The most “perfect song” in pop history, according to Hans Zimmer
There was a time when classical music and pop were kept apart like oil and water. One marked high culture, and the other marked the lowest of the low.
Then Leonard Bernstein came along and picked out the moment a rare maestro alchemically mixed them in a masterstroke we are still reeling in the ripples of today. “There is a new song, too complex to get all of first time around,” Bernstein begins. “It could come only out of the ferment that characterises today’s pop music scene. Brian Wilson, leader of the famous Beach Boys, and one of today’s most important musicians, sings his own ‘Surf’s Up’.”
Pinpointing the song as the highpoint of the unfurling revolution, the composer continues, “Poetic, beautiful even in its obscurity, ‘Surf’s Up’ is one aspect of new things happening in pop music today. As such, it is a symbol of the change many of these young musicians see in our future.”
It was only a mere demo when Bernstein was discussing it in 1967, but still he saw it as a “symbol of change” and a transfiguration of Wilson’s baroque development of pop. “This new music is much more primitive in its harmonic language,” Bernstein adds in relation to its measure against open-form classical music.
Adding, “It relies more on the simple triad, the basic harmony of folk music. Never forget that this music employs a highly limited musical vocabulary; limited harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically. But within that restricted language, all these new adventures are simply extraordinary.”
But more so than the magic of its mechanics, it was the mystery of what it was doing to people that mattered the most. Classical music could most certainly communicate emotion, but pop was no communicating a revolution. It may have been a spiritual one with blurry ideologies, but something was happening. And no song demarcated that quite like Brian Wilson’s timeless masterpiece.
It’s a song that, years later, Hans Zimmer, the Oscar-winning composer behind, well, any classical soundtrack you’ve ever liked, has continued to study and aim to replicate with everything he has written since.
Speaking with Rick Beato, the masterful musician commented on the greatest pop songs ever written. “There are Paul Simon songs which I think are perfect,” he said. “There are Manu Chau songs which I think are perfect. And there are… ‘God Only Knows’. Beach Boys. Perfect song. That’s the one.” That’s the one, indeed.
Why is ‘God Only Knows’ such a masterpiece?
From its startling opening lyric to its culminating key change, the anthem seems to defy expectation and waltz all over the open terrain of music made boundariless through pioneering ingenuity and boundless soul. As Wilson explained himself: “It’s not really in any one key. It’s a strange song. That’s just the way it was written.”
He continues, “It’s the only song I’ve ever written that’s not in a definite key, and I’ve written hundreds of songs.” This was melded even further as instrumental elements were layered by the emerging technology of the era on top of each other, creating three-dimensions of sound that practically put a halt to mono recording on the spot.
Thus, the moment it hit the radio, it wobbled every musician’s head just as much as it captured the public’s hearts. It was a flawless piece of music, somehow pairing innovation and beauty in a manner where one elevated the exultancy of the other. In short, ‘God Only Knows’ is a song that shaped the second half of the 20th century and beyond.
Now, it still lives in everything from the hybrid scores of Hans Zimmer to the recording techniques of a Billie Eilish album. We can all be thankful for that because it is the sort of beautiful utopia where prettiness unrivalled revels in progress and untold, and the simple net sum of that is a song that stirs us all with the priceless loveliness of waking on a pretty day.
