“Blew my mind”: Brian Wilson’s favourite cut on ‘Pet Sounds’
When The Beach Boys released Pet Sounds in 1966, many listeners had their minds blown by how far the surf pop group had leapt in a short space of time to release one of the most ambitious and lavish pop records of its era. Some listeners were immediately turned off by Brian Wilson’s creation and wanted to hear more of the fun-filled harmonies about loving life in California, but with time, the general consensus became that this was not just a momentous album for its time, but that it would change the course of pop music forever.
Nothing had ever sounded like it before, and while some acts immediately caught on to its revolutionary methods and wanted to emulate them – The Beatles being a prime example – there are still very few albums that capture the same playful sense of creativity that Pet Sounds is laced with. The songs managed to be elaborate and lusciously orchestrated, but they weren’t inaccessible as a result of this. It was clear that in order for pop to continue evolving, people had to approach their craft with the same kind of inventiveness as Wilson did.
Wilson had always dreamt of making music of this ilk, and the compositions that were rattling around in his brain had always carried some of its complexities. It wasn’t until this period of the band’s career that he was put in a position where it became achievable for them to even attempt. He himself had been inspired by the work of The Beatles, and how they had evolved their sound significantly, and while there was pushback from bandmate Mike Love and his father, Murry, Wilson still pursued the creation of his masterpiece.
The 12 original compositions on the album are all works of genius, and it might be considered unfair to single out any one of them as being any more or less majestic than the others. However, while others were having their perceptions of what pop music could be rejigged by the album, Wilson was even taken aback by some of his own creations.
Sitting at the end of the album, ‘Caroline, No’ appears to be one of the more straightforward songs on the record, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less of a towering achievement in composition. There aren’t as many orchestral arrangements or vocal harmonies present on the track, but the evolution that it went through from its original inception to the final finished product was what really impressed Wilson the most.
In an interview where he broke down every song on Pet Sounds, Wilson claimed that ‘Caroline, No’ was perhaps his finest work on the album, and that to this day it packs just as much power as it did when he wrote it. “That’s something that stood over the years,” Wilson claimed. “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 new life, like a breathing person, like the life of a song or something. And quite a heavy experience for me. I liked my voice on that one.”
Remarkably, the song also won the approval of the Wilson patriarch, and apparently, it was a suggestion from Murry that helped the song reach its full potential. “My dad said,” Wilson concluded. “’You know what, son? You oughta speed that up a whole note; it’ll sound better.’ So that’s what we did. So ‘Caroline, No’ as people hear it is actually not really the sound that we did when we recorded it. That’s kind of a weird story.”
