Pet Sounds found The Beach Boys leaving behind the surfing and street racing for trenchant self-examination, with music as sophisticated and ambitious as anything in pop/rock to that time. It dumbfounded a few folks when they heard it for the first time, and sold poorly compared to previous Beach Boys’ records.
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These days, Pet Sounds, released in 1966, stands as one of the most beloved, accomplished albums ever released, the peak of Brian Wilson’s creative questing. Every one of the album’s 13 songs deserves praise. But here are the five that stand out a bit from the impressive pack.
5. “Sloop John B”
It was Al Jardine who brought the seafaring folk song to the attention of Wilson, who saw it as an opportunity to flex his producing powers on an already-written song. First, Jardine presented him with a slightly altered version that sounded a bit more like a Beach Boys song. Flutes and glockenspiels make the arrangement absolutely twinkle. Wilson trades off the lead vocals with Mike Love, but the highlight comes when the instruments drop away for just a bit, and you’re left with those incredible, interlocking voices bellowing for all they’re worth.
4. “Caroline, No”
It’s at this point we have to praise the secret weapon of Pet Sounds: lyricist Tony Asher. No one before or since has been quite as effective at getting inside Wilson’s head and translating the hopes and fears that he ably articulated in his music. In the case of “Caroline, No,” Asher allows for some messy emotions to enter into the picture, which humanizes Wilson’s lead vocal performance. The narrator feels like he’s been betrayed by the transformation of the titular girl into someone he doesn’t recognize. Her new haircut is just a symptom of the disease that’s their crumbling love affair.
3. “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulders)”
This unheralded track is one of the most romantic in the entire Beach Boys catalog. The key is how delicate it all is, as if even the slightest disturbance will cause everything to come crumbling down. Perhaps that’s why the narrator is so insistent on his lover keeping quiet. Those violins creep along almost as if in a horror movie, giving a slight sense of unease to the entire proceedings. The standout moment of the track comes when Wilson asks the girl to listen, listen to his heartbeat, as if that’s the only way he can truly be understood.
2. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”
This is one of those impeccable Beach Boys singles that simply has no discernible flaws. That standout arrangement shows how Wilson had advanced out of Phil Spector’s shadows as a producer. It’s not an enmeshed Wall of Sound, but rather a collection of individual parts that take turns coming to the fore before returning to the background to serve the song’s overall momentum. Here is another example of The Beach Boys leaving behind some of the high school stuff. The narrator wants his girlfriend to shack up with him, a topic that you might have missed if all you hear are the hooks (which is understandable, because there are a ton of them).
1. “God Only Knows”
It’s always in the running for greatest love song of all time, and justifiably so. Everybody talks about the instrumentation and the way the vocals cascade on top of one another in the runout. But let’s give shouts out to some unheralded elements. Wilson’s chord changes are nothing short of miraculous, how they seem to give the narrator hope and then pull it back from him. Asher’s lyrics deliver the message with stunning succinctness. And then there’s the lead vocal of Carl Wilson, quite simply one of the most sensitive performances in the history of singing. Good luck to the love song thinking it can take the crown from “God Only Knows.”
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