How the worst Beatles song beat The Beach Boys’ best in 1966
Pet Sounds was a flop. And we wonder why democracy keeps failing us. The human race cannot be trusted. As the classic Peep Show quote prolaims, “People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can’t trust people”.
When one of the top five albums in history is initially met with a ‘meh’, it becomes clear that we are, sadly, fundamentally flawed to begin with, and we get what we deserve. The Beach Boys deserved better than us. We were not worthy of Pet Sounds. That remains the case.
Leaf through any given record collection, from a Disco-loving auntie to a death metal-crazed co-worker, and you’ll more than likely find Pet Sounds. However, at the time, the band’s new sound was a little too challenging for some. The departure from their early doo-wop tales of surfing and sports cars resulted in the group’s lowest charting album since their 1962 debut.
It wasn’t necessarily a commercial flop upon release, but their transition into trippier terrain resulted in a decline in sales, a remarkable thought in retrospect. It didn’t crack single figures in the US charts, and Aftermath by The Rolling Stones kept it off the top spot in the UK. 1966 was undoubtedly a great year for music, but not that bloody good.
This isn’t the only robbery that the historic record was beset with. Like the Colonel complimenting your chicken or Johnny Cash complimenting your quiff, getting the nod from Paul McCartney for your music is like Henry J Heinz saying you make a pretty good ketchup, and the plucky Liverpudlian once openly decreed: “‘God Only Knows’ is one of the few songs that reduces me to tears every time I hear it. It’s really just a love song, but it’s brilliantly done. It shows the genius of Brian [Wilson]”.
He added: “I’ve actually performed it with him, and I’m afraid to say that during the soundcheck, I broke down. It was just too much to stand there singing this song that does my head in and to stand there singing it with Brian…” Not only did it pack an emotive punch for ‘Macca’, but upon release, it also inspired Sgt Pepper thanks to its stereo-sound wizardry. As Jackson Browne said with a smile, “Imagine a band influencing The Beatles!”
He wasn’t alone either, Pete Townshend called ‘God Only Knows’ perfect, Bono said it was proof of angels (as he would), and about a million people have had their first dance to it (depsite it actually being about a love for God).
Who knows how the Fab Four’s second half might’ve sounded without it? However, it says a lot about cultural history that the masterpiece of ’God Only Knows’ was smashed in a chart battle by the curio of ’Yellow Submarine’. This cataclysmic collision of an opus and an oddity says a lot about the constitution of the UK charts. Daftness has often risen above awe on the commercial front in this country.
Hell, it even happened to The Beatles themselves when ’Let It Be’ was kept at bay by Lee Marvin’s ‘Wand’rin’ Star’.
So, it’s not just a case of The Beatles being a bigger band at the time – in fact, they remain the biggest commercial act of all time by far – as evidenced by Marvin’s unlikely triumph, they too could be toppled despite their lofty status. No, there’s something about ‘Yellow Submarine’ that is as true now as it was in 1966 when the silly little kids song triumphed over one of the greatest anthems ever written.
George Martin might have called it “filler at best”, and that may be true in every single department other than the fact it embodies the extent of their transcendence. Even today, there are toddlers who know the track despite it being written over half a century ago by a group of young radicals in the midst of psychotic experimentation.
From sports chants to Royal Navy parties, the silly little song has jovially woven its way into society, and while that might not account for the same magic that ’God Only Knows’ yielded, it certainly constitutes a hit. Only a year down the line, the Fab Four would pilfer the profound advancements of ‘God Only Knows’ anyway, and render the innovation populist in a manner that they were masters of anyway.
Still, whichever way you look at it, in a just universe, ‘God Only Knows’ should be beating ‘Yellow Submarine’ in any contest of any kind.
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