The surprising Beach Boys cover Brian Wilson absolutely adored: “Really, really good”
Before the album era had truly come to materialise as music’s paramount artistic expression, the 1960s pop climate was still operating largely as it did during the rock and roll era, an artist’s survival dependant on having another hit ready to drop every three months. No band of the era matched The Beach Boys‘ voluminous output during their early years, beating even the British Invasion spearheaders The Beatles with an astonishing eight LPs by the time of 1965’s Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) before the Fab Four had even released Help!.
Naturally, spreading songs about surfing and hot roddin’ wore thin across an average of three albums a year, and for The Beach Boys Today!, principal songwriter Brian Wilson and lyrical collaborator Mike Love explored more personal territory, penning wistful orchestral ballads exploring the darker side of love and life. ‘I Get Around’ it wasn’t, and following its relatively modest sales, label bosses at Capitol pushed the band back to sunny West Coast pop, a creative compromise that resulted in ‘California Girls’.
The second single from Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), ‘California Girls’ was reportedly inspired by Wilson’s first LSD trip, coasting on his cerebral journey thinking of the old Westerns of his youth and one of pop’s perennial thematic focuses: girls. A prequel of sorts to Calvin Harris’ ‘The Girls’ but good, Wilson and Love set their home state as a microcosm for any given part of the world, inviting the listener to celebrate the different kinds of girls that come from the far-flung corners of one’s country.
In America’s case, according to The Beach Boys, “East Coast girls are hip,” Southern girls are gifted with a special “way they talk,” and “Midwest farmer’s daughters really make you feel alright”.
This regional appreciation for girls inspired The Beatles’ ‘Back in the USSR’. Opening ’68’s double LP and conceived as a nod to their Soviet fans suffering heavy restriction to the West’s decadent rock and pop, Paul McCartney coyly swaps Americana for communism, delivering a roll call of the Moscow, Ukraine, and Georgian girls that ‘knock him out’, with a pastiche of The Beach Boys’ vocal harmonies that ends up feeling as authentic as the real thing.
The Beach Boys’ songbook has attracted some of music’s biggest names to tackle their melancholic-spiked sunny pop, one unlikely star receiving high praise from Wilson himself. Speaking to New York in 2025, Wilson applauded Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth’s 1985 cover for his Crazy from the Heat EP, a debut solo effort released a few weeks before his departure from one of heavy metal’s biggest acts: “I thought that his version of ‘California Girls’ was really, really good”.
Member of another key feature of California’s musical tapestry, Roth’s exit from Pasadena’s premier hard rock act came following his former group’s biggest album yet: 1984 a monster seller and its lead single ‘Jump’ topping charts around the world. Roth slathers a glossy ’80s pop sheen with Van Halen’s longtime producer Ted Templeman, replete with plenty of Roth’s trademark “whoah” and “yeah” to ensure his anaemic cover rubs, even more, the wrong way.
Roth had the last laugh, however. The original Beach Boys songwriter is known for his curious taste, though, having once declared Norbit his favourite film and admitted he was jealous he hadn’t written Kokomo. There is no doubt, however, that with his seal of approval, he left Roth in dreamland.
