Best track on the Beach Boys' SMiLE

I could have seen Surf's Up being a hit in the wake of God Only Knows.

I could see "Wonderful" cracking the top 20 anyway

I did:

29 Brian Wilson Wonderful Oct 2004

OK, top thirty..

Hang on, "Heroes and Villains" was a hit.

― Mark G, Friday, May 22, 2015 2:49 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Would love to know more about this - Wikipedia just tells me it peaked at #12 in the US (not a major hit by their standards) but not how long it was on the charts, etc.

Not to reset the goalposts, but I suppose with my probing of hitness/hit potential I'm more trying to get at the expectations/hopes/crucial needs Brian Wilson et al. had for this album. I don't think it would have been enough for Smile to eke out #15 on the albums chart or whatever, to be just another album some people maybe bought for a few weeks.

yeah he needed to top Good Vibrations, and that just wasn't going to happen with this other material

ah damn "can't wait too long," so good
might like this song better than anything on smile! holy lord, that intro.

In the UK,

HEROES AND VILLAINS
BEACH BOYS
CAPITOL
Highest position: 08
Weeks on the chart: 09

It's not their biggest hit, granted, but it's up there with the biggest ones.

("I get around" was one place higher and three weeks longer)

In the US Cashbox chart (exclusively sales-based) Heroes and Villains was a #8 / 8 weeks on the chart

Good Vibrations was #1 / 14 weeks

"I Get Around" is highly under-rated and has a killer chorus. "I'm a real cool head/I'm making real cool bread" pretty awesome pre-rap boasting.

p confident that if we polled the Beach Boys singles that would win tbh

of course, only one way to find out...

What are the reference books about Smile ?

Dominic Priore "Look!Listen!Smile!Vibrate!" is the ur-text

Thanks !
As for "Heroes&Villains" I'm surprised it was such a hit. It doesn't seem present at all in the soundtrack of that era...
How did "California girls" and "Wouldn't it be nice" chart, for instance ?

In Cashbox,

California Girls, #3 / 11 weeks
Wouldn't It Be Nice, #7 / 10 weeks*

*b-side God Only Knows charted #38 / 7 weeks

Believe it or not, the BB single that spent the longest time on the Cashbox chart was their 1976 cover of "Rock and Roll Music," at 22 weeks.

crazy that they didn't get to #1 with "California girls" !

Yeah, and that was #3 in Billboard also. The records that kept it down were "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" by Herman's Hermits and "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher

Columnated ruins domino!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

yeah he needed to top Good Vibrations

i know what you mean and it's true (at least had to match it), but you got me thinking: what #1 hit has ever topped "good vibrations?" in terms of arrangement scope, compositional diversity (/cohesion), melodic richness, performative nailed-ness? or opening it up much wider, what top 40 hit in general? the only thing i think comes close is "bohemian rhapsody" (#9 peak on hot 100 originally, #2 in '92), though on these terms i'd put "good vibrations" several notches above

And "Strawberry fields" didn't make it to #1 either !

I voted "Our Prayer". I don't think the Four Freshman songs posted here really get at the appeal of this song. to me it's like a Van Gogh painting: the beauty is in part a function of the desperation, the evident madness, of BW's singing, of his reaching without a clear idea of what's he's reaching for. but BW's reaching is just one vocal, and the others don't seem aware of its particular urgency. BW is hiding in plain sight, doesn't want them to understand what he's expressing (because Mike Love would punch him). so his expression is concealed in a structure the others will recognize and accept, & BW has to coax them into it. Listen to the dialogue on the Smile Sessions: it's nothing serious for Love, BW has to struggle to get him in line, pleading "c'mon", a little voice among the others. it's not "And Your Dream Comes True", "something's not happening". Brian's pleading is so soft. Carl wants to get it right, but doesn't hear it right. "it's not fast enough, Brian": they're catching on to the structure. & then they finish it, only a little reassembling will be needed.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow

challops ftw

Has there been a discussion of Brian's 2004 version versus the original 1966 version?

Brian's (and everyone's) vocals are so much better on the '66 version (which is expected), but some of the transitions and how the album unfolds belong, IMO, easily to the 2004 version (thinking mainly 'Cabin Essence' through 'Surf's Up' here — that whole cycle just about brings me to tears it's so good; while the '66 version is also quite good, it just doesn't match the emotional heights the '04 version reaches).

I'm really split on this.

what is challops about surf's up winning? it almost won the beach boys poll

And it's fucking brilliant to boot.

I can take 2004 and leave those old tapes behind. I'd never heard of them before this new SMiLE project had been announced. I think there may have been something about the sonics on the early sessions that I found appealing, but there's more of a chance I'll revisit Brian WIlson's 2004 comeback before looking back to when the train went off the rails or whatever.

That's just insane. The 66 sessions are endless enjoyment for hours and hours. Plus there are edits in the style of 2004 format.

I don't know, like I said, the sequencing on the '04 version is pretty seamless.

what is challops about surf's up winning? it almost won the beach boys poll

― iatee, Sunday, November 8, 2015 1:15 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And it's fucking brilliant to boot.

― austinato (Austin), Sunday, November 8, 2015 1:54 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It is, but it still seems uncharacteristically pretentious of ILM to pick it so decisively over one of the most mind-blowing pop singles of all time.

Ahh, good point!

I'm not sure I follow that. Like, it wouldn't be pretentious if fewer people preferred it to the single?

maybe pretentious is not the right word, it just seems sort of unpoptimist to pick Surf's Up

'Surf's Up' is not a pop song, structurally speaking, and ilx generally leans towards the established cannon. So, the multi-movement mini-epic song winning out over not one, but two established genuine pop hits is a bit un-ilx-esque. And pretentious because it's a multi-movement mini-epic!

maybe pretentious is not the right word, it just seems sort of unpoptimist to pick Surf's Up

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Sunday, November 8, 2015 11:37 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people interested in voting on late period beach boys album tracks are probably not very poptimist.

It is, but it still seems uncharacteristically pretentious of ILM to pick it so decisively over one of the most mind-blowing pop singles of all time.

Also, don't forget how GV really does feel a bit tacked on here. In a lot of ways, it's the predecessor to the modular songwriting Brian begins to explore on Smile, not the apex of it.

Day in the Life is a dreary bore imo

ok that's challops too, but it's certainly a Serious Work in the same vein as Surf's Up, and in a way that makes it exactly none better than Good Vibrations (or, IDK, In My Life)

also GV is one of the sonic wonders of the world

Well, on the '04 SMiLE, the reprise of 'Our Prayer', for me, ends the album. 'Good Vibrations' is there because it was a part of the sessions and they wanted to include at least one hit on the album. To further the Sgt. Pepper comparisons, even that album had a "throwaway" pop song in 'With a Little Help From My Friends.'

...one of the best "throwaways" in history, but ok.

My point about "A Day In the Life" is that I think "Surf's Up" had the potential to be received on AM radio in a similar way in 1967: as a heavier, more serious and culturally relevant work than the band had heretofore been known.

Would add that nothing about it is either dreary or boring.

Hehe, that's why I throwaways in quotes, cuz y'know.

And I can definitely see it taking off somewhat had it been released at the time.

Yeah and I missed that man alive hit the serious point in his post too. It's late.

Anyway, I'm not knocking GV here. It's unquestionably the perfect marriage of their early sound and what he was attempting with Smile.

Nor are you wrong that Brian was headed in a more ponderous direction. Put another way, had Smile been more like GV in spirit, which is to say less influenced by Brian's LA hipster friends and hangers on, I seriously doubt that Mike Love would have had any problems with it.

I just don't think of GV as Smile. I think of it as a bridge. Possibly the bridge to nowhere...

You = man alive

I have no problem with "serious" and "culturally relevant" pop songs, I just don't think a song should get any extra points for being serious or culturally relevant, it's a net zero effect for me. Meanwhile I think GV is probably the best Beach Boys song period, and possibly one of a handful of all time great radio hit songs, so how it fits in to a record that is kind of a strange mish mosh anyway doesn't really matter to me.

if good vibrations were like surf's up and was a relatively obscure beach boys album track rather than a song that every human being has heard 100000 times, a song that makes you think of sunkist and oldies stations, maybe people would love it more. people vote for their favorite songs, favorites don't exist in a vacuum. if I were voting for one of these songs to be put in a time vault or something, I would vote for good vibrations.

I probably give "Surf's Up" points for being sophisticated, but it's relative. The things that make it sophisticated are manifest in the basic elements of the song - its structure, its harmonic and melodic elements, and its poetry. Any song can score points in those areas in ways that are sophisticated or not. I think if I'm looking at just a basic math when comparing those two songs, it's not like either of them seem to far exceed the other. I would pick "Surf's Up" as my favorite because it feels like it encapsulates that whole album in a song or is something like the climax or denouement of the album (regardless of its placement). Where it gets me the most is where you finally get the title words in the second verse of the second part. It's such a powerful moment, I think, in part because you're reminded of the fact that it's the Beach Boys.

Good Vibrations is also a fairly sophisticated song in a way it gets less credit for. I mean yeah the chord progression, melody and lyrics of Surf's Up are more obviously high arty (and in a successful way), but Good Vibrations is very melodically, rhythmically and sonically daring as a pop song, and has some pretty interesting harmonic and structural things going on too.

For that matter, so is I Get Around. Yeah, they're songs that make you think of soda or the cast of Full House or whatever, but we have these things called ears that allow us to get past those associations if we focus.