The first Beach Boys song I considered for this list of favorite “happy” songs was ‘God Only Knows.’ It’s probably my favorite of theirs. But I quickly realized that it’s pretty melancholy as love songs go.
So I went with my backup, another favorite of mine, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice?’ You could argue that this song is bittersweet as well — after all, it’s about a couple that can’t be together the way they want to be — but it’s musically exuberant.
Here’s a nice marriage of art and science. Alexander Chen, of the Google Creative Lab, programmed this visualization of an isolated Beach Boys vocal track based on the aural dynamics of church bells.
In his words, “Using a mathematical relationship between the circumference of a circular surface and pitch, I wrote code that draws a circle for each note of the song.”
Often on YouTube, I’ll see comments on song clips that read something like “This song was written about my life!” or “This describes exactly how I feel about [fill in the blank].”
Plenty of people out there, it seems, see their own feelings and experiences in the lyrics of songs they love.
I almost never do.
One of the most celebrated albums of all time, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds was at the center of a pop music arms race in the mid-60s. Brian Wilson, inspired by the consistent sound and vision of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, crafted this masterpiece, only to have The Beatles respond with Sgt. Pepper.
And while The Beach Boys pale in comparison to the Fab Four overall, this album certainly belongs in the same conversation as the albums that surrounded it.
Our latest Random Weekend selection is the first instrumental track of the series, and perhaps the first instrumental track I’ve featured on the blog (though I’m not as sure about that).
I’m wholly unqualified to speak intelligently about instrumental music, but this certainly strikes me as a lovely piece of work that captures the spirit of Pet Sounds (on which it’s the sixth track).
Meet Me In Montauk 