Our Favorite Brian Wilson/Beach Boys Tunes
RIP Brian Wilson, one of the greatest to ever do it.
Yesterday, the news broke that Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson had passed away. If you’re familiar with any of the members of the Indieheads Podcast, you’ll know that a lot of us are huge fans of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson’s work. If you got me (Matty) started, I’d tell you Brian at his peak was the greatest songwriter pop music has ever seen. And to celebrate his life and the many great songs he wrote, we’re briefly reviving the newsletter here as I’ve gathered many of our friends & castmates to tell us what their favorite Brian/Beach Boys tunes are. So, read all about it below, and once again, rest in peace to Brian Wilson, the absolute GOAT.
Cast Picks
Matty’s Pick: “Surf’s Up” (Smile)
Gun to my head, this is my favorite song ever made. Hearing this for the first time towards the end of high school absolutely blew my 18 year old mind away, and made me a devotee to Brian Wilson forever. While the version of this song that appears on Surf’s Up in 1971 is quite good, the Smile Sessions version is the one for me. Brian on this song is the absolute best he’s ever sounded, and the arrangement he writes here can really only be rivaled by the greats in classical music. But let’s not forget Van Dyke Parks’ contributions to the track, adding some lyrical flair and interplay that takes Wilson’s epic arrangement to the next level. The lines “A choke of grief, heart hardened, I / Beyond belief, a broken man, too tough to cry” just get me every single time. Fuck man.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the solo version of this song Wilson recorded in 1967 that, even in its bare bones state, is just as powerful as the “finished” version we hear on The Smile Sessions. Even on a piano at his lonesome, no one could touch Brian at this time. And possibly no one ever will for the rest of time.
Rose’s Pick: “Vega-Tables” (Smile)
“Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!”, the headlines read. At his peak, Brian Wilson was heralded as pop music’s boy savior, a wunderkind with the voice of an angel and the pen of any of America’s finest pop poets. What these tributes to Brian ultimately missed out on was that these two things (surfing, God respectively) weren’t a thing to be exchanged with one another. Brian’s best work as a songwriter reveled in the most ordinary of human conceptions: love, loss, nature, the simple core of life & livelihood that harmonizes through our every day. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in my personal favorite work of his, “Vega-Tables.” Originally written with Van Dyke Parks for the SMiLE sessions and later repurposed on 1967’s releases Wild Honey and Smiley Smile, the tune contains a little bit of everything that made Brian’s work electrifying: Easygoing, yet elegantly composed melodies that dart around your eardrums for attention, a cacophony of sonic ideas enveloping the core tune that somehow never manage to overwhelm it, and a lyrical expression of pure joy for something as up-front as eating your vegetables. Even within this relatively straightforward space, Brian finds turns for the surreal (“I threw away my candy bar and I ate the wrapper…”), but still grounds them in a childish sense of glee (“...and when they told me what I did I burst into laughter!”). Through and through, he makes his message clear: Surfing, god, love, nutrition—these are all just pieces in a grand food pyramid of human experience. The key that Brian found has always been in the same place: it’s in the balance.
Jeremiah’s Pick: “Surfin’ USA” (Surfin’ USA)
surfin USA is the goat—my mom would motor me around the swimming pool when i was 4 singing it while I balanced on her legs and my brother tried to eat me (he was “Sharky”)
AJ’s Pick: “Don’t Go Near The Water” (Surf’s Up)
The first song I have a tangible memory of hearing is Blue Swede’s ‘Hooked on a Feeling.’ I’m probably a few years old, sitting in the backseat of the Toyota pickup truck I would end up driving in my young adulthood, and the idea of sound emitting from the radio chanting “ooga chaka, ooga chaka, ooga chaka” is firing signals through my brain, awakening something primal.
The second song I ever heard, well, was probably something from The Beach Boys’ Endless Summer cassette. It may have been ‘Little Duece Coupe’ or ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ but the collection’s cohesive package of storytelling and insular worldbuilding infected the suburbs of Wanaque, New Jersey with prismatic visions of a colorful California coast and a world where everyone whizzed by on roller skates and dipped french fries into ice cold vanilla ice cream.
Brian Wilson’s songwriting has been a constant presence in my life, for as long as I can recall.
The youthful anthems of The Beach Boys’ surf-pop dominance essentially taught me what music was: where the structure of a great tune comes from and how melody functions.
When I rediscovered Pet Sounds with a more educated mind decades down the road, the singular perfection of every second it contained was all-consuming. I’ve run through every moment, instrumental layer, and twist on convention more times than it's healthy to admit.
(I sincerely apologize to all the young women who had to listen to me drone on about Brian Wilson’s career in my early twenties. I’m better now, I promise.)
Pet Sounds is rightfully, and singularly, receiving the shine of admiration in light of his passing.
Eventually, turning through the band’s catalog, I came to love Surf’s Up as fully as one of the most-acclaimed albums ever made. One of the most striking album covers of all time signifies a dour, biting come-up from the psychedelic optimism that defined my understanding of The Beach Boys’ entire ethos.
‘Don’t Go Near the Water’ opens on Wilson’s detuned piano riff spiraling into a hell of man’s own making, the oceans that once served as a youthful escape boiling over and turned to poison. There’s still an appeal to collective action, as Mike Love and Al Jardine chant “do what you can today”, but it’s undeniable that reality finally set in for the band that once propped up a near-propagandistic version of American imagery.
Surf’s Up, as an album, isn’t unlistenably bleak. Rather, it’s sober revelations betray the fantasy land that Wilson’s universal appeal had built up for so long. It is a wake-up call, now more than ever, to stare reality in the eyes.
When I saw Brian Wilson perform Pet Sounds in full at the Pitchfork Music Festival years back, I was confronted with a famously troubled artist reckoning with mortality. He sometimes struggled his way through choruses, deferred performing responsibility to a stage full of familial collaborators, and despite it all, echoed the youthful vision of each song on that record.
When I saw “The Beach Boys” perform at the New Jersey State Fair a summer later, I saw a hollow shell of what I’d once loved stripped for parts, a cartoon recreation of something pure prodded out on stage to appeal only to an impulse that was never real.
Don't you think it's sad? What's happened to the water? Our water's going bad.
Friends of the Pod Picks
Rena’s Pick: “All I Wanna Do” (Sunflower)
I remember the first time my wife played “All I Wanna Do” for me in the car, I thought it was a Tame Impala song. Kevin Parker wishes he could write something that sounds this effortless! “All I Wanna Do”’s unmistakably 2010s indie-reminiscent sound was created using reverb and delay techniques that have since become hallmarks of dream pop, modern psych rock and lo-fi electronic music. It’s remarkable that the Beach Boys never returned to this specific sound—they practically created a genre and discarded it. Brian Wilson’s songwriting has a certain earnestness, combining the naivety of youth with a sense of boundless optimism. Even in his happiest songs, though, the soundscapes he paints are run through with a slight melancholic tint that makes his bright, colorful melodies richer and bolder. Nobody else could write such perfectly pure pop songs without becoming sickly saccharine. The arrangements are so delicately and gracefully layered, like the petals of a flower swaying in the wind. There are many more heavy hitters in the Beach Boys catalogue, but I chose to write about this song because it reminds me of my wife, and how she views the world. Brian Wilson was able to tap into this feeling of hopefulness and romanticism that exists outside of time. There’s always going to be another sunset, but each one is worth savoring.
Josiah’s Pick: “Add Some Music to Your Day” (Sunflower)
My real journey began with The Beach Boys only a few years ago when I finally decided to do the deep dive. I couldn’t believe the range of this band between the lyricism and production. I’ve decided to write about “Add Some Music To Your Day” because after listening to so much Beach Boys I appreciate that Brian would write a simple song like this just about how important music is to everyday life. He wrote this with a friend who he said wasn’t a songwriter but he contributed a couple lines and that’s really such an awesome thing to me to include your friend who isn’t on your level of writing but loves music all the same. It’s how I feel being included in this with such great writers honoring Brian Wilson. At the end of the day Brian Wilson truly loved music maybe more than any person who has ever lived. These lyrics aren’t his best work but they are meant to remind us just how impactful music is to each and every one of us. It is apart of every big moment in your life. It’s apart of the highs of life and the lows. No one understood that more than Brian Wilson. I appreciate that reminder every time this song shuffles on.
Joe’s Pick: “Forever” (Sunflower)
Brian Wilson gave us all so much. I find it hard to articulate the words, nor can I even believe that he’s gone. I fell in love with his work at a young age, so, to a point, I feel as if I’ve lost my lodestar for what it means to create art, what it means to be in the world, to find meaning in the contours of lyric. Having shared similar struggles, both the work and being known, it is like the California sun itself has fallen out of the sky.
I wanted to write about something of Brian’s; to rightfully compare him par with the great artists; Michelangelo, McCartney, Beethoven, Wilson. “God Only Knows”, of course, felt like a given, a song I want to be buried with and a song I’ve fallen in love to and with. How could I even find the words? I thought of“California Girls”, in its dreamy majesty, to look back at all the interesting things he’s done. I even contemplated the audacity of “Mona”, off the underlooked “Love You” alongside the agonies of “Surf’s Up”.
Yet time and time again, I always come back to “Forever”, off Sunflower. While “All I Wanna Do” feels like the origin point for so much of the pop music we consume today, there’s a quiet subtlety to “Forever”. Brian called it a rock and roll prayer. He said it best. I think the song opens possibilities of known, to be felt as wholly authentic. So here’s to you, Brian. You may be going away, but not forever, not while you continue to speak to all of us.
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Jake’s Pick: “Help Me Rhonda” (Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!))
While it's by no means the best Beach Boys song, "Help Me Rhonda" will always bring me back to childhood memories of listening to their Greatest Hits CD on family road trips. To this day, these are some of my earliest music memories that introduced me to one of the first bands I ever fell in love with.
This song encapsulates Brian's most jovial songwriting instincts, which seem so simple upon a casual listen, but as someone who has written dozens of songs, you quickly realize how incredibly difficult that simplicity is to pull off authentically.
It's one of many Brian Wilson songs that have a collective effervescence - where you can't help but sing along because the music just feels THAT good.
Brian didn't have a single inauthentic bone in his body, and his songwriting & arrangement skills constantly inspire me to reach for those euphoric moments in my own music.
Thanks for everything, Brian.
Listen to the new track from Jake’s band Ruby Sparks:
Connor’s Pick: “I Just Wasn't Made For These Times” (Pet Sounds)
One weekend in college I was introduced to the contradiction of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson. A few months prior, I had met my friend Tyler, a fellow aspiring musician, and we spent a day in his dad's Rhode Island house with an especially frenetic deficit in attention and any guitar tab we could pull up on his laptop for inspiration. As the sun was going down, Tyler pulled up the lyrics to "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" by the Beach Boys and began to play it otherwise from memory. Despite my older brother's best efforts, I wasn't familiar with their music. But when Tyler started to play the song, it felt timeless. The whole day we were unfocused with youthful excitement, trying to show each other every cool song that we wanted to emulate and interrupting each other after no more than a couple bars of each tune to move on to something else. But I remember waiting patiently until Tyler stopped playing this one before uttering a word. The melody demanded attention. I asked Tyler what it was. He lit up momentarily before incredulity flashed on his face, asking, "You don't know the Beach Boys?" Without waiting to hear my exasperated reply, Tyler began furiously typing into the YouTube search bar "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times a capella."
As an artsy high school teenager I tended to be skeptical of a cappella. The Beach Boys were different; Brian Wilson was different. Even with every instrument stripped away, his arrangement of lush harmonies sounded like the warm coastal breeze. You listen to them once and you realize their name is more than just a play on their cute surfer personas. The music itself evoked the careless bliss of a summer by the water. The words depict isolation not just from the people around you but from an entire cultural period. Reading the lyrics of the Beach Boys' songs for the first time showed Wilson perpetually engulfed by feelings of loneliness. At the heart of their music is the expression that Brian Wilson is unable to escape the fear that he can't be understood. Coupling the words of "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" with some of the most inviting and blissful choral arrangements of the 20th century is what has always captivated me. In particular, this a cappella rendition from Pet Sounds emphasizes the contradiction. With the instruments removed, you can hear loud gaps of silence between the chorus arrangements and the singularity of Brian's voice bringing us back to the verses. "No one wants to help me look for places / Where new things might be found" - the push and pull between his desire to be understood and mastery of a sound synonymous with summer itself is what made Brian Wilson for me one of the greatest songwriters and arrangers of all time. The sound of the Beach Boys is the sound of a man trying as hard as he can to force himself out of the depths of despair with the innate sound of togetherness.
Check out Connor’s music under his project Gilroy:
isobel’s Pick: “This Whole World” (Sunflower)
Many of Brian’s songs are referred to as pocket symphonies for good reason; “California Girls,” “Heroes and Villains,” and “God Only Knows” combine key modulations, texture and mood changes in ways no one else could ever quite touch. But “This Whole World” from 1970’s Sunflower album condenses everything that made Brian a legendary composer and arranger into an ebullient, timeless pop song that traverses worlds of feeling in the space of under two minutes.
With Carl giving it his all as a vocalist - showing some of the range he’d go on to display later in the 70s - the song modulates keys on average around every two chords, climbing and climbing until it settles into a magnificent chorus clearing of stutter-step kick drum and glockenspiel. I think if you could manifest the energy of a happy puppy tugging at its leash on a sunny day into a song, it would be this. The entire group vocalizes in the background the whole time, another instrument in the arrangement.
Brian was obsessed with the “aum bop didit’ vocalization for the rest of his life. It factored into much of his solo work and was something he played off of when writing, like a mantra that brought him comfort. This feeling of comfort and joy is palpable in “This Whole World” perhaps more than any other Brian Wilson song. Much like “God Only Knows,” the melody here has never been written before and will never be written again - it almost doesn’t even make sense. Brian taps into something holy with “This Whole World,” as he did throughout the rest of the 70s. It gives the lie to the myth that he spent years in bed, unproductive. Quite the opposite - in 1970, “This Whole World” was Brian’s best effort at a single. It wasn’t a hit - the entire Sunflower album was sadly overlooked - but it was absolutely his best, and it deserves its place in the top tier of Brian’s compositions.
Check out isobel’s music as one half of pet wife:
Jameson’s Pick: “Don’t Worry Baby” (Shut Down Volume 2)
The Beach Boys made a music fan out of me at seven years old when I sang on stage with them. Brian Wilson wasn’t touring with them at that time, but a decade later, I rediscovered the Beach Boys—who I had gotten too cool for in middle and high school—and was moved by Brian Wilson’s arrangements and songwriting, blessed to realize that our nation’s greatest composer and one of its greatest lyricists existed in the same personage.
How lucky are we to have lived at the same time as Brian Wilson? He was the sunshine and the breeze, the dusk and the shadows, able to hone in on something general about American deliverance that all of us, in our collective filament, understand but cannot articulate. Brian could, and he did so with shockingly honest and vulnerable lyrics that hearken back to happy times on a freeway at sunset with your friends or lonely mornings alone on your boat in the desolate sea, dreaming about lost love, bathed in glorious and rapturous harmonies. He built a dichotomous world in his music—a utopian California that never truly existed and a dystopian version of a perfect man Brian himself could never be—that advanced American pop in both form and content. Nothing ever sounded like his work before, and despite many attempts, nothing has ever sounded like him since.
It’s hard to choose a favorite Brian Wilson arrangement, but I’ll go with “Don’t Worry Baby.” It bridges the gap in the Beach Boys’ two most notable eras, their early bubblegum beachside pop standards of the early 60s and the grand psychedelic symphony of 1966’s Pet Sounds. It’s somewhat of an interpolation of The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” but is a lynchpin in the band’s anthropology and one of Wilson’s best vocal performances to boot. It has the ripping Dick Dale-esque guitars that conjure bikinis and surfboards, but is a supplication to something greater, a narrator who at once yearns for a beautiful woman and knows it isn’t going to work out because he can’t change the person he’s always been. Behind the bravado of tanned California skin and matching terry cloth polos were the signs of a broken man who would only become more tortured as the music got more rhapsodic. But in the brokenness there’s beauty— you’d be a fool not to recognize it. We’re not just lucky to have lived at the same time as Brian Wilson, we're lucky to be alive at all. Thanks for all you’ve done, Brian. Nobody’s ever made being human feel so Godlike.
