The songwriter who was “almost perfect” according to Paul Simon
There is a line in the beautiful ‘Kathy’s Song’ where Paul Simon sings, “I don’t know why I spend my time, writing songs I can’t believe, with words that tear and strain to rhyme,” but the melody is so seamless and the meter so neat that it almost feels like a declaration of his own genius. Nothing about Simon’s work is ever strained.
“Well, for me, Elvis is the king of rock, Sam Cooke is the king of soul, James Brown is the king of funk, but when it comes to songwriting, I think Paul Simon is the king,” Jack Savoretti told Far Out. So, if you’ve got the king complimenting your songwriting work, then you really are revered. And that’s certainly true of Brian Wilson. Even George Martin, the producer who spent his days working with The Beatles, said, “If there is one person that I have to select as a living genius of pop music, I would choose Brian Wilson.”
Simon paid him an equally lofty compliment when he said of his peer, ”The melodies are so beautiful, almost perfect. I began to realize he was one of the most gifted writers of our generation. Brian Wilson’s music has made a lot of people happy for a long time. I love his music.”
However, the New Yorker wasn’t alone in being rather slow to realise the brilliance of Brian. Because of the upbeat pop that they were doling out with sunny album covers that contrasted with the happening folk scene of Greenwich Village, it took a while for The Beach Boys to be taken seriously. As Simon recalled, ”I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Brian for a while because the Beach Boys’ subject matter was so West Coast.”
However, this all began to change when a couple of tracks betrayed the hidden depth in their midst and demanded great attention from the songwriters of the day. ”Then he got into this really touching music with “In My Room” – and “Good Vibrations” was amazing,” Simon added.
For many musicians of Simon’s generation, Wilson represented proof that pop music could possess the same emotional and compositional sophistication traditionally associated with classical or jazz.
Beneath the harmonies and surf imagery was a songwriter obsessed with arrangement, mood and vulnerability, someone capable of turning teenage anxieties and romantic longing into music that felt strangely universal. Songs such as ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ revealed an emotional openness that deeply influenced generations of writers searching for greater honesty in pop.
Wilson’s growing reputation among serious composers and songwriters also reflected a wider shift happening during the 1960s, when popular music began demanding the same artistic consideration as more established forms.
Albums like Pet Sounds and the unfinished Smile project challenged assumptions about what rock and pop could achieve structurally and emotionally. By the end of the decade, figures such as Simon and Bernstein no longer viewed Wilson as merely the architect of California pop fantasies, but as a genuine musical innovator whose work had permanently expanded the possibilities of songwriting.
With these records, he not only hit upon greater profundity but also expanded the limited vocabulary of pop, something everyone aware of melody began to pick apart and reapply to their own oeuvre. Even the maestro himself, Leonard Bernstein, was aware of this. The classical composer explained, ”There is a new song, too complex to get all of first time around. 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’.”
Concluding: ”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.”
