Carole King on the beauty of the “Brian Wilson chord”
Brian Wilson and Carole King are two of the most esteemed names in pop music. King wrote over 100 Billboard charting hits for the likes of Aretha Franklin and The Animals, while Wilson was the first auteur pop artist to be credited with all aspects of the recording process, from writing to performing.
King’s working relationship with her husband, Gerry Goffin, gained the pair huge success throughout the 1960s. After ‘It Might as Well Rain Until September’ gained chart success, the pair went on to write ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ for Franklin and a number of songs for Dusty Springfield. After the couple divorced, King ventured from writing to singing and spent the following decade collaborating on records with the likes of B.B. King and Joni Mitchell. Later, she earned a Grammy win for ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ – King’s 1971 recording of the track made her the first woman to accept the ‘Song of the Year’ award.
While King was pioneering pop through her wide-spanning collaborative discography, Wilson was forging his own way in the genre with the Beach Boys. ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ marked the band’s first entry into the top ten and anticipated what would become their distinctive surf-pop sound. With the release of the album of the same name, the band catapulted into a level of success which would form the US answer to Beatlemania.
It’s no surprise that the two pop titans shared a mutual respect for one another. In fact, they even collaborated on Brian Wilson’s seventh album, That Lucky Old Sun, in 2008. One edition of the album featured a cover of King’s Wilson-inspired track ‘I’m Into Something Good’, with a feature from King herself.
In an interview featured on Brian Wilson’s website, King shared how she first discovered Wilson and the Beach Boys. She said: “I didn’t become aware of the Beach Boys’ music until ‘California Girls’ and ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ migrated to East Coast radio. After all the hours I spend in the ensuing years enjoying the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and other albums, I could see how Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) foreshadowed the Beach Boys’ future work, particularly ‘Good Vibrations’.”
She went on to gush over the beauty of what she dubs the Brian Wilson chord: “Beach Boys fans might call it ‘the Brian Wilson chord’. Whatever its nomenclature, musicians and non-musicians alike will recognise it as the climactic chord on ‘Good Vibrations’ when the vocals come together to create a singular, glorious and unforgettable moment: ‘Ahhhhhhhh!’”
It’s a memorable moment in the chart-topping song, bringing the track’s sunny euphoria together in one decisive harmony. The track’s elated bouncy instrumentation slips away, becoming more minimal to allow the Brian Wilson chord to have its full impact. The “Ahh” is punctuated by a brief pause before leading straight back into the layered harmonies and springy rhythms of ‘Good Vibrations’. It is, as King described it, a glorious and unforgettable moment in an iconic pop song.
Listen back to the unforgettable climactic Brian Wilson chord in ‘Good Vibrations’ below.
