Beach Boys Today!: Classic or Dud

except for the studio chatter at the end.

also, TS:Today! -> Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) VS Pet Sounds -> Smiley Smile

Brian had a habit of following up ambitious records with ones where he was taking a break.

uh-oh. you've thereby excluded the much earlier "don't worry baby," "the warmth of the sun," "surfer girl," "catch a wave" and "in my room," for starters. pet sounds was a reasonably good attempt to re-create the feeling of "don't worry baby."

however, dont buy Today by itself. get it along with Summer Days and Summer nights, not only for that album, but for the bones tracks too.

I've been listening to this a lot and it really struck me how dark it is with a whole lot of turmoil underneath the surface, and what makes this such a great album is how all of those things are amplified when you play the songs against each other. The second side gets praised for conceptual brilliance, but the first side is a brilliant sequence too, not only on its own but in conjunction with the second side.

Track two "Good to My Baby" is pretty disturbing, moreso when it's echoed in the second-to-last song "She Knows Me Too Well," two songs about a guy who can be a shit to his partner. Two different singers, so you could take them as two different characters or perhaps two different voices of the same one. In the earlier song, the singer is in denial and defensive, but near the end he's fully aware of his hypocrisy.

Meanwhile track three feels all the more creepy coming after track two - both are sung by Mike Love, but now Love is confronting a guy for being a shit to his sister. That alone stands out, but on top of that, there's almost an incestuous quality in the lyrics, all the more strange given the chorus of voices that are all coming from the same character. (For the pre-chorus, we get pleas to show physical affection that's later followed by "why don't you love her, like her big brother.")

After that, it's a roller coaster - "When I Grow Up to Be a Man" looks forward to an adult future of marriage and having kids, but that's immediately shattered by "Help Me Rhonda" (or "Ronda" but I always listen to this with the superior single version slotted in) where the woman who is "going to be my wife" ditches the singer, sending the singer into the arms of someone else in desperation.

Plenty has been said about side two, but again if you view these as depicting the same character, it paints a tumultuous portrait of a young man at the mercy of his overwhelming feelings, not to mention very little confidence in how to handle relationships. First he's innocent and scared to be hurt, then not-so-innocent with a relationship that falls apart, then eventually angry, jealous and possibly not-so-faithful, and he knows all of this.

Last track is a throwaway, but I always viewed it as a "bonus track" rather than an album track, kind of like one of those CD reissues that plops in studio chatter or a pre-recorded interview as a hidden track at the end of a disc.

Anyway, classic all the way, it's up there with Pet Sounds and a hypothetical SMiLE as my favorite Beach Boys albums.

Excellent post about one of their best albums. Re track three:

"Don't Hurt My Little Sister" depicts a brother's protective stance entangled with romantic overtones.[66][40] According to Wilson's 2016 memoir, it was written "about me and the Rovells. I wrote it from the perspective of one of them telling me not to treat another one of them badly."[69]

^^Supposedly also earmarked for the Ronettes but rejected by Phil Spector who subsequently retooled it substantially into "Things Are Changing (For The Better)".

birdistheword OTM. this album is marvellous but there's something domestically disturbing at its core which you've summarised really well here.

interesting this came out the same year as Rubber Soul, an album which while not being exactly a concept album, also has hints of a dark and tumultuous through-line going through it that wasn't attributable to earlier albums.

Thanks all!

xxxp Did not know that, and it also makes some logical sense given Brian's infatuation with his wife's sister. That infatuation shaped some of the lyrics in Pet Sounds per Tony Asher (what he also generally described as Brian's confusion about love) so I imagine it's possible it played a role here too.

It's too bad "Guess I'm Dumb" didn't make it on to the album - adding a dose of self-loathing into the mix would've been pretty startling. All I found was that no one in the band wanted to sing it or presumably include it which likely discouraged Brian from trying it himself. At least it gave Glen Campbell a good record, but the backing track they eventually release is pretty good.