I heard this song playing the day my mother died. I'll never forget waiting for the ambulance to get to our house, in shock, and this was playing in the background.
If I were to pick a favorite song of The Beach Boys, it would have to be this one. The song gives off such a romantic, almost heartbreaking sound to me that is unmatched to any song except maybe God Only Knows. Perfect.
Certainly one of the most beautiful pieces Brian ever wrote- and that moment b4 the bridge where Brian sings "listen...listen" is one of the most transcendent moments in all of pop music.Pure genius.
I maybe love this song more than any other on the album. Its like a magical evocation of a perfect moment in time, when your loved one rests their head on your shoulder - words alone fail to describe the beautiful intimacy of the moment, but music, in the hands of the truly special talent of Brian Wilson, truly can.
Rich Batsford very nicely said. This is also my favorite track on the album. I find it a pitty that God only knows and Wouldn't it be nice stole the show on this album. Not that these aren't good songs but the whole album has such gems which many people don't know about.
Man, I'd put that string arrangement up against the string section on any piece of classical music. Definitely the most beautiful strings I've heard in pop music.
agreedm the best strings on a pop song composed by a genius like Brian with still the handicap that he wasn't educated in music like most string arrangers. Thats pure music talent...
That a capella-piece is breathtakingly beautiful. The song as it appears on Pet Sounds is brilliant, but I could also listen to just that a capella piece for its entire duration. It goes straight to the heart.
@Kein Nasem - Absolutely, those harmonies are not just incredibly beautiful but they reach right into the heart and soul. I feel like it's working on another level of music altogether. Just amazing!
You know the beautiful thing about Brian's music is that even people who claim not to like it or have yet to hear of it, don't even realize that the artists or bands they do like, were either directly or indirectly influenced by him and the Beach Boys. God Bless you Brian, God Bless all of you.
Same thing with the Beatles man, I have a music friend, who is a moron, who doesn’t appreciate them or the beach boys enough. No Beatles, no beach boys? Even if your favorite artist wasn’t directly influenced by them, the artist they were directly influenced by, was absolutely directly influenced by them. You go back long enough in influences from any favorite artist and you end up back at the Beach boys and the Beatles. even that insane jerk Kanye West has an incredibly deep appreciation for both bands.
With a lot of artists when you hear a deconstruction of their work it brings them down to earth a bit, and you ponder something isn’t quite as genius as you thought. But when you hear a deconstruction of Brian’s work it’s like “nope, he’s simply on another plain of genius and no amount of peering behind the curtain will ever change that”
I like how Brian caught himself, "Shit" "I mean Shoot," he was probably trying to sound professional around the wrecking crew. This the only session he does that. Others are full force and anything comes out of Brian. lol
03:10 Goddamnit! How could they create such atmosphere? If I didn't know that song, and it didn't have those vocal harmonies, I'd swear that was a Sigur Ros piece
Bass and Cellos, with some soft string quarted and a Organ, playing a bi-chord i think (maybe the 1st and 5th) Then a guitar with picking tremolo appears at the chorus
this song is a complete masterpiece. i fell in love with it as soon as i heard it, i am so blessed to even be able to listen to this. brian wilson is a genius!
Never knew about this song until I read people raving about "Pet Sounds" on a YT thread. Being two years older than this album, I decided it was time I give it a try. This song stopped. me. dead. Sure, I grew up hearing BB, but never heard how much this song influenced so much going forward. Chicago with Cetera, Pink Floyd "Great gig in the sky...Freddie Mercury for goodness sake. And the emotional impact of the slender lyric, plainly delivered. The intimacy calls to mind Mahler's Ruckert Lieder. Just.freaking. wow.
My deepest wish with this beautiful Beautiful Song is to hear the surf guitarist playing it's tremolo part a bit louder..I still have not found that particular line yet or heard it on youtube someone playing it so please, if anyone just could...God Brian Wilson did let his deepest Feeling Speak and I Love him for that ❤
I really do think it was Brother Carl who said it best about his older Brother when he said : " He heard everything--the whole thing--the 1st time, every time. " That, & his visionary harmonics are BW's lasting gift to music. No one--EVER--heard what he heard--& still does, today. At 70 y/o, he still does it! Awesome. Wolfsky9
I am such a fan of Brian Wilson's voice. Heck, I even think his speaking voice was attractive. Needless to say, I think his singing was absolutely beautiful. So, 1:07 to 1:24 is a slice of heavenly bliss for me.
a great example of how the very best song writers take simple love songs and elevate them to works of sublime beauty. Brian was the guy that the Beatles admired the most (along with "His Bobness")and from who they drew inspiration.
@@BehindTheSounds Yes you're correct.the point I was trying to make is a mediocre song writer will approach the love song, which after all is a very common or "simple" theme in music and festoon it with hackneyed cliches and maudlin musical contrivances. As you are well aware, Brian approached the common love song from a very different and much elevated perspective. I enjoyed your presentation by the way.
@@BehindTheSounds yea brian was the master at making sophisticated complex songs sound simple. Like i get around, ya think its just a few chords easy to cover on guitar...nope its a ton of chords n effortless key changes and thats not counting the singing. The vocals are so sublime and melt into each other its hard just to pick out a lead vocal. And had #1 hits foolin people thinkin just a surf band. In fact he was so good he fooled his own band and finally himself by thinking his songs were just disposable pop. Drugs and mental illness always gets blamed for his spiral and tho they didn't help, i think he just wanted support from his band and public and got neither. 60 yrs on and that rift of art vs commerce is still bugging him crazy
Its funny to figure how pet sounds arrangements touches me since i was 15yo. Now at 40, i listen all again and feel the same. Brian will never be outdated.
4.00 this is heaven on earth ! Never before and after will I never hear anything as beautiful as this.. He must have had some contact with the powers above because this is simply out of this world.. And at that age and without no one to copy... wow Chief 1
These videos are fucking incredible man! Really help with hearing the whole production/arrangement which is so intricate it's nearly impossible to completely dissect when listening to the finished product. Always read your comments as well, very insightful and non-biased to Brian as far as the Beach Boys story goes.. Wish you could make more "behind the sounds" vids!!
This is one session that has disappeared they only have Brian's Demo, Vocal Demo, Take 1A and the Vocal Overdubs. The Session Tape was booted and that's why it's low quailty. It has since disappeared.
And here we go with the “underrated” thing again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a word more heavily misused and abused in my life. Not even “awesome” or “epic”. I know it’s probably a waste of time to even point this out, but *NO.* Neither this album nor the Beach Boys themselves are ‘underrated’. Not even remotely. Maybe back in the 60’s (you know, a half-century ago) Pet Sounds could’ve qualified as ‘underrated’, at least in America… but for roughly the last 30 years or so it has generally been regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, by fans and critics alike. And _how on earth_ did you ever come to the conclusion that the Beach Boys have never gotten the recognition they deserve? They’re one of the top ten most popular and influential bands in the history of music, ffs! They’re basically only one tier down from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
The sense of longing and yearning in this most incredible tune, expressed so poignantly in the strings and Brian's stunning falsetto, is nearly unbearable.If any tune in the BB's canon exemplifies Brian's genius, it's this tune. Certainly one of the most beautiful ballads in all of pop music.
Raoul Duke I can believe how well and satisfying Love and Mercy turned out, it's engaging story the entire film, it's like a tragedy but then it has a happy ending
The musicians including Carol Kaye and Frank Capp and Blaine are part of The Wrecking Crew, the most successful collective of studio musicians ever. Wrecking Crew musicians accompanied Glen Campbell on the very last song he would ever record, I'm Not Going To Miss You."
+Allen Probe, our family thinks a lot of Mr. Campbell. He and Mrs. Campbell--Kim--were members of our church here in Phoenix for a lot of years. He was gracious and caring. Though we didn't know him personally, we often encountered Mrs. Campbell on Sunday mornings when we went to pick up our daughter in the children's care area. One morning, he brought Al Jardine to church, and I personally was pretty okay with that because Mr. Jardine has always been a high caliber performer and man, and I'm a fan. (Alice Cooper, Vincent Furnier also attended our church.) It's my own opinion that we failed Mr. Campbell when he got in trouble some years back. My guess is that he was apparently slipping into the initial stages of his present illness. He had a traffic accident. I'm not certain how much we actually tried to help the Campbell family at those times, but I think it could have been a lot more--my own personal inadequacies in the matter, included. Many of our church still pray for Mr. and Mrs. Campbell. It was difficult for my family and me to watch the video of his last recording session.
Nicely edited! To me, this track represents the tasty appetizer to the sonic banquet of SMiLE. Well, WOULD have. As such, all we have is this perfect gem of pop purity, which can be used as a yardstick to measure the creations on SMiLE. Since this was a complete track, it can be used to assess how CLOSE to completion anything on SMiLE was by comparison.
It's too phoenomenol almost to grasp what he has done here....in 1965 I was at primary school singing along to Old Farmer Buck on BBC Radio....and at the other side of the world Brian Wilson is creating music that is mind blowing. I have been a fan all of my life and even have his hair drier I got after a concert (amazing eh) ......but I now believe Brian done all his greatest music in a five year period (maybe six) ....his mind must have been amazing in that time.
Thank-you. I really appreciated this. Even though I have listened to this LP so many times, your series gives me yet another deep appreciation for the work.
Wow man, these series of clips you uploaded are awesome, thanks for sharing them with us, really gives insight into what was lost over the radio of the days and also just what it takes to really produce some of the hits we loved over the years. Its not what people think it is, especially in the early days of four tracks and bouncing things down like George Martin and many early producers had to deal with. Way different than the endless tracks of digital music of today.
I think your right. It wasn't received well at first, in was in England but it was one of those albums you sort of had to chill and listen to on a good stereo to really appreciate the craftsmanship (IMHO anyway) and genius of Brian. I know its my favorite, sure I liked the early surf stuff I was a young kid then, but wow the stuff he did later was just pure genius for lack of a better word.
I don't think you can really diminish the lyrical contributions of Mike Love and the guitar solos composed by Carl Wilson, especially in the formative years of the group. Also the lyrics to most of the car songs were penned entirely by Roger Christian: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Christian_(songwriter)
Spot on Gene. Ive always argued that too. George Martin was truly the fifth Beatle; the productions wouldnt exist without him. Brian wrote and produced. Not even Spector did this.
The arrangement style is of course similar but that is to be expected. Maybe they’re the same key to fit the band’s vocal ranges. I don’t hear any similarities in the actual composition tho. In the language of music these two pieces are saying different things with similar voices.
