Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson dead at 82
Brian Wilson started the surf rock group The Beach Boys
Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys founder and lead songwriter, has died, his family confirmed on social media. He was 82.
“We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away,” they wrote. “We are at a loss for words right now.”
They added, “Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world.”
Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson died at the age of 82. (Getty Images)
Circumstances surrounding his death were not immediately provided.
The Beach Boys began with Brian and his two brothers, Carl and Dennis. Eventually, they were joined by their cousin, Mike Love, and a friend from school, Al Jardine. The band is one of the most commercially successful groups of all time, selling over 100 million records worldwide. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
In January 1963, The Beach Boys recorded their first top-10 single, “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” which began their long run of highly successful recording efforts.
“I love the whole ‘Pet Sounds’ record,” Wilson said. “I got a full vision out of it in the studio. After that, I said to myself that I had completed the greatest album I will ever produce. I knew it. It was a spiritual record. I wanted to grow musically, to expand our horizons and do something that people would love, and I did it.”
The Beach Boys formed in 1961, and became one of the most commercially successful bands of all time. (Robin Platzer/Getty Images)
The Beach Boys rose to fame in the ’60s with hits such as “God Only Knows” and “Good Vibrations.” (Michael Ochs)
Last year, Wilson was placed under a conservatorship following a dementia diagnosis.
The diagnosis, coupled with the death of Brian’s wife, Melinda Wilson, led his family and doctors to make the decision.
Following the passing of Brian’s beloved wife Melinda, after careful consideration and consultation among Brian, his seven children, Gloria Ramos and Brian’s doctors (and consistent with family processes put in place by Brian and Melinda), we are confirming that longtime Wilson family representatives LeeAnn Hard and Jean Sievers will serve as Brian’s co-conservators of the person,” the family said in a statement to Fox News Digital at the time.
“This decision was made to ensure that there will be no extreme changes to the household and Brian and the children living at home will be taken care of and remain in the home where they are cared for by Gloria Ramos and the wonderful team at the house who have been in place for many years helping take care of the family,” the statement continued. “Brian will be able to enjoy all of his family and friends and continue to work on current projects as well as participate in any activities he chooses.”
Wilson was born in Inglewood, California, and played with The Beach Boys for more than 60 years. (Getty Images)
According to a doctor’s declaration submitted to the court, Wilson was unable to self-administer his own medication or adhere to his medication scheduling. He also struggled with his ability to control his mood or emotions.
Wilson was previously placed under a conservatorship in the ’90s after being involved with psychologist Eugene Landy.
Landy became a live-in psychologist and business partner. Family members said Landy over-medicated Wilson based on a paranoid schizophrenic diagnosis. This, along with other worrisome issues, caused a conservatorship request by the family to separate Wilson from the troubling doctor. source
Brian Wilson, the musical genius behind the Beach Boys, dies at 82
Brian Wilson, the musical savant who scripted a defining Southern California soundtrack with the Beach Boys before being pulled down by despair and depression in full public view, has died. He was 82.
Wilson’s family announced his death Wednesday morning on Facebook. “We are at a loss for words right now,” the post said.
“Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize we are sharing our grief with the world,” said the statement, which was also shared on Instagram and the musician’s website.
The statement didn’t reveal a cause of death. Wilson died more than a year after it was revealed he was diagnosed with dementia and placed under a conservatorship in May 2024. For decades, Wilson battled mental health issues and drug addiction.
“The world mourns a genius today, and we grieve for the loss of our cousin, our friend, and our partner in a great musical adventure,” the Beach Boys said in a statement on Wednesday. “Brian Wilson wasn’t just the heart of The Beach Boys — he was the soul of our sound. The melodies he dreamed up and the emotions he poured into every note changed the course of music forever. “
The group added: “Together, we gave the world the American dream of optimism, joy, and a sense of freedom — music that made people feel good, made them believe in summer and endless possibilities. We are heartbroken by his passing.”
Elton John, the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, Mick Fleetwood and Nancy Sinatra were among the artists who remembered Wilson on social media. Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge and California Gov. Gavin Newsom also paid tribute to Wilson and his contributions to music.
“Wilson fundamentally changed modern music, helping make the Beach Boys not only the defining American band of their era, but also the California band to this day,” Newsom said in a statement. “He captured the mystique and magic of California, carrying it around the world and across generations.”
Roundly regarded as a genius in the music studio, Wilson wrote more than three dozen Top 40 hits, bright summertime singalongs that were radio candy in the early 1960s, anthems to the surf, sun and souped-up cars.
In an era when rock groups were typically force-fed material written by established musicians and seasoned songwriters, Wilson broke the mold by writing, arranging and producing a stream of hits that seemed to flow effortlessly from the studio.
Riding the crest of peppy, radio-friendly songs like “Surfer Girl,” “California Girls” and “Don’t Worry Baby,” Capital Records gave Wilson almost unchecked control over the group’s output. The label came to hold Wilson in such high regard that it even allowed him to record where he wished rather than use the cavernous Capitol studios in Hollywood that the Beach Boy leader felt were suitable only for orchestras.
“There are points where he did 37 takes of the same song,” said William McKeen, who taught a rock ‘n’ roll history course at the University of Florida. “One track will be someone singing ‘doo, doo, doo’ and the next will be ‘da, da, da.’ Then you hear them all together and, my God, it’s a complex piece of music.
“And he heard it all along.”
In many ways, the studio became Wilson’s primary instrument, just as it had been Phil Spector’s. As his confidence grew, Wilson’s compositions became more majestic and complex as he pieced together a far-reaching catalog of music while his bandmates toured the world without him — just as he preferred.
When the group returned from a tour in Asia in 1966, they discovered that Wilson had created an entire album during their absence. He had written the songs — many with guest lyricist Tony Asher, used the highly regarded Wrecking Crew session musicians to record with him and regarded the product as essentially a solo album. All his bandmates needed to do, he explained, was add their voices.
The songs on “Pets Sounds” were achingly beautiful and introspective. Some were melancholy, wistful, and brimming with nostalgia. Gone were the waves, the sunshine and the blond-haired girls that populated his earlier work. They were replaced with interlocking songs that seemed to form a single piece of music.
His bandmates were dumbstruck. Mike Love, his cousin and lead singer of the group, told him the album would have been better had he had a bigger hand in its creation. “Stop f— with the formula,” he reportedly snapped. Other band members agreed that the songs seemed foreign compared with surefire crowd pleasers like “Surfin’ U.S.A” and “Dance, Dance, Dance.” But they relented, and the album was released.
Love, in a lengthy 2012 L.A. Times op-ed about his brittle relationship with Wilson, told the story far differently, however. He said he was an early champion of the album, wrote some of the songs, came up with the title and helped convince Capitol to get behind the record when the label dragged its feet.
Though “Pet Sounds” was the first Beach Boys recording not to go gold — at least not immediately — it was a virtual narcotic to critics and admirers. Paul McCartney said it was “the classic of the century” and, as the story goes, rallied the rest of the Beatles to record “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in response. Classical composer Leonard Bernstein declared Wilson a genius and one of America’s “most important musicians.”
As the years passed, the album became a treasured gem, saluted as one of the finest of the rock era and preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. Fifty years after it was released, it was still ranked as the second-best album of all time by both Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, topped only by “Sgt. Pepper’s.”
“Part of Brian Wilson’s genius was his ability to express great complexity within the frame of great simplicity,” wrote Anthony DeCurtis, an author and former Rolling Stone editor.
Then things fell apart.
For months, Wilson tinkered in the studio on an album with the working title “Smile” as anticipation built for what it might be and in what direction it might take rock, already shifting quickly in the dawn of the psychedelic era — music, drugs, lifestyle and all. Wilson said the album would be a “teenage symphony to God,” a piece of music so audacious it would unlock the straitjacket he felt was keeping pop music bland and predictable.
The first window into the album was “Good Vibrations,” a 3-minute, 35-second song that featured dramatic shifts in tone and mood with Wilson’s distinctive falsetto soaring above it all. It was an immediate commercial and critical success.
But it was also a disturbing sign of the madcap world Wilson now inhabited. Recordings for “Good Vibrations” stretched over seven months, the sonic blips and beeps he was trying to stitch together consumed 90 hours of tape and costs soared to nearly $75,000 — roughly $740,000 in 2025 valuation. All the while, musicians — some bandmates, others hired guns — filed in and out of four different studios as he searched for perfection.
Not everyone thought it was worth the effort for a single song.
“You had to play it about 90 bloody times to even hear what they were singing about,” complained Pete Townshend, the guitarist and songwriter for the Who. Spector — Wilson’s idol — said it felt “overproduced.” McCartney said it lacked the magic of “Pet Sounds.”
Wilson felt otherwise. When he finished the final mix on “Good Vibrations,” he said it left him with a feeling he’d never experienced.
“It was a feeling of exaltation. Artistic beauty. It was everything.”
The band toured again as Wilson continued work on “Smile,” an increasingly troubled project. He ordered members of a studio orchestra to wear fire gear and reportedly built a fire in the studio during a recording of “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” which was to be the album’s opening number. He turned to veteran recording artist Van Dyke Parks for help with the lyrics rather than wait for his bandmates to return.
When Love listened to the still-under-construction album, he dismissed it as “a whole album of Brian’s madness,” according to the Guardian. Parks, an admired lyricist with his own career to worry about, eventually walked away from the project, spooked by Wilson’s erratic behavior and what he saw as Love’s uncomfortable tendency to bully his cousin.
Whether it was the hostile reaction from his bandmates or the hopelessness of navigating the maze of half-finished songs and sonic fragments he’d created, Wilson put the whole thing aside. It would be decades before he revisited it.
“When we didn’t finish the album, a part of me was unfinished also, you know?” Wilson wrote in his 2016 memoir “I am Brian Wilson.” “Can you imagine leaving your masterpiece locked up in a drawer for almost 40 years?”
Love, who sued Wilson repeatedly through the years to get songwriting credit for dozens of songs he claimed he helped write, bristled at the suggestion that he had upended his cousin’s masterwork.
“What did I do? Why am I the villain?” Love wondered aloud in a lengthy 2016 profile in Rolling Stone. “How did it get to this?
And he took drugs by the bucketful.
He was public about his demons. He was mentally ill, he said, consumed with such depression that he couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time. He smoked pot, experimented with LSD and got through the day with a steady lineup of amphetamines, cocaine and sometimes heroin. A tall man, Wilson’s weight ballooned to more than 300 pounds, and when he did surface in public, he seemed withdrawn and distracted.
“I lost interest in writing songs,” he told The Times in a 1988 interview. “I lost the inspiration. I was too concerned with getting drugs to write songs.”
It all started in Hawthorne, where Wilson was born on June 20, 1942. The eldest of three boys, he grew up in suburban comfort not far from the beaches that would inspire so many of his early songs.
His father, Murry, was a musician and a machinist; his mother, Audree, a homemaker. Wilson went to Hawthorne High, where he played football and baseball. He earned an F for a composition he submitted in his music class, though decades later the school changed his grade to an A when administrators discovered the composition had become the Beach Boys’ first hit song, “Surfing.” School officials invited him to campus to accept their apology.
At home, he played the piano obsessively. He recalled hearing George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” when he was 4, lying on the floor of his grandmother’s house, mesmerized that the composer had captured both a city and an entire era in a single piece of music. He took accordion lessons but set the instrument aside after six weeks. His father, though, noticed his son had the ability to quickly repeat melodies on the piano.
“He was very clever and quick. I just fell in love with him,” Murry Wilson says in Peter Carlin’s “Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.”
In 1961, with his parents on vacation, Wilson, his brothers, Love and their friend Al Jardine rented guitars, a bass, drums and an amplifier with the food money their parents had left behind and staged a concert for their friends. When Murry Wilson returned home, he was more pleased than angered and encouraged the fledgling musicians to continue. Armed with a handful of songs, the Pendletones — named for the then-popular flannel shirts — began to play at school dances and parties. When they went into the studio to record, a producer changed the group’s name to the Beach Boys and never bothered to tell them.
If it all sounded sunny and carefree, Wilson didn’t remember it that way. He said his father was abusive and seemed to delight in humiliating him, typically in public. It was possible, he said, that his hearing problems stemmed from one of the times his father smacked him in the head.
“I was constantly afraid,” he told The Times in 2002. “That’s what I remember most: being nervous and afraid.”
When the Beach Boys became successful, Murry took over as their manager and increasingly took charge of their business affairs. When money was needed, he overrode his sons’ objections and sold off the band’s publishing company, believing the group had peaked. When the group went on the road, he went with them and fined his sons if they broke his rules — no booze, no profanity, no fraternizing with women. Finally, in 1964, Wilson and his brothers essentially fired their father. Never fully reconciled with his sons, Murry died of a heart attack in 1973.
To some observers, the riddle of Brian Wilson could not be fully explained by the drugs he took, the voices he heard or the depression that smothered him like a blanket. It was more than that.
“My own theory is that he was never able, never quite allowed, to become an adult — and that this, more than anything else, has been the story of his life, and of his band,” wrote Andrew Romano in a lengthy 2012 Newsweek article.
An abusive father, a cousin he regarded as a bully and ultimately a psychiatrist who sought to control his every move, his every thought — all appeared to have a hand in making Wilson who he was.
And then there was Eugene Landy, a colorful character by any measurement. He wore orange sunglasses, drove a Maserati with a license plate reading “HEADDOC,” sported a Rod Stewart-style haircut and practiced a brand of pop psychology that was regarded by some as revolutionary. Others, though, saw Landy as a Svengali-like figure, a man who could make Wilson appear to be on the road to recovery while bleeding him of every resource he had.
Hired by Wilson’s first wife, Marilyn, in 1976, Landy had his first meeting with his new client in Wilson’s bedroom closet, the only place where the musician said he felt safe. Landy gradually won Wilson’s trust and, believing in 24-hour therapy, moved in with the musician.
The results were immediate. Wilson shed weight, quit taking street drugs and rejoined the Beach Boys on stage for the group’s 15th anniversary. For a man who was so paranoid that he reportedly refused to brush his teeth or shower for fear that blood would gush from the faucet, it was a night-and-day change.
But it was short-lived, and Landy was fired when the Beach Boys’ management balked at his fees, which hovered around $35,000 a month — around $345,000 in 2025 valuation.
Without Landy, Wilson quickly regressed — back on drugs, overeating, retreating to his bedroom. He separated from his wife and grew apart from his daughters, Carnie and Wendy. Then with a flourish, Landy returned and — armed with a full team of nutritionists, assistants and caregivers — doubled down on his around-the-clock therapy.
Landy concluded Wilson suffered from a schizoid personality with manic depressive features — introverted, painfully shy, unable to show emotion. Left untreated, Landy said, Wilson would inevitably swing freely between delusional highs and nearly suicidal lows. He loaded Wilson up on medications — lithium, Xanax, Halcion, among others.
So involved was Landy in Wilson’s every move that in 1988 when the musician released “Brian Wilson” — his first solo album and his best effort in years — Landy was listed as the executive producer and given co-writing credit on five of the 11 songs. Landy’s girlfriend was given co-writing credit on three other songs. Landy became Wilson’s manager, formed a business interest with the musician to share in any profits from recordings, films and books and tried to become executor of Wilson’s estate.
Landy was ousted for good when the state attorney general’s office opened an investigation into his relationship with Wilson, probing accusations that he had prescribed drugs without a medical license and had financially exploited his famous client.
In 1989, Landy pleaded guilty to a single charge of unlawfully prescribing drugs, surrendered his license and moved to Hawaii, where he died of lung cancer in 2006.
Wilson, who rarely said anything negative about anyone, could find little kind to say about Landy in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone. “I thought he was my friend, but he was a very f— up man.”
Despite the tumult, Wilson kept recording and performing, sometimes showing glimpses of his former self, yet always doomed to comparisons with his earlier work.
In 2017, Times rock critic Randy Lewis observed that Wilson seemed chipper and content during a leg of the “Pet Sounds Live” tour at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. His voice, once shriveled by years of smoking and other abuses, was “assertive and confident,” Lewis wrote.
Two years later, though, Wilson postponed a leg of his “Greatest Hits” tour to focus on his mental health.
“It is no secret that I have been living with mental illness for many decades,” he wrote in a tender apology to ticketholders. “I’ve been struggling with stuff in my head and saying things I don’t mean, and I don’t know why.”
A few snippets of the album had been used on “Smiley Smile,” a hurry-up recording in 1967 that the Beach Boys recorded to meet contractual demands, and “Surf’s Up,” a 1971 album built around a song of the same name that Wilson wrote for “Smile.”
Nearly 30 years later, an L.A. musician named Darian Sahanaja asked Wilson whether he’d be interested in revisiting “Smile.” The two had come to know each other on the road when Wilson sat in with Sahanaja’s group, the Wondermints.
The master tapes were unlocked, and Sahanaja said he downloaded the tracks and unconnected song fragments, aware that he was handling the very material that had nearly driven its author mad.
As the two worked on a laptop, the harmonies and unwritten connective tissue seemed to return to Wilson, Sahanaja said. They smoothed out transitions, changed tempos to help connect songs and phoned Parks when they were unable to make out lyrics. If he couldn’t remember a passage, Parks came up with substitute language.
In February 2004, Wilson’s version of “Smile” finally premiered at London’s Royal Festival Hall. With Wilson on stage, seated at a piano, and Parks in the audience, the crowd roared thunderously as a song cycle that had become nearly mythical in its absence was finally unveiled.
“I’m at peace with it,” Wilson said later, smiling.
Wilson is survived by six children, including daughters Carnie and Wendy, who made up two-thirds of the Grammy-nominated pop vocal group Wilson Philips. He is preceded in death by his wife, Melinda, who died in January 2024. His brother Dennis drowned in 1983 while diving in Marina Del Rey, and Carl, his other brother, died of lung cancer in 1998. source
The 12 Best Brian Wilson Songs
12. “Surf City” – Surf City and Other Swingin’ Cities (1963)
Written by Brian Wilson and Jan Berry
The Beach Boys were the first band to give a major voice to surf music, helping spread the surf craze nationally with songs like “Surfin’”, “Surfin’ Safari”, and “Surfin’ USA”. But the first surf song to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — though written by Wilson — was released by Jan & Dean. The song was also Wilson’s first time topping the charts, causing some friction within the Beach Boys over him giving away what could have been their first number one.
Though Jan & Dean brought a bit more star power to the recording, the song is Wilson through and through. It opens with a vocal hook of “Two girls for every boy” with an unusual chord progression outside of the main key, a trick Wilson continued to employ throughout the first few years of the Beach Boys’ career on songs like “Catch a Wave” and “Hawaii”. And, of course, the vocals throughout, with call and response harmonies and Wilson’s signature falsetto counterpoint in the chorus, are distinctly Beach Boys in style. “Surf City” is not the most interesting song in Wilson’s catalog, but it’s the strongest of his early surf songs, and as his first number one, it maintains a special place in his songwriting legacy.
![The Beach Boys - Surfin' Medley (Surf City/Surfin' Safari/Surfin' USA) [Live 1999]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi_webp/TpK9NE6fTTs/hqdefault.webp)
11. “Darlin’” – Wild Honey (1967)
Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love
“Darlin’” was almost another song that got away from the Beach Boys. After the collapse of SMiLE and Wilson’s decreasing mental stability, the Beach Boys were falling out of relevancy in 1967 as the Beatles passed them by as pop innovators and newer, hipper, sounds were coming into the mainstream. At the time, Wilson started working with a new group called Redwood, who would later become Three Dog Night; he wrote and produced a song of theirs titled “Thinkin’ ‘Bout You Baby”. But when Mike Love and the other Beach Boys heard the recording, they convinced Wilson to give them the song instead. With new lyrics and a revamped song structure, “Darlin’” was recorded for their Wild Honey album and became a modest hit for the group.
Dubious origins aside, it’s one of Wilson’s strongest works for the late ’60s. It embraces a horn-driven Motown soul sound, which works surprisingly well for the group’s vocal harmony style. Carl Wilson’s voice has the right kind of energy to make the lyrics come alive and Wilson’s arrangement ensures that even with the new direction, “Darlin’” still sounds like a Beach Boys track. Most importantly, though, the melody remains one of Wilson’s most elegant to date.
10. “Don’t Let Her Know She’s an Angel” – Sweet Insanity/Gettin’ in Over My Head (1991)/(2004)
Written by Brian Wilson
“Don’t Let Her Know She’s an Angel” was originally recorded for Sweet Insanity, an album Wilson was working on in 1991 until the tapes were allegedly stolen. Five of the songs, including “Don’t Let Her Know”, were later re-recorded for Wilson’s 2004 album Gettin’ in Over My Head. In his spotty post-Beach Boys solo career, the song stands out as a moment of true brilliance. It has all the harmonic complexity, melodic beauty, and deeply-personal vulnerability that makes Wilson’s writing so special.
The Sweet Insanity version is filled with dense synth arrangements and programmed drums, an unusual but welcome aesthetic for Wilson. The officially released version returns the song to the chamber-pop style that is more familiar for Wilson, with lush strings and flutes accentuating his intricate web of vocals. He sings about feeling insecure in the beginning of a relationship. The dramatic and passionate music captures his intense emotions and anxieties. As a late-career gem, “Don’t Let Her Know She’s an Angel” stands out as one of Wilson’s most sophisticated songs.
9. “Isn’t It Time” – That’s Why God Made the Radio (2012)
Written by Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Joe Thomas, Larry Millas, and Jim Peterik
To coincide with the group’s 50th anniversary, the Beach Boys reunited for their first album of new material since 1992’s Summer in Paradise. It was also the first time Wilson had worked with the group since 1988’s Still Cruising, and the first time original member David Marks had appeared on a Beach Boys album since 1963’s Little Deuce Coupe.
The album is a mixed bag, with most of the songs feeling stale and overstuffed, but a few tracks shine through. “Isn’t It Time” has an exciting vitality that makes it one of Wilson’s most memorable late-career tracks.
Driven by pounding piano and ukulele chords grooving with syncopated drums and handclaps, “Isn’t It Time” reminisces on the past and asks, “Isn’t it time we get ready again? / Isn’t it time we go steady again?” Much like their 1968 nostalgia-baiting single “Do It Again”, “Isn’t It Time” pushes the group forward in an exciting way by looking backward. The lead vocal is split between Wilson, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, and Mike Love, giving the song a communal spirit and reminding us how powerful their voices are when combined together.
8. “The Little Girl I Once Knew” (1965)
Written by Brian Wilson
Though “The Little Girl I Once Knew” was a decent hit in its time, its status as a standalone single not included on an original Beach Boys album may account for its fading legacy. This is tragic, because it’s the perfect transition track from early Beach Boys to Pet Sounds-era experimentation. Like many of the songs on Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), “The Little Girl I Once Knew” mixes an up-tempo summer sensibility with unusual arrangements and harmonies. Most notably, there is a two-measure pause before each chorus, occupied only by the ringing out of a single vibraphone note. The pause makes the track distinct, and it prevented many radio stations from embracing it, fearing the few seconds of dead air during their broadcasts.
The lyrics of the song may have held it back from being as universally appealing as the similar-sounding “California Girls”, too. Whereas “California Girls” has its problems with objectification, it still comes across as inclusive and jubilant. “The Little Girl I Once Knew” feels more predatory in its excitement for a young girl who’s growing up before your eyes. Still, the intricate arrangement, powerful layers of vocals, and distinctive pre-chorus pause make it a strong stand-out song.
7. “Good Vibrations” – SMiLE/Smiley Smile (1966)
Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love
“Good Vibrations” was recorded in 21 recording sessions over seven months in four different recording studios, costing up to $75,000. This made it not only the most expensive single recorded to date but also the most ambitious. Wilson’s approach to the song, composing small sections that would later be assembled together in a sort of collage, proved to be effective for “Good Vibrations”.
The song was dubbed a “pocket symphony” by publicist Derek Taylor for its contrasting “movements”. Though this compositional process would eventually be the downfall of Wilson’s failed masterpiece SMiLE, “Good Vibrations” continues to be one of the most beloved songs of the ’60s, in spite of — or because of, depending on who you ask — its bizarre structure.
With a theremin hook, prominent cellos, and a bass harmonica, “Good Vibration” is one of Wilson’s most distinct sounding productions. Its influence on the ensuing psychedelic and progressive rock movements can’t be overstated, but its legacy as a pop hit is impressive as well. “Good Vibrations” changed the way a pop record could be made, the way a pop record could sound, and the lyrics a pop record could have. For a band remembered most for fun-in-the-sun surf and car songs, “Good Vibrations” serves as a reminder that the Beach Boys were also one of the most innovative and boundary-pushing groups of their day.
6. “Surf’s Up” – SMiLE/Surf’s Up (1967)/(1971)
Written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks
Even more than “Good Vibrations”, “Surf’s Up” was designed to be the true centerpiece of SMiLE. In some respects, it is the album’s most straightforward song. “Surf’s Up” is elaborate and multi-sectioned, but not filled with eccentric arrangements or sudden shifts in aesthetic. It can easily be reduced to just vocals and piano, as it was presented on Leonard Bernstein’s TV special, Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution.
Stripped to its essentials, it’s still an elegant, sophisticated piece of pop perfection. Van Dyke Parks’s lyrics are cryptic and beautiful. They flow out of Wilson’s ethereal melody in a seeming stream of consciousness fashion. Obtuse and expressionistic, they explore ideas of faith, spirituality, and enlightenment. Wilson’s music perfectly captures both the confessional quality and the postmodern imagery of Parks’s poetry. His warm chords and ornate melodies recall contemporary art music more than pop. “Surf’s Up” may not be Wilson’s most accessible song, but in many ways, it’s his most beautiful.
5. “Don’t Worry Baby” – Shut Down Vol. 2 (1964)
Written by Brian Wilson and Roger Christian
The early Beach Boys recordings were notable for their mixing of Chuck Berry’s rock ‘n’ roll with the tight jazz vocal harmonies of the Four Freshman. But when Wilson began incorporating Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound production, it set the group on their path to the studio experimentation of Pet Sounds and SMiLE. “Don’t Worry Baby” is one of the earliest examples of Spector’s influence on Wilson, as the latter intended it to be a spiritual sequel to the producer’s hit with the Ronettes, “Be My Baby”. Alhough “Don’t Worry Baby” may never be as iconic as “Be My Baby”, it remains one of the Beach Boys’ more beautiful and masterful songs.
Lyrically, the tune betrays masculine anxiety seen in many ’60s Beach Boys tracks which is particularly interesting. Before the start of the song, the narrator has challenged another man to a dangerous drag race because of his male pride, but he now seeks comfort in his girlfriend’s embrace. As the song shifts keys from E major to F-sharp major for the chorus, the perspective shifts to his girlfriend as she tells him, “Don’t worry, baby / Everything will be alright.” With lush strings, loud drums, and stacks of harmonies, Wilson manages to take the Spector sound and begin to make it his own on “Don’t Worry Baby”.
4. “Please Let Me Wonder” – The Beach Boys Today! (1965)
Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love
By the time Wilson was working on The Beach Boys Today!, he had fully developed his studio techniques and arranging style to what we’d see the following year on Pet Sounds. “Please Let Me Wonder” is the most shining example of the kind of sound that would follow. As the story goes, it was the first song Wilson composed under the influence of marijuana, and the expansive sound goes along with his shifting personal and musical perspective.
Much like “Don’t Worry Baby”, Wilson embraces his insecurities in “Please Let Me Wonder”. His character begs the girl he loves not to tell him how she feels: “Please let me wonder,” he sings, “If I’ve been the one you love / If I’m who you’re dreaming of.” The song contains some of his most dense and powerful vocal arrangements, as well as a lush palette of instrumental color created by layers of guitars, organs, and punctuations by a vibraphone. “Please Let Me Wonder” not only creates the template for the introspective songs of Pet Sounds but stands on its own as one of Wilson’s most personal and affecting ballads.
3. “The Warmth of the Sun” – Shut Down Vol. 2 (1964)
Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love
There’s some debate over exactly when “The Warmth of the Sun” was written. It may have been right before, right after, or even during John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The truth of its origin aside though, the song carries a spiritual connection to the tragedy, even if the lyrics do not directly address the event. Rather, Mike Love’s powerful words describe finding inner strength in times of heartbreak. The lyrics are emotionally resonant and strongly inspirational, in addition to being more elegant and poetic than Love’s lyrics tended to be for the group.
Matched with Wilson’s music, the song is as great as a lovelorn ballad can be. The unusual chords, shifting keys from C major to E-flat major to C minor to A major and finally back to C major to cycle through again, capture the longing of the words Wilson sings. His melody balances the frailty of his soaring falsetto with the steadfast optimism of the “warmth of the sun” within him. Many of Wilson’s early songs are remarkable for their wild complexity underneath a sheen of catchy, simple pop, and “The Warmth of the Sun” is perhaps the preeminent example of this dichotomy. To a casual listener, the song goes down as smooth as any other early ’60s pop ballad, but the layers of expressive chords and intricate vocals underneath add a richness to “The Warmth of the Sun” that only Wilson can achieve.
2. “God Only Knows” – Pet Sounds (1966)
Written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher
It would be easy to populate this entire list with songs from Pet Sounds, but for the sake of variety, “God Only Knows” serves as a perfect encapsulation of all the beauty, experimentation, and melodic charm of the album. While it’s unlikely that anyone reading this is unfamiliar with “God Only Knows”, it’s the kind of perfect pop song that continues to reveal new layers to appreciate with each listen.
“God Only Knows” marks the epitome of Wilson’s harmonic brilliance. The verses constantly shift tonal center, always moving forward but never feeling settled. Even when the chorus comes in, the chords keep moving and leave the entire song’s key ambiguous. This longing quality is matched by Tony Asher’s beautiful words. The lyrics are able to capture honestly the complex and conflicting emotions associated with love.
The choice to start a love song with “I may not always love you”, is a bold one, but its frankness makes the song more memorable and emotionally resonant. As the vocals circle around a three-part counterpoint in the final chorus, the sentiment is left unsettled in the same way as the music. The track fades away, leaving the impression that the circle of three chords and three vocal parts will continue into infinity.
1. “When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)” – The Beach Boys Today! (1965)
Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love
“When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)” might not be the first song to come to mind when compiling a list of Wilson’s songs. It might not even be in the first ten or 20. But the song stands out as his most interesting and impressive work. Released as the first single on The Beach Boys Today!, “When I Grow Up” captures the transition from early to mid-career Beach Boys, looking forward musically the same way its lyrics focus on the narrator’s future. The composition is centered around a dissonant five-note chord sung as the main vocal hook which embodies the anxiety the narrator feels as he worries about what he’ll be like “when I grow up to be a man.”
While many of Wilson’s early songs contained difficult and adventurous musical ideas, they were often subtle and made to sound elegant and smooth. “When I Grow Up” is the first instance where the music sounds deliberately difficult. Music theorist Philip Lambert wrote about the chord the vocals hit in the hook, “What is that chord and what is it doing at the beginning of a pop song?” But with lyrics that express deep-seated anxieties about growing up, pursuing your passion, and what it means to be a man in the ’60s, the dissonance of the chord — and the instability it brings the song — fits perfectly.
Still, “When I Grow Up” is massively catchy and even fun — if you can ignore its lyrics. That dichotomy between innovative art and heartfelt, sunshine-y fun is what makes Wilson’s music so special. source
