It's About Time: Beach Boys Poll Results

chart performance:

Today! US #4 UK #6
Summer Days... US #2 UK #4
Pet Sounds US #10 UK #2
Smiley Smile US #41 UK #8

Interesting that Smiley Smile didn't "bomb" in the UK at all. Likewise, all of the late '60s albums charted much higher across the pond

#14

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Beach_Boys_-_Dance%2C_Dance%2C_Dance.jpg

The Warmth Of The Sun - Shut Down V2
250 points, 12 votes, One #1 vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70psCljGnXM

I'll say it: this song is overrated

^crazy

you monster.
i think this is classic, think i put it fairly high on my ballot.

like how it fits in with the early beach boys concept w/o being a surfing song.

Didn't vote for this *looks at ground, shame-faced*

hauntingly beautiful. this is the pinnacle of the development of the Surfer Girl / In My Room idea IMO.

I also think it's pretty damn psychedelic

this sounds like it should have been the one hit of some obscure band who then died in a mysterious accident before it was released. only one or two songs in their career are anywhere as dark as this.

I was just about to write something about Dance x3!

great track, lots of weird Four Freshmen chord changes that border on easy listening. I rank this ahead of Surfer Girl for not aping Disney.

My #1 pick.

Music this gorgeous simply hasn't been made either before or since.

Love this song, but the extra percussion on the third verse seems a bit out of place to me.

They abandoned them because they stopped making great songs.

eh this is demonstrably untrue imho

What's an example of a post 67 single that you think should have been a big hit?

seeing as how these songs are on the same album and the album STILL BOMBED I think you are missing some caveats. they were hamstrung by their previous image and made an abrupt shift that was too alarming/too random, I think we can agree on that much...?

no, I don't think so. as skip pointed out, it was an album without a real single.

I do kind of think that if Smile had actually been completed and released, it still would have bombed.

I don't think so. If they had held back Good Vibrations and released it along with the album, I think it would have been a big hit.

yeah but it did well in the uk, i think the image thing is key, "rock" culture had started in the US and the beach boys were not part of that

please kip mike love

Hate to blow the UK's trumpet but they also made "Forever Changes" a Top 30 album, maybe they had just had good taste? I also suspect Brian Wilson was much more respected and taken more seriously in the UK.

Incidentally, how awesome is your band when "The Warmth Of The Sun", "Don't Worry Baby", or "God Only Knows" have to be relegated to the B sides of your singles?

yeah but it did well in the uk, i think the image thing is key, "rock" culture had started in the US and the beach boys were not part of that

and they were a part of the uk's rock culture? I don't know, I don't think this "uncool, not a part of rock culture anymore" theory quite holds up. The top selling album of '67 in the US was the Monkees! Who I guess were cooler and more rock and roll in a way, but still.

What's an example of a post 67 single that you think should have been a big hit?

"Add Some Music to Your Day"
"This Whole World"
"Cabinessence"
"Break Away"
"Long Promised Road"
"Feel Flows"
"Surf's Up"
"Sail On, Sailor"

I'll say it: this song is overrated

lotta what ifs for the beach boys in the smile era -- what if they had played monterey?
(answer: they probably would've come across as kind of lame?)

Don't know, how did the Association go down?

the uk had a much more pop as opposed to rock orientation (and i'm using rock as the heavier, self-serious culture that came from rock n roll). the monkees fans were kids and teens. the kids and teens who grew up with the beach boys were listening to heavier stuff and left the beach boys behind by the time of smiley smile (and yes it was also way too weird to ever be much of a pop smash)

association did not go down too well

The Beach Boys would never have rocked hard enough to stay with the times in 68-70. So it was going to happen at some point. Even at its 40-minute, coherent, primped best, Smile would still be a bit lame compared to say Jimi Hendrix. In the end, maybe it's not surprising that "Good Vibrations" ended up a one-off, 3-minute slice of overworked genius, not a basis for some larger and more important movement that would ripple through the culture.

association! kinda proto Devo here. kinda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOtHPCcH7cc

Love that band

#13

I Just Wasn't Made For These Times - Pet Sounds
274 points, 11 votes, One #1 vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX4py6AdIYQ

prob my favorite from pet sounds

think this was my highest pet sounds tune? (kind of forgetting what i actually voted for now)
but anyway! so good. the bass line, the percussion, the "sometimes i feel very sad" part, the theremin! perfection.

first use of a theremin on a pop record

Since Wouldn't It Be Nice, Caroline No and God Only Knows are pretty much locks for the top ten, it appears that the only song from Pet Sounds not to chart is Pet Sounds.

the top 12 is looking pretty amazing. With a couple quibbles with too-low-ranked surf tunes, saving the best for last.

so iatee, just to take the first example from your list, "Add Some Music to Your Day", was released the same week that Bridge Over Troubled Water, two Sly and the Family Stone and two Creedence songs were all in the top 10. And they're all frankly better songs and more obvious pop hits. I mean which of these lyrical hooks sound like a hit to you? Everybody is a star, thank you for letting me be myself again, who'll stop the rain, hey there lonely girl? Or add some music, add some, add some. wtf does that even mean?

And the first time we hear the refrain "add some music to your day" it's sung in a way that makes it impossible to sing along with. The song doesn't have a particularly memorable melody or any kind of instrumental hook either. The phrase "add some music to your day" doesn't strike me as something that tapped into the zeitgeist in any way. It's just really hard for me to believe that anyone would argue that the song is objectively an equally well written and constructed pop song as say Good Vibrations. Regardless of how you personally feel about the two songs, certainly you can see why one was a number one hit and the other wasn't, can't you?

They abandoned them because they stopped making great songs.

eh this is demonstrably untrue imho

What's an example of a post 67 single that you think should have been a big hit?

sorry went to get lunch but I thought it would be self-evident that "great song" /= "big hit".

"Or add some music, add some, add some."

Brutal!

And the first time we hear the refrain "add some music to your day" it's sung in a way that makes it impossible to sing along with.

don't get this at all

also ugh the "zeitgeist", most worthless concept ever

don't get this at all

you think the part at 0:30 is something you would hear on the radio and immediately start singing along with, or you don't think the quality of being able to sing along with the lyrical hook is an important factor in a pop song's success?

also ugh the "zeitgeist", most worthless concept ever

Really? You honestly don't think that "I'm picking up good vibrations" tapped into something in the air in 1966 in a way that "Add some music to your day" didn't in 1970?

> Since Wouldn't It Be Nice, Caroline No and God Only Knows are pretty much locks for the top ten, it appears that the only song from Pet Sounds not to chart is Pet Sounds.

"Here Today" hasn't appeared yet. And I voted for it!

I have no problem singing along with that song and find engaging in hypotheticals about abstractions like the "zeitgeist" largely pointless in terms of evaluating a piece of music's formal qualities

xp

"Here Today" hasn't appeared yet. And I voted for it!

Ugh. I'm going to have to fire my researcher.

obviously a song's artistic quality is often disconnected from the prevailing culture. But I don't hear you making, and yet to come across, a convincing argument that any of the Beach Boys' 67-70 tracks even approaches Pet Sounds/Good Vibrations in artistic quality.

you think the part at 0:30 is something you would hear on the radio and immediately start singing along with

laughed hard at this. Imagining a football crowd chanting it now

lol, I can just see somebody dividing them into sections first

Prediction time: Where in the top 10 is Santa's Got an Airplane going to place?

a convincing argument that any of the Beach Boys' 67-70 tracks even approaches Pet Sounds/Good Vibrations in artistic quality.

well, what barometers are we going by here? the complexity of the arrangements? the emotional impact of the lyrics? the catchiness of the melodies? These are all fairly subjective in one way or another (for what it's worth I definitely think something like 'Til I Die or Our Prayer is in the same league compositionally as the earlier "peak" material, for example)

xp

artistic quality

haha

8.5

and find engaging in hypotheticals about abstractions like the "zeitgeist" largely pointless in terms of evaluating a piece of music's formal qualities

if you want to talk formal qualities then go ahead. I think that it's pretty obvious that Add Some Music is not anywhere near as sophisticated, melodically, harmonically, or in terms of its arrangement as Good Vibrations.