The Beach Boys song Brian Wilson called timeless: “It’s something that’s stood over the years”
Any artist can only hope to try and write something bigger than themselves. As much as people might try to follow trends and cash in whenever they write their classics, it takes a master’s touch to make something that only holds up as a piece of art but can live on for years to come and never once sound dated. Although Brian Wilson can claim to have paved the way for the modern sounds of pop if he wanted to, he thought that one of the most timeless Beach Boys songs came when writing ‘Caroline No’.
By the mid-1960s, The Beach Boys’ leader had actually started on his latest venture. He at least had a target to aim for. The American rock and roll market was usually known for having The Beach Boys’ odes to summer and fun on the charts, but something different happened when he started hearing what The Beatles were doing.
As much as people may have loved Rubber Soul, Wilson was determined to make something even better than that. After all, he had the know-how to turn the studio environment inside out, so why not try his hand at making his own masterpiece, just like the Fab Four?
Although half of Pet Sounds sounds absolutely immaculate, ‘Caroline No’ is a bit of a strange addition to the track listing. Outside of being one of the biggest hits from the record, this feels closer to a Brian Wilson solo song than anything that had to do with The Beach Boys, almost as if he wanted to take centre stage one last time to close the book on the album.
While the piece sounds just as great as the rest of the album, the sentiment behind the track is a lot more poignant than before. Flipping around the song’s title from ‘Carol, I Know’, Wilson seems to be talking about the tragedy of seeing one’s childhood innocence slipping away, as he practically sounds like he’s crying halfway through the track.
Despite works like ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ generating massive success over the years, Wilson still thought ‘Caroline No’ was the main highlight of the project, saying, “That’s something that stood over the years. Obviously, probably my favourite cut on the album. Just absolutely blew my mind away. We gave it life. Gave it new life, like a breathing person, like the life of a song or something.”
And while it’s easy to just see the musical mastermind talking about the raw sonics of the record, there’s also a personal connection behind it that no one else was really picking up on then. Given his emotional vulnerability outside of the studio and the kind of horrors that he would endure later in life, this sounds like one of the final gasps from Wilson’s child-like beginnings with The Beach Boys.
It may have been fun at the start making the biggest rock songs ever, but ‘Caroline No’ is practically a bridge between the band’s laid-back summer side and the beginnings of their era as intellectual artists wanting to dissect the meaning of love. Fans may not have known the power of Pet Sounds upon release, but once ‘Caroline No’ started, you knew that the playing field had become much broader than anyone realised it could be.
