Released on this day in 1966: Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys.
Now obviously I completely missed this first time round by the minor detail of not actually being born yet. I only really got into The Beach Boys properly about fifteen years ago. Before that they were just the “surfin’ USA” band in my head. Sun, sand, striped shirts and songs that sounded like somebody selling ice cream on a Californian beach.
Then I properly listened.
And once Pet Sounds gets hold of you, that’s sort of it really.
These days I still listen to The Beach Boys most weeks. Sometimes because I specifically fancy hearing them. Sometimes because Spotify throws one on and suddenly two hours disappear while Brian Wilson quietly rearranges your internal organs with harmonies.
At the time The Beach Boys were America’s golden boys. Surfboards. Cars. Girls. Sunshine. Matching shirts. Harmonies tighter than Ipswich Town’s budget after a bad season.
Then Brian Wilson heard Rubber Soul by The Beatles and reacted in the most sensible possible way by retreating into a studio and deciding to reinvent pop music while seemingly holding together his sanity with string and hope.
And somehow he produced this.
Pet Sounds sounded like it had landed from another planet in 1966. Orchestras. Bicycle bells. Theremins. Dogs barking. Melancholy everywhere. It’s lush and beautiful one minute then quietly heartbreaking the next. Half the album sounds like someone smiling politely while having a complete existential collapse internally.
Wouldn’t It Be Nice is still glorious. God Only Knows has gone beyond being “a great song” now. It’s just accepted fact. Like gravity or Alan Brazil sounding half-cut before 10am.
The album title still makes me laugh though. Pet Sounds genuinely sounds less like one of the greatest albums ever made and more like a cassette you’d buy from a garden centre in 1988 to calm an anxious Labrador during fireworks night.
The clever bit is the sadness underneath it all. Fear of getting older. Loneliness. Self-doubt. The realisation that success and fame don’t stop your brain occasionally deciding to turn against you. Which is probably why it still sounds so human nearly sixty years later.
The record company didn’t really get it because there weren’t enough songs about surfing. Mike Love apparently looked at some of the lyrics like Brian had handed him advanced algebra written in Norwegian. America itself largely shrugged at first too because the public will quite happily ignore genius if it can’t immediately dance to it with a burger in one hand.
Meanwhile Paul McCartney heard Pet Sounds and basically thought:
“Oh hell… right then.”
A year later Sgt. Pepper turned up.
And that’s the legacy of Pet Sounds really. It changed albums from being collections of catchy songs into actual pieces of art. Personal. Emotional. Weird. Ambitious.
Music stopped just trying to entertain you and started trying to understand you a bit as well.
Still astonishing.
Still beautiful.
Still sounds fresher than most modern albums made by blokes with twelve guitar pedals, a vinyl podcast and unresolved emotional issues they insist on calling “an artistic journey”.
