The 1966 song Brian Wilson called his greatest vocals: “My favourite”
When historians dissect everything that Brian Wilson did, the first thing that will jump out is the harmonies.
The Beach Boys weren’t poor musicians by any stretch, but if we’re judging them solely on their contributions to rock and roll history, the interplay that they had with each other is still some of the best harmony singing that anyone has ever made. But even when they were trying to show off on tracks like ‘I Get Around’, there were more than a few times where Wilson felt like he outdid himself whenever he was looking for something new out of his bandmates’ voices.
But while everyone tells the story of The Beach Boys as if Pet Sounds changed everything, there are some missing pieces in there. There’s no doubt that the album is a masterpiece and among some of the finest music to ever come out of the 1960s, but when you look at the albums that came before that, Wilson was already working on music that didn’t have to deal with the same ho-hum surf rock that he had been playing for years at that point.
The Beach Boys Today was still fun with the same songs of teenage angst, but you can hear him starting to delve a little bit deeper on some of the tunes on the B-side. ‘She Knows Me Too Well’ and ‘Please Let Me Wonder’ are still fantastic cuts from this time that almost predict what songs like ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ and ‘God Only Knows’ were going to be, and when Wilson had The Wrecking Crew behind him, it was almost like he had his own mini orchestra to conduct on every tune.
He understood what every song needed in his head, and when you hear the final result, he was almost channelling Mozart in a lot of these arrangements. No one would have thought of making something this sophisticated for a rock and roll song, but even if some members of the band pushed back on the cerebral parts of the record, Wilson was going to stand by every single note that made it onto the final record.
In fact, the whole album would have made for a decent Brian Wilson solo album if he wanted to make it without his bandmates. The band were basically singing everything that Brian told them at that point, and even if he found it in his heart to give away some of the best songs on the record to other people to sing, he felt that nothing could stand in the way of him making a song like ‘Caroline No’.
This was the first time that one of their songs was credited solely to him when it was released as a single, and even when listening to the song years after the fact, Wilson felt that it was a true high point of his career when asked about his best vocal, saying, “That’s something that stood over the years. Obviously, probably my favourite cut on the album. Just absolutely blew my mind away.”
“The song itself was taken and put in a context, musical context over at Western Recorders. We gave it life. [If I had to pick], I’d have to go with ‘Caroline, No’.”
Brian Wilson
To be fair to some of Wilson’s detractors, the song was a bit more downtempo than the typical rock and roll songs, but it’s worth it to hear him push himself this much. The harmony is already one of the finest on any Beach Boys project, but the way that Wilson sings it is one of the most emotional vocals that he ever laid down, especially towards the middle of the song, where he almost sounds like he’s on the verge of tears.
The rest of the world might not have seen it the same way when Pet Sounds didn’t manage to chart all that high, but sometimes the world doesn’t know what it has on its hands when they hear an angel singing for the first time. Time would be much kinder to Wilson’s masterpiece, and looking at the whole thing now, every single musician should take notes from this album about creating something that truly touches people’s hearts.
