‘Summer in Paradise’: How The Beach Boys made one of the worst albums of all time
At the end of the 1980s, it seemed like every classic rock band was getting a second wind on the charts. From the posthumous releases from artists like Roy Orbison to The Traveling Wilburys becoming one of the biggest names in music, fans were happy to give some love to the artists who made rock and roll so special two decades before. Although The Beach Boys could have easily piggybacked off the trend, everything started going wrong when working on the album Summer in Paradise.
Looking back, though, the band practically had an overnight success lined up for them from the minute they started working on the album. When working on the soundtrack circuit, Mike Love wrote one of the biggest hits of their later career with the song ‘Kokomo’, used famously in the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail. While the legacy of that song has been heralded as one of the worst songs in the group’s career, the real problem behind their next album was the critical band member missing.
Since Brian Wilson was still under the emotional manipulation of therapist Eugene Landey, most of the album was made without the songwriting genius. Taking the reins, Love was in charge of writing most of the project, working with producer Terry Melcher to put together what he considered to be the ultimate summer album experience.
While still operating at a creative low point, much of the album features songs more in line with what Love probably thought the new sounds of the time were supposed to be. Even though much of the album is made up of covers of rock classics like ‘Remember (Walking in the Sand)’ and ‘Under the Boardwalk’, many of them are drowned out by baffling production decisions, like putting on crunchy guitars that make them sound like the background of some MTV reality show.
The most offensive example comes from the song ‘Summer of Love’. Looking to get in touch with the sounds of the day, Love puts a rhythmic cadence in his voice that’s probably the closest thing to rapping as he dares, which goes over as well as one would imagine from a 50-year-old man attempting to sound like Q-Tip.
When making original material, though, the band are practically recycling their old hits, either doing revamped versions of older songs like ‘Surfin’ or trying as hard as they can to recapture the magic of ‘Kokomo’ on tracks like ‘Island Fever’. Even when trying to make a statement about the environment on the title track, Love gets caught up in the band’s legacy more than the message, cramming references to ‘Barbara Ann’ throughout most of the verses.
As if to drive home the ‘1990s’ aesthetic, adding John Stamos behind the drums is a bizarre choice, especially considering his involvement on the cover of the song ‘Forever’. Even though Stamos does have impressive chops in some spots, it’s hard not to picture the guy from Full House singing the song rather than an impressive new talent.
Even though Wilson would return to the fold on later albums, Love hasn’t exactly been proud to talk about Summer in Paradise in retrospect, with the record going out of print years ago and not being included on any streaming service. The 1980s may have been kind to its rock and roll heroes, but Summer in Paradise is the moment where things began going horribly wrong.
