Brian Wilson discusses his two favourite Beach Boys songs
The classic lineup for The Beach Boys consisted of the Wilson brothers, Brian, Dennis, and Carl, their cousin Mike Love, and close friend Al Jardine. This family unit reflected its interpersonal harmony via good vibrations throughout the 1960s and beyond to bring some of the decade’s most cherished and influential music to the world.
During their most prominent spell, The Beach Boys were oft posited as the American answer to The Beatles. The band set out with a genre-defining surf-rock sound but soon incorporated a contemporary psychedelic rock sensibility as they locked antlers with the Fab Four.
Although The Beach Boys’ work was markedly pioneering, like The Beatles, they maintained a potent presence in the mainstream. This was primarily thanks to the genius of Brian Wilson, one of the era’s finest songwriters with an acute ear for resonant melody and groundbreaking composition.
Wilson was asked to name his favourite Beach Boys tracks in a past interview. Although his fans would find this a most difficult undertaking, the songwriter succinctly stated two categorical favourites.
“Well, my personal two favourite Beach Boys songs are ‘California Girls’ and ‘Surfer Girl’,” Wilson said. “‘Surfer Girl’ was our best ballad achievement, and ‘California Girl’ was like the most shuffle between the record, that was our highest achievement in shuffle rhythm, and then the opening was symphonic and Bach and whatever else you want to call it.”
‘Surfer Girl’ was released in July 1963 as the title track and lead single for The Beach Boys’ third album. Although Wilson had written several songs before, he often referred to ‘Surfer Girl’ as his first original track since it wasn’t forged from borrowed melodies or structures.
“Back in 1961, I’d never written a song in my life,” Wilson said in the liner notes for a Surfer Girl album reissue. “I was 19 years old. And I put myself to the test in my car one day. I was actually driving to a hot dog stand, and I created a melody in my head without being able to hear it on a piano. I sang it to myself; I didn’t even sing it out loud in the car. When I got home that day, I finished the song, wrote the bridge, put the harmonies together and called it ‘Surfer Girl’.”
If ‘Surfer Girl’ holds a place in Wilson’s heart on nostalgic grounds, ‘California Girls’ – not the Katy Perry song – holds merit for its compositional attributes. Although Wilson would create a true sonic marvel in the contrapuntal harmonies of ‘God Only Knows’ and Pet Sounds the following year, this 1965 single marked the beginning of the band’s more daring material.
Wilson once described ‘California Girls’ as his “hymn to youth”. It was conceived during his first LSD trip, and although the lyrics are a candid rumination on attractive women, the composition was complex. Its chromatic display and disregard for convention make it precursory to ‘God Only Knows’, arguably one of the greatest pop songs of all time.
