The Pure Genius of Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson has died. I knew it had to happen, and was almost ready for it, having thought about this day many times. But trying to write about the importance and beauty of Brian Wilson’s music is almost too big a task. Like writing about why the sun is good, or animals are swell. Both topics, incidentally, that could easily form the basis of a song (heck, an entire album) by the Beach Boys.

Brian Wilson was and is the greatest genius in the history of popular music, and it’s not close. The harmonies he created with his brothers, cousin, and friends as the Beach Boys are the closest thing we have to hearing the voice of God. In the realm of popular music (that is, incorporating everything except classical, which is pointless to try to compare) they remain unsurpassed.

In a world before the ready availability of internet autists to back up one’s points, it was quite hard to make this case. Normie perception was that the Beatles were far superior, when in reality they are a pub band next to the ethereal majesty of the Beach Boys.

Similarly, miscreants who prefer the cheap carnal thrill of the Dionysian over the Apollonian may prefer the Stones, but let us speak no more of them.

Those who favour lyrics over music may chose Dylan or Cohen, and the case here is stronger. It is true that the Beach Boys produced some of the most absurdly naive and occasionally disturbing lyrics in the history of music. See for example:

Took me back darlin' to that time in my car
When you cried all night 'cause we'd gone too far

Hmm, okay lads. One could cite many more, and in fact the entire ‘Love You’ album, essentially a Brian Wilson solo project, is full of zingers like:

When guests are boring he fills up the slack
John-ny Car-son
The network makes him break his back
John-ny Car-son

But such ostensible shortcomings are a necessary function of Wilson as a creative force too monumental to question itself. The sun isn’t bothered if you’re too hot, nor can Brian concern himself with iambic pentameter, or even good taste.

This is not to say that one enjoys the Beach Boys despite their lyrics. The naive wonder, especially present in their early work, is integral to the overall meaning. That meaning is impossible to fully describe, which is why they wrote music and not essays, but it’s something like a youthful yearning for immortality even while knowing that the moment, however beautiful, must be transient.

This is captured famously in songs like ‘Caroline, No’, but is arguably more intensely palpable in earlier works like ‘Your Summer Dream’, where Wilson sings in his effortlessly high range:

See another couple over there
To them an ordinary day
Soon you wonder where the time has gone
The sun has almost slipped away

Anyone who has been young and in love will know the almost oneiric quality of those early weeks, and the stark contrast with the suddenly appalling quotidian routines of the rest of the world.

We also see the awareness, clearly apparent in Beach Boys songs from the very beginning, that such moments slip away almost as soon as they arrive. This feeling, which one could call a kind of unbearable nostalgia for the present, seems to have been partially inherited from the Four Freshman, whose versions of songs like ‘Their Hearts Were Full of Spring’ and ‘Graduation Day’ were masterfully adapted by Wilson in those early days. The second verse of the former goes as follows:

As the days grew old
And the nights passed into time
And the weeks and years took wind
Gentle boy, tender girl
Their love remained still young
For their hearts were full of spring

This single verse, although written by Bobby Troup, encapsulates almost the entire thematic offer of the Beach Boys. Take this essence, this yearning of the all-American post-war youth, combine it with harmonies so perfect they could only come from blood relations, add Brian’s perfect pitch and West Coast pioneering spirit, and you have something very special. Indeed, you have the greatest popular music of all time.

It is not really possible to pick the ‘best’ Beach Boys song or even album. And I already sense this piece has taken the slightly oblique approach of one who knows too much. I am so far down the Beach Boys rabbit hole that I fear the chasm between my autistic thoughts on the demo of an outtake of a rare B-side and your observation that ‘God Only Knows’ is a good song is simply too wide.

This is not to brag. I have wasted my life. But it is to say the Beach Boys canon is so vast and full of wonder that I cannot possibly make a dent in it in a single article.

If I really had to pick, I’d say Sunflower is the best album. Or maybe Friends, No, wait, maybe it’s The Beach Boys Today! It is not Pet Sounds, though it may be true that ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ is the best song. Or maybe it’s ‘This Whole World’, or ‘The Little Girl I Once Knew’, or ‘Forever’, or ‘When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)’, or ‘Do It Again’, or ‘Darlin’’, or ‘Don’t Worry Baby’, or…you see, it simply isn’t possible.

This is an oeuvre so colossal, with not just the genius of Brian but the considerable combined talents of Dennis and Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, and yes, even Mike Love, that one simply doesn’t know where to begin. It will sound as clunky as an unrevised Brian Wilson lyric, but the listener simply has to go on his own journey.

How does one explain that the song ‘Marcella’ came from a bizarre but brilliant song called ‘I Just Got My Pay’, which itself came from an earlier take called ‘All Dressed Up for School’? How could I ever convey the genius of a song about health food, featuring the lyrics ‘Doughy lumps, stomach pumps, enemas too, that’s what you get when you eat that way’?

Like so much great American art, it is much weirder than one first imagines. Try reading Moby Dick all the way through if you don’t know what I mean. Or Whitman, Poe, and Emerson. To paraphrase Walt, this is work that contains multitudes.

The Beach Boys’ music encompasses all of life. Joy, love, sadness, nostalgia, American optimism, the raw feelings of high school, the celebration of automotive perfection, surfing (obvs), ageing, Gregorian chants, foot care, protecting one’s little sister, skiing season in Salt Lake City, talk shows, marriage, friends, and yes, animals and the sun (warmth of).

Musically it will never be beaten. Listen to just the refrain at the end of ‘When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)’—where Mike sings ‘Won’t last forever’ and Brian answers ‘It’s kind of sad’—and understand that those approximately 16 seconds are far greater than what most bands achieve in their entire output. And yet it is only sung twice, the second time already fading out. Such is the unthinkably copious nature of Brian Wilson’s genius.

Similarly one could cite just the bridge sections of ‘Do It Again’, ‘Forever’, or ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ as moments of unparalleled perfection. And hundreds more examples. Torrents of brilliance. An overwhelming tidal wave of talent.

To an extent, I am reminding myself of all this. I am now too old to feel this music as keenly as I once did. I have a cold, and a constant low level anxiety about work. But because of Brian’s music, I know that there is more.

God is real, and He spoke through Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. I would say rest in peace, but it sounds wrong, because if anyone is in heaven it is Brian. It seems most likely he was just visiting earth to check out the waves and some other cool stuff. He would call this place something like ‘neat’, so if you didn’t listen carefully you might miss what had just happened, which was distilled perfection almost beyond comprehension.