The Smile Sessions (album) by The Beach Boys

One of the most famous unreleased albums, The Beach Boys' Smile was finally released as part of a box set in 2011. Smile is an incredible album. Each movement is wonderfully cohesive and meticulously crafted by Brian Wilson. There's some obvious highlights, and they all fit nicely within the confines of the album.

This is clearly missing something. It doesn't have the feeling of a full fledged album. The songs are pretty interesting, I can imagine this could have been the best ever album of all times if released at its time. But this is not as ambitious as pet sounds in any way due to the late release.

This has to be the Beach Boys' strongest collection of songs outside of 'Pet Sounds' and is arguably a far more interesting piece as a whole. Obvious centrepieces 'Heroes and Villians', 'Cabin Essense', 'Surfs Up' and 'Good Vibracious' are of course instant classics, but a few of the deeper, stranger cuts nestled within this album (e.g. Vegetables, Do You Like Worms?, Wind Chimes and Wonderful) are serious growers with Brian Wilson's endearingly naïve lyrics and his disjointed, proto-cut-and-paste approach forming the core of the album as a whole. At this point in their career, The Beach Boys were at odds with the music scene around them - forking away from the psych rock of the time towards rootsy Americana and piano-backed barbershop. But even in it's nearly finished state, it's intriguing to wonder how this would have sounded to audiences in '67, on the cusp of Sgt. Peppers and the Summer of Love. We'll never know this would have been a hit or a dud had it reached audiences in the decade it was written, but it's inarguable that nothing like has been written in the decades of popular music since.

Awesome, though I didn't care for some filler tracks.

Favorites: Surf's Up, Good Vibrations.

SMiLE overtakes Pet Sounds in musical achievement, and would have even overtaken Sgt. Peppers if it had come out as anticipated. Just think of the incredible lengths to which the Beatles would have been forced to go had this been their competition at the time! When The Beach Boys fell off the face of the earth with Smiley Smile, the Beatles were essentially given a free pass to do whatever they wanted, which turned out fine considering the albums they put out, but I wonder how things would have changed if The Beach Boys had continued to put the Beatles’ feet to the fire with this incredible follow up to Pet Sounds. This is perhaps my favorite album of all time.

From Montpejo 03/13/2019 20:16

Standouts: Good Vibrations, Surf's Up

Weakest: Our Prayer, Barnyard, The Elements: Fire (Mrs. O'Leary's Cow)

Although I love Beach Boys and Brian Wilson this album do not work for me, I may be of an unpopular opinion but I prefer the simple versions of these songs, in fact, besides "Good Vibrations" I can't say I really enjoyed anything Else in this album.

Been listening to the top 10 of this site for every year since my birth year (1988) and this album sounded horrible to these ears. A huge slog to get through - and I had already suffered this crap when listening to "Smile" by elder statesmen Brian Wilson at #9 in 2004.

I am 99% sure, given Pet Sounds' "masterpiece" status, that if this album had been released in early '67, it would be considered the greatest album of all time. It would have beat out Sgt. Pepper by a good 5 months. Even though it wasn't released then, it's still one of the greatest albums ever, people just don't know it. The songwriting is endlessly creative and encapsulating, but the one flaw is that it doesn't really feel like a "Beach Boys" album and instead more like a Brian Wilson album. If only it had that classic beach boys feel to it...

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