Post subject: Beach Boys Albums outside of Pet sounds/Smile
I have been revisiting the Beach Boys discography recently starting from Surfin Safari(1962) to Love You(1977)(never bothered with albums after this,should i?) and discovered that they have just as many great and memorable songs as The Beatles.Their early pop period starting from Please Please Me - Help gets praised in lists yet Beach Boys is represented only by Pet Sounds.
So to all of u who never heard BB music outside of Pet sounds/Smile(kokomo maybe).Give these albums a listen and honestly compare them to the other 60s pop albums instead of endlessly saying it's no Pet Sounds.
From this list, I've only listened to the last two, but to be honest, although I'd take Pet Sounds over anything The Beatles have ever done, I'd take anything by The Beatles over Sunflower and Surf's Up. I don't think they are bad, I like them, but that's all, they're just nice albums. What I mean is that I'm not sure whether Pet Sounds is good or not for the rest of their discography : because of it, all their other works may sound worse than they truly are, but without it, I'm not sure anyone would give a fuck about The Beach Boys as an album band (not talking about their singles, eh). It's like people complaining about the fact that Pablo Honey would be recognized as a great album if Radiohead had not recorded much better albums after it; actually, I'm pretty sure that if they had only released Pablo Honey, nobody would even care about its existence anymore. Radiohead would be that band with the Creep single.
I'm not saying you're complaining or anything, you raise an interesting point. I just answer based on what I've listened to so far, which I think is far from exceptional. That said, I'll gladly listen to your favorite BB album out of your list, if you think it could change my mind (because is actually like my mind to be changed)
I second this. Their albums outside Pet Sounds and the stuff related to the Smile album, especially their 70s stuff, are massively underrated. After Love You, their only relatively consistent album is L.A. (Light Album), but probably listen to them all anyway because of their highlights. I think their adult-oriented musical direction and their occasional major flops gave them the label as "irrelevant", but I still think they were a great band releasing quality songs, though they were found on inconsistent albums.
Regarding their 60s days, no, it was not all about Pet Sounds and yes, they were almost as good as The Beatles. Just fun, youthful pop energy combined with their gorgeous trademark vocal harmonies. However, compared to The Beatles, their albums were a bit more inconsistent and especially this filler garbage found on three different albums brought their albums down:
The Beach Boys Today!, Wild Honey, Friends, Sunflower, Holland and Love You are great from start to finish (except "Bull Session with the 'Big Daddy'" on Today! of course). All other Beach Boys albums have plenty of great tracks (not only the singles) on them to check them out. My favourite album on the poll is probably Wild Honey, but it could easily be Today!, Friends or Sunflower a day in the future. _________________ "The Beatles, the greatest band known to mankind." - Bismah Mughal
There is one criminally under rated album missing fron the list though. Take a listen to Holland. Absolutely fabulous album. My favourite BB album of all time.
I'm not saying you're complaining or anything, you raise an interesting point. I just answer based on what I've listened to so far, which I think is far from exceptional. That said, I'll gladly listen to your favorite BB album out of your list, if you think it could change my mind (because is actually like my mind to be changed)
Today! even though it is the third album before Pet Sounds this is the album that hints of the greatness that they would eventually perfect on Pet Sounds.
And as Mother Nature's Son already mentioned the sessions stuff are literally filler that reduces the quality of the overall albums.
For me the quality of the Beach Boys is in direct relation to Mike Love's role. The more songs he wrote, the less I liked them because his lyrics were so damn juvenile, and uninspired. On those early Beach Boys albums, nearly every song I really like was be Brian or sometimes Carl Wilson. Brian had passion. I don't hear that in Mike Love _________________ http://jonnyleather.com
They have more good albums than they are given credit for, Pet Sounds is the peak, but Sunflower, Surfs Up, Today, and Love You are all great and Wild Honey, Smiley Smile, Summer Days, and friends are all fairly good. _________________ http://www.last.fm/user/kramerfan86
If you're a fan of Animal Collective, you should probably listen to Sunflower. You can totally tell the influence on MPP, Strawberry Jam, and Panda Bear's Person Pitch.
I really like Today!, which might have even been on my chart if I didn't have the (poorly followed) 1 album/artist limit. After that, my favorite of these albums is Surf's Up, probably. But Today! is definitely my favorite of these, just hit after hit after hit.
OK, so I've just listened to Today!, and I'm like WTF. It was amazing. Like, really. Wow. Blown away. It may be Brian's voice, or I don't know, but it's without any doubt my album of the week.
Thanks a lot man, without this thread is wouldn't have listened to it before months, or even years. I may relisten to Sunflower and Surf's Up tomorrow to see if my opinion of these has changed.
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