for the contributions he gave the world, and not necessarily the difficulties it filled his life with.
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