"Good Vibrations"

The Beach Boys

album cover

Forever Picking Up . . .

"Good Vibrations" sits alone between the two artistic skyscrapers of Brian Wilson's career—the 1966 Pet Sounds, for which this single was originally intended, and the even more experimental Smile, the "concept" work that he shelved after more than a year of work and god-only-knows-what inner turmoil. The episodic suite is an embarrassment of melodic riches. It's all singable, yet really hard to sing. It's catchy, but not in the same way "Surfin' USA" is catchy. Each new section scales a totally different mountain range. One minute we're doot-doot-doodling along a happy hokey surfer dude landscape, the next we're in the fjords, with cascading vocal lines raining down a Beethovenian homage to the glory of nature.

The legend: Beach Boys songwriter Wilson removed the song from Pet Sounds because he didn't think it was finished. When the album didn't immediately become a hit, he went back to "Good Vibrations" and spent several months (and over $50,000, a then-unheard-of sum for a single) shuttling between studios trying to catch all the fragmented magic he heard in his head. In all, Wilson used over 70 hours of tape to create the single, which lasts three minutes and thirty-five seconds. It's the most idiosyncratic of pop experiences, an almost disconnected bag of tricks held together by, of all things, the high-pitched theremin, an otherworldly-sounding electronic instrument that responds to hand motions. The single, which Wilson once described as a "pocket symphony," uses the squiggling trajectory of the theremin to represent positive vibrations in motion. Though it ventures all over the place, "Good Vibrations" somehow remains locked on that Total Joy frequency, the one that Wilson, and Wilson alone, owns.

Genre: Pop
Released: 1966, Capitol
Appears On: Smiley Smile. (It was rerecorded for Brian Wilson Presents Smile, released by Nonesuch in 2004.)
Catalog Choice: Pet Sounds
Next Stop: There is none. This is the highest expression of the art of the pop single. The Beach Boys have more Top 40 hits than any other U.S. rock band.
Book Page: 54

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Comments:

#1 from Lonnie Brownell, Encinitas, CA USA Earth - 10/20/2008 2:17

This is a single cut, not an album, but most of the listings are albums, not cuts.

Odd.

Absolutely a pop masterpiece, in any case.

#2 from Tom Moon - 10/24/2008 12:28

there are a handful of great singles in the book, individual pieces that sorta stand apart from everything else. In general I found that in developing a “listening plan” for a newbie, it was important to recommend full albums, so that said listener could get a sense of the artist’s range. also, I want to encourage people to engage an artist for 30 or so minutes, to follow his or her experiments as well as the known hits.

but in cases like this (where there’s an interesting backstory and an absolutely classic track)it seemed reasonable to have the single stand alone.

Thanks for your note. Enjoy!

tm

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About 1,000 Recordings

Celebrate the joy, the revelation, the mystery, the fun, the sheer shivers-up-the-spine pleasure of great music.

Essential operas. Milestone rock albums. An education in the blues. The world of world. Classical from Bach to Bartók to Beethoven to Brahms. And dozens of unexpected gems, surprising discoveries, and long-lost masterpieces.

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