Brian Wilson’s favourite songs with and without The Beach Boys
The classic lineup of The Beach Boys comprised brothers Dennis, Carl and Brian Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and close friend Al Jardine. This unique family unit reflected its internal harmony across many a good vibration throughout the 1960s to bring some of the decade’s most cherished and influential music. Although the ’60s marked the band’s most vital decade, they have remained active for over 60 years.
Like their British rivals, The Beatles, The Beach Boys trailblazer a new path for rock music. Despite this experimentalism, they crucially maintained prominence in the mainstream. This was primarily thanks to the genius of Brian Wilson, one of the era’s most celebrated songwriters and composers.
Wilson was once challenged to name his favourite Beach Boys song. Although his fans would find this a particularly difficult undertaking, the songwriter was markedly categorical in his answer despite naming two 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’ is held in high regard for its compositional distinction. 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.
Speaking to Esquire in 2015, Wilson gave a more extensive list of his favourite songs by The Beach Boys and threw in his favourite of his solo material for good measure. Picking out 1989’s Brian Wilson cut ‘Love and Mercy’, he said: “I had a little half bottle of champagne, and I got a little woozy and wrote ‘Love and Mercy’. It only took me about a half hour to write it. When I was writing that song, I did feel like, ‘Wow, this is magic—I’ve really got something here?’ And it wasn’t just the champagne!”
See the full list of Brian Wilson’s favourites below. Follow our playlist if you like what you see.
Brian Wilson’s favourite songs:
- ‘Sail on, Sailor’ – The Beach Boys
- ‘The Warmth of the Sun’ – The Beach Boys
- ‘In My Room’ – The Beach Boys
- ‘I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times’ – The Beach Boys
- ‘Do It Again’ – The Beach Boys
- ‘Surf’s Up’ – The Beach Boys
- ‘Love and Mercy’ – Brian Wilson
- ‘God Only Knows’ – The Beach Boys
- ‘Heroes and Villains’ – The Beach Boys
- ‘Good Vibrations’ – The Beach Boys
