Worst Song on the Beach Boys "Love You" - Part 3 in an Ongoing Series

now this is actually tough ... each one of these songs has something to recommend it, i think. some of them just for the lols, but they're good lols.

(I certainly can't think of too many other pop albums from this period that are so synth-heavy).

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~busk/images/ymo.jpghttp://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uB-0D-gV8mY/RwzBonuandI/AAAAAAAAEf0/0R6ZdgjIDw0/s400/human+league.jpghttp://www.plong.com/MusicCatalog/G/Giorgio%20Moroder%20-%20From%20Here%20To%20Eternity/Giorgio%20Moroder%20-%20From%20Here%20To%20Eternity.jpg
http://the217.com/site_media/images/2007/11/media-1194761616-1439.jpghttp://3.bp.blogspot.com/_UCCrxgHVVL4/SXyy5zdlByI/AAAAAAAAAJo/hwsvzclVNFA/s320/4fe2224128a07266c8513010.jpghttp://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IUhQuLoBlN0/SS3bgHsPMMI/AAAAAAAAADs/b5PCe4Q1kfI/s320/donna%2520summer%2520bad%2520girls.jpg

'let's put our hearts together' or 'love is a woman'

but 'love is a woman' always makes me lol and wonder how many mike love jokes were made during the recording

yeah, love is a woman is so tangled linguistically.
Love is a woman
So tell her she smells good tonight
Love is a woman
So make her feel that way tonight
also -- "she fell for all my tricks" haha.

thx for the history lesson Geir but none of those albums are anywhere near the Beach Boys AMERICAN brand of pop

yeah that's all disco shit, geir, amirite?

I love "Johnny Carson". Avalanches used it in a mix too.

I'm gonna go with "Airplane" here, seems like it has the least to recommend it.

Weirdest record I've ever heard. Voting for the throwaway, Ding Dang is not really in the spirit of the poll. Guess it's Airplane.

this LP really represents a quiet yet entertaining threat to many canons of taste, i think.

Obviously this is the anomaly in the crap-period Beach Boys discography in that it's widely considered completely LOL OMG brilliant. I will vote for 'Love Is A Woman', mostly because I never really enjoyed Dennis's cheese-grater voice, but I'll admit I never noticed that about Mike Love.

This is great though. 'I Wanna Pick You Up' is as dodgy as 'Hey Little Tomboy' read in the wrong context.

I think Brian is singing "Love Is a Woman" -- and yeah, it's probably the worst thing on there, though "Let's Put Our Hearts Together" is pretty terrible, too.

Still, possibly my favorite BB album.

let's put our hearts together deserves some kudos for its sheer artlessness, though

I have never heard this album and I vow to check it out this week.

Was going to say "Ding Dang" ... but as 57 second songs co-written by Brian Wilson and Roger McGuinn go it's not too bad!

The "Whoo!!!" in "Ding Dang" is pretty priceless.

There's a much longer version of this that I believe the Love You version is either edited from or based on:

Also, just put this on this am. Still one of my favorite records of theirs.

Things I noticed:
1. There is no bass drum or cymbals on virtually any of the songs on this record.
2. The organ sounds are awesome.
3. The lyrics remain supremely bizarre -- a fusion of fantasizing about being back in high school, the weird TM phase they'd gone through, and Brian spending way too much time just zoning in front of the television.

Lots of these songs get redeemed by doing something different at the end. Voted Roller Skating Child for "it's so cold I go brrr" lyric.

the ending to roller skating child is so brilliant. i can't choose here. love it all.

Reading Brian Wilson's "auto"biography (cha-right), apparently a lot of the Johnny Carson-style songs were written as part of a process directed by Dr Landy to help him get back into songwriting. To do this he was encouraged to write about pretty much anything that was on his mind and there are supposedly dozens of unrecorded songs called things like "Carnie Please Stop Switching the Lights On and Off All the Time", or similar.

^^^lolz A+. Really I love songs written in this style.

I love to pick you up
'Cause you're still a baby to me
Cribs and cradles and bottles and toys
Are part of the joys they bring
I wanna wash your face
And change your clothes and button your shoes
Walk you around and wrestle with you
Then I'm gonna make you sing
In the mornin' I could wake you up
Feed you breakfast from a little cup
I want to pick you up
Rock you back and forth and make you smile
I want to hold you close for a while
I wanna tickle your feet
Drop you in your little tub
Wash your body and shampoo your hair
Be careful not to sting your eyes
When it's night I'll put you in your bed
And I'll bend and kiss ya on your head
I want to pick you up
Rock you back and forth and make you smile
I want to hold you close for a while
Pat pat pat pat pat her on her butt butt
She's going to sleep be quiet
Pat pat pat pat pat her on her butt
She's going to sleep
Little baby go to sleep

... these have never struck me as all that weird. A rather endearing paean to his daughter(s) and being a parent.

Pat pat pat pat pat her on her butt butt
She's going to sleep be quiet
Pat pat pat pat pat her on her butt

Needs restating.

yeah that's all disco shit, geir, amirite?

Those albums I showed are all great. Beach Boys were too. A bit earlier that is :)
(As in "Holland" or earlier)

returning to this thread to mention how much I love 'mona'

The reference to Phil Spector is ace.

Relistening to this, there are no bad tracks on it! But "Mona" is probably the least interesting musically. The vocals on "Solar System" are kind of painful to listen to, and I find the vocal on "Honkin' Down the Highway" irritating. No point in complaining about the lyrics, it's the Beach Boys after all. Still don't know what to vote for!

I find the vocal on "Honkin' Down the Highway" irritating.

"Honkin' down the gosh-darn high-EEEEEEEEEE-way!"

I think it's hilarious. I also think there's just something particularly cracked about a 275 lb. Brian Wilson who never showers writing "I guess I got a way with girls!"

Yes, that's funny, like Lou Reed writing "I'm just a gift to the women of the world"... the same year too! Love Mike's vocal on "Johnny Carson", I must admit.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

msg to whoever voted for 'The Night Was So Young' :

u crazy

yeah that song's amazing

I feel like that and 'I bet he's nice' are the meat on this, def the songs I listen to the most often

This line from Wikipedia:

Many of the songs contained here have a very childish quality to them ("Roller Skating Child", "Airplane", and "Solar System" are examples of this) and, while attempting to be an up-beat album, it does conjure up a sense of melancholy when one considers that these naive songs are being created and performed by a man who had regressed to a child-like state in the wake of years of drug-affected emotional abuse.

Another interesting quote on the same idea, from Xgau's A review:

As for the words, well, they're often pretty silly, but even (especially) when they're designed to appeal to whatever Brian imagines to be the rock audience they reveal a lot more about the artist than most lyrics do. And this artist is a very interesting case.

I think if you can appreciate catchy kids music, I imagine you could appreciate this album without understanding the context

Yeah, I could see that -- but would it be as rich in that case? Would that sense of melancholy still be there (if it is indeed there)? Or does that feeling come from knowing that Brian Wilson wrote the songs? I realize this is just a random "What if..?", impossible to answer definitively, and of course, all music is affected by the context, what we think about the person making it, the time it came out, etc. I guess what I wonder is if the context does more "work" in the case of the Beach Boys than it does with something like, say, James Taylor. We know that James Taylor had drug problems and suffered from depression, and that "Fire and Rain" can be connected to the some of the anguish that came out of all that, but I don't feel like that knowledge is essentially to "getting" the song. But I wonder if the "complete" experience of this album is impossible without knowing at least something about Brian Wilson's struggles.

I don't think it would be as rich w/o the back-story, and I think that goes for *all* of the BB material post-PS.

I don't agree w/ wikipedia's 'melancholy' logic - Brian's childishness is pretty much his core personality, so I don't see why it should evoke melancholy when it comes out in a 1977 album any more than when it did in a 1967 album.

(That's to say - is 'roller skating child' really that different from a lot of the stuff on 'surfing safari'?)

I think my two favorite songs on this are "Johnny Carson" and "Honkin' Down the Highway". And "Johnny" has that wonderful Pet Soundsish orchestral stop-start bit.

Actually I think "Mona" might be my favorite. I'm still a side 1 person w this record. Bought it on vinyl a few weeks ago and can't pass up the opportunity to play back side 1 over and over again.

Melancholy or backstory is pretty much not in my mind when i listen to this. It's just a great record with some really memorable melodies and characteristic BB humor.

LOL @ "Honkin' down the gosh darn hiiiiiiiway" This album is hilarious and awesome. Also dig the photo on the back where Brian looks like a topless gremlin.

i need to listen to this soon. almost forgot how great it is.

I'll always wonder about the extent to which my musical tastes were colored by the fact that this was the first adult album that I owned and listened to regularly as a very young child. I thought all grown-up music was supposed to sound like this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_n0ITu2qJU

curious about this "My Solution" song he refers to wtf is that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnyGklpCc84

found some live love from the Beach Boys w rare Brian appearances on youtube! Largo, 1977: here is "Airplane", with a typical weirdly mean spirited intro from Mike Love where he goes on about Brian's Back and it comes across kind of petty and jealous. and Brian's vocals are all over the place but still very beautiful and i love this song (except maybe the "airplane! airplane!" bit which just is a bit too cheesy). this song could have been on Smile imo.

Tremendously disappointing read on Mike's intro here. I was hoping for him to be far more dismissive of this than he was. Has nothing on his H&V overdub from the Lei'd in Hawaii boot.

Brian's vocal, Charles Lloyd on flute ... God only knows what ... these audiences must have thought of all this.

yeah I didn't think Mike's intro was that bad!

Somebody shoot that friggin' flautist though.

... ha, it's Charles Lloyd!

pretty funny that lloyd and love were collaborators
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOBR536ffQ4

incredible album cover

yeah, that pic on the bottom right deserves inclusion in the weirdos thread

pretty funny that lloyd and love were collaborators

Let me guess, it's a Maharishi thing?

it's an apple juice thing, you wouldn't understand

yeah i think it's TM related ... also they shared a love of a rockin' good time! wooo!
https://56.media.tumblr.com/3e6824f674fbbb683872b0a394b1d881/tumblr_o3oxvuDQn01qzy30io1_1280.png

You know what, until this thread I had never heard of Celebration (the short lived 1970s American rock band, fronted by Beach Boys lead singer Mike Love as well as members of the band King Harvest).

as someone who has listened to Celebration's album, I envy you

I'm not really much of a fan of Love You... I understand that the album has quite a cult following, but I've never enjoyed it and don't really see the appeal of it beyond it being a snapshot of Wilson's mental state at that time. For me, bar the odd track, I get off the bus circa Holland, really.

Everyone always talks about the lyrics (for obvious reasons) but the sonics of Love You are p fascinating and unique in their own right. There were plenty of people making synth-centric or exclusively synthesizer-based albums around that time, but none of them were going for what Brian came up with, this harmonically dense, buzzing combo of roller rink organs, brass, and burping basslines. And there's like *no* drums on it, most of the time its just snare drum and sleighbells and handclaps or something. So it's neither the abstract electronica of krautrock/kozmische nor is it close to Moroder or disco (to name a couple contemporary examples) - it's a strange synthesized funhouse reflection of the Beach Boys 60s sound. There really isn't much else like it.

mike was actually into love you. you should all head the demos where brian is playing the songs for mike. after ill bet hes nice mike goes "thats a mother fucker!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufandNVn3dQ

ha!

lol thanks for posting those demos!

i love the dopey vocals that kick off "I'll Bet He's Nice". that song has a certain feel to it... Magnetic Fields? Postal Service?

*Slight* contrast to when Brian played the band the Barnyard/I'm In Great Shape demos during Smile.

yeah, I find Love You depressing. Like THIS is what it's come to? Meanwhile I paid over original list price for a CD of Summer in Paradise...

man i cant feel more different. love you makes me so happy. its a real joyous record. also props to carl who really did sweeten up the tracks. the original mix of the night was so young (which i think is one of the best beach boys songs ever) is downright miserable before carl's voice and guitar sweetened it.

I kinda straddle the line between the two reactions. It's a fun record but it felt a little melancholy to me even as a tot, and learning the biographical background later kinda underscored that. Brian is clearly a little shaky both emotionally and vocally.

yah the performance of love is a woman on snl.... oof

In re: my comments above about this being my first grown-up people record, I had no idea for the longest time that 'Pat, pat, pat pat pat her on her butt, butt' were not the kind of lyrics you would find in any old grown-up people song.

tbf old people do a lot of butt patting

tbf though that is how adults talked back then always talking about tushies and stuff. it wasnt that creepy for some reason. also in one interview brian said "that songs not about a little girl its about a girlfriend!" or some crazy shit. oh btw patti smith's review of love you for creem is like the best piece of writing ever.

http://www.smileysmile.net/uncanny/media/users/djm/scan0008-13SMALL.jpg

"that songs not about a little girl its about a girlfriend!"

cocaine's a helluva drugf

never seen that patti piece before, that's incredible

chaki I'm curious what yr opinions of MIU and LA/Light Album are

i kinda hate miu. i dont like boogie woogie stuff. la is more my speed but i dont pull it out often. i listen to holland and love you most i think.

I can't really bring myself to listen to anything post-1979, apart from Brian's first solo album.

MIU is so bad I dunno why I keep it. Some mixture of completism and perverse joy at something so boneheaded even existing. But I don't actually like to listen to it except to make fun of it, really.

I see MIU and LA as garden variety bad music while Love You is kind of an extension of Brian's mental illness.

15 Big Ones is at the bottom of the barrel for me though. They had more of their faculties and should have known better. Nearly every track is embarrassing.

I mean, how about that first note in "She's Got Rhythm"??? LOL.

almost everything on 15 Big Ones is better than MIU!

In re: my comments above about this being my first grown-up people record, I had no idea for the longest time that 'Pat, pat, pat pat pat her on her butt, butt' were not the kind of lyrics you would find in any old grown-up people song.

― Telephone Meatballs (Old Lunch), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 4:10 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yeah that song is kinda the creepiest.

i think the lyrics are deeper than people give them credit for. "tell her she smells good tonight" and come off creepy or shallow until you see the picture of Brian and his wife "frozen forever in the light bubbly aura of a birthday party" as patti wonderfully puts it. its about a grown up level of intimacy of married life now? tho they got their start writing locker room hype style boys talk music so it's still using that language.

man i cant feel more different. love you makes me so happy.

yeah i genuinely love this album so much, more than Pet Sounds even. it's so free and unashamed about being what it is. and some of the arrangements and chord progressions are so beautiful they could fit on Smile. but it feels a lot goofier and sillier. and then you have the weird avant rock thing too, "Ding Dang" kind of feels like Devo a bit, there is some weird plastic soul in here, maybe play this alongside "The Idiot" and "Station to Station".

"adult child" is for me what "love you" seems to be for other people.

I like:

She's Got Rhythm, hilarious vocals
Come Go With Me is more enjoyable than any cover on 15 Big Ones
Hey Little Tomboy is a great slice of Mike Love skeeziness
Kona Coast, not that bad
Peggy Sue is more enjoyable than any cover on 15 Big Ones
Wontcha Come Out Tonight? Okay, this is really bad
Sweet Sunday Kind of Love is more enjoyable than any cover on 15 Big Ones
Belles of Paris, sad
Pitter Patter, zzzzzz
My Diane, throwaway
Match Point of Our Love, another great Mike Love sleaze track
Winds of Change, nice vocals

"I like" should say "MIU Album"

Then there's LA. I love "Good Timin" and the "Here Comes the Night" disco remix but aside from those I'd rather have even the crap tracks on MIU.

Belles of Paris, sad

thx Donald

Match Point of Our Love, another great Mike Love sleaze track

isn't this an Al track?

Al's only songwriting credit on MIU was Kona Coast.

My Diane, throwaway

Oh man, My Diane is amazing – esp. when you realize it's about Brian's sister in-law. Plus, it's one of Dennis' best and most pained vocals.

"She's Got Rhythm" is also a pretty underrated tune IMO – it feels like Brian's homage to Frankie Valli. I imagine it was a stomper in concert.

Also, I kinda like "Pitter Patter" – it has pretty great ensemble vocals and the "It looks like raaaaaain..." open is pretty catchy.

Part of my sympathies for MIU is that I heard the record very late – by the time I did my expectations were in the absolute gutter. As it is, it's a decent retro-rock record with more decent Brian tunes than its rep would suggest.

otm re: My Diane, kinda the best song on the album

eh who am I kiddin there's no "kinda" necessary

"adult child" is for me what "love you" seems to be for other people.

which contains the genuinely creepy tomboy song

you can't have beach boys without creepy. i'm sorry, but you can't.

put me down as another My Diane fan.

you can't have beach boys without creepy. i'm sorry, but you can't.

with you and also with you on adult child being awesome (its over now is so amazing) but love you i put up there with pretty hate machine and dirty mind as a one man tour de force album

I'll bet he's funny and that ain't all
I'll bet he shows you quite a ball

i this line is hilarious