What did Brian Wilson’s favourite Beach Boys songs say about him?
Without Brian Wilson, there’s a good chance that The Beach Boys would have been a footnote in rock and roll history. Each of them may have been fine singers in their own right and made some of the greatest pop tunes of the 1960s, but if it weren’t for Wilson pushing himself to write better songs, the idea of modern pop music would have been completely different from the typical doo-wop songs they were used to playing. Wilson wanted to dream bigger, and looking at his favourite Beach Boys songs, it’s not like he wasn’t willing to take a few chances here and there.
However, when the band first became famous, Wilson’s entire role felt like part of one big musical assembly line. ‘Surfin’ USA’ and ‘Surfin’ Safari’ may have been the biggest hits, so as any marketing team would know, the only thing that worked better than one summer single is 15 more of them being played around the clock. Wilson could do that when he wanted to, but it was much more cathartic for him to stretch out a bit.
Look no further than him writing ‘Surfer Girl’. Wilson always defined it as one of the first major breakthroughs for him when it came to writing ballads, and judging by his track record, he knew that there was an untapped market for him trying to write something much slower than the average rock and roll tune.
Pet Sounds wasn’t going to sound anything like the surf songs they were used to, but that wasn’t a bad thing at all. Most labels would have treated it like a PR nightmare, but anyone with unclogged ears would be able to recognise the brilliance of songs like ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’.
Wilson, in particular, always highlighted ‘God Only Knows’ as one of his favourite tunes, even if it got him in hot water, saying, “This song was written really quickly… probably in less than an hour. It’s an honour to have written this one. It was also a pretty controversial record in that, as far as I know, it was the first rock song to have ‘God’ in the title.”
But that sense of spirituality in his music has always been a running thread in his favourite songs. ‘Surfer Girl was always about tapping into something that is more felt than heard half the time, and when listening to ‘Good Vibrations’, Wilson acknowledged that it was one of his all-time masterpieces because of how much he could progress his music beyond traditional surfing songs.
There was definitely a more sophisticated angle when it came to the harmony, but a lot of his favourite tunes also came from him finally being able to be honest in his songwriting. ‘In My Room’ might not be as adventurous as anything off of Pet Sounds or even their later material on The Beach Boys Love You, but it’s still one of the best pieces Wilson ever wrote because of how much of himself was put into it.
So while there are pieces that are more than a little bit uncomfortable for people to revisit during Wilson’s career, his favourite songs are the ones written as a pure form of musical expression. Anyone could have made a sustainable career out of making songs about fun in the sun and driving cars until the end of time, but there were two rules that Wilson abided by when writing his masterpieces: it had to push him forward, and it had to be honest. Because if you weren’t honest with the audience, what was the point?
