Smart Girls

[Barnshine]

Never heard it, only heard of it, until now.

WHAT. THE. HELL.
 

What the hell was anybody involved with this.... ehm... *thing* thinking? Was Dr. Eugene Landy completely out of his mind?
I have to admit that at the same time it's kinda funny, awfuly pathetic and terribly sad. Just wow.

[runnersdialzero]

I find it amusing that everyone's gotta blame this one on Landy, and basically blame anything bad the guy ever did on someone else, too, as if the guy was incapable of doing wrong. When you get down to it, Brian was the one who wrote this song. The idear of "Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, write a rap song! At fifty years of age!" may have materialized in good o' Gene's head, and as scary as the guy was, I doubt it was ever a gun-to-head situation. Brian agreed and wrote it. And oh my.

[The Heartical Don]

I find it amusing that everyone's gotta blame this one on Landy, and basically blame anything bad the guy ever did on someone else, too, as if the guy was incapable of doing wrong. When you get down to it, Brian was the one who wrote this song.

Can't agree here. I can't imagine Bri writing such a truly awful politically correct wreck of a song, denouncing his own beauties from the past, without someone having prodded him to do so. I guess Landy wanted to create a 'new Brian', totally in sync with modern times. He truly was something of a doctor Victor Frankenstein.

[Lowbacca]

Sue me, but I dig the lyrics on the chorus. Really dig 'em.

 

[The Heartical Don]

Sue me, but I dig the lyrics on the chorus. Really dig 'em.

 

How much dough would you realistically be able to free from your assets, then?

[Lowbacca]

Sue me, but I dig the lyrics on the chorus. Really dig 'em.

 

How much dough would you realistically be able to free from your assets, then?

Not worth it, chum. 

[onkster]

You haven't lived until you've heard Brian exclaim: "Big brains are AWESOME!"

[Lowbacca]

"As time goes on I've seen the light
Intelligent chicks are dynamite"

"I love hips and legs and breasts
But strictly on a higher plane
What really turns me on's her brain"

"Wouldn't it be nice
If they gave phds
For strokin' me with hypotheses"

"Smart girls, talkin' 'bout smart girls
Sexy legs with high iqs
Smart girls, I love the smart girls
You brainy babes with your attitudes"

YES.

(Lyrics may even have directly influenced the Wondermints?)

[runnersdialzero]

You haven't lived until you've heard Brian exclaim: "I love hips and legs and BREEAASTS!"

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

I like it. I think the samples are very creative.

[Landlocked]

I like this song, a lot. The chorus is great. I've listened to it far more times than I should admit.

[The Heartical Don]

You hold certain web people in very high esteem for a very long time, and then... this...

 

Coming up next: Andrew G. Doe outs himself by saying that 'Kokomo' is the best song in the entire universe ever.

*looks discreetly for a noose and a chair*

[Lowbacca]

You hold certain web people in very high esteem for a very long time, and then... this...

 

Coming up next: Andrew G. Doe outs himself by saying that 'Kokomo' is the best song in the entire universe ever.

*looks discreetly for a noose and a chair*

I can corroborate my take on "Smart Girls". Sure, overall it's cheesy, offensively unimaginative, bad. But I agree with the soul-sucking Egyptian mummy: I kinda like how the samples are embedded and first and foremost: the lyrics sound like classic Brian. You've got to admit that. It's his silly.. goofball.. politically uncorrect.. doing what he feels like.. attitude that we all love. He's a big child. Who wouldn't secretly want to rap these lyrics?   I do. Some of the lines in "Smart Girls" wouldn't be out of place on LOVE YOU or M.I.U., by the way.

[runnersdialzero]

It's certainly amusing, which is worth something.

[Roger Ryan]

It's not that far from something like "I'm Bugged At My Old Man" or "She's Goin' Bald" in being a humor song. Not commendable, but more fun than I thought it would be after reading about it.

[Mike's Beard]

Worse than anything Mike did on SIP. Don't forget Landy was Brian's "co-writer" during this period so the crappy lyrics may very well be his fault.
What a stinkarooo! Honesty it makes Summer of Love sound like Surf's Up by comparison.

[The Heartical Don]

Worse than anything Mike did on SIP. Don't forget Landy was Brian's "co-writer" during this period so the crappy lyrics may very well be his fault.
What a stinkarooo! Honesty it makes Summer of Love sound like Surf's Up by comparison.

Listen to The Beard at this point.

[Runaways]

It's not that far from something like "I'm Bugged At My Old Man" or "She's Goin' Bald" in being a humor song. Not commendable, but more fun than I thought it would be after reading about it.

I think what sets those two apart is the tongue in cheek aspect.  I don't sense anything ironic about smart girls.

[keysarsoze001]

Sigh. Can't believe my first post here is going to be about "Smart Girls"...

The song is ridiculous, but somehow it's just totally Brian for me. To my mind, actually sitting down and dedicating time to recording that song is not terribly different from doing the same with "Shortenin' Bread" or "Ding Dang", or, God help us all, "Santa's Got an Airplane". It's the kind of song which works as an example no matter what your thesis about Brian's post-SMiLE work may be. If you think he lost it and that, say, Love You is absolute dreck, this song solidifies that opinion. If you think he has a very funny, very dry sense of humor, and that he was being funny all of the times when he's just sort of burst out with a non-sequitur in the middle of a concert or interview, this song works as a big put-on too. If you think Landy was responsible for every poor artistic decision he made during those years, it works for that, because his name is on there.

I do seem to remember him talking about it in that interview when he was on the cooking show. He was very animated in that interview IIRC, and he even delivered the first "My name is Brian and I'm the man" part, after which I seem to remember the crowd cheering. Which probably made Brian think "hey, yeah, they like it!" because he's Brian.

The whole set of Sweet Insanity tracks to me is pretty much required listening if you want to have a full picture of Brian as an artist. It sort of provides the context for something like TLOS being a small miracle, really.

As long as we're discussing Brian's weird outtakes, I say next up should be "Life is for the Living".  

[Myk Luhv]

I don't think any amount of ad hoc rationalisations can save this song from being garbage. The awful attempt at sampling -- seemingly unaware that there's more to it than taking chunks of choruses and dropping them, basically unchanged, into a verse (Bomb Squad it ain't) -- is grounds enough to be rightly embarrassed by this horrid mistake of a song. The rhymes (such as they are...) do the song no favours either. Yeah, it's a funny song but I think Runaways is right: There is obvious and intentional humour in "She's Goin' Bald" or "Bugged"; if there is humour in "Smart Girls", it's surely from the song's ample shittiness. You're laughing (and cringing) at rather than with the song.

[keysarsoze001]

One of the most glaring problems with the samples is that they're almost never in the same key as the rest of the song, so it sounds like an amateur remix found online or something. There are ways of musically quoting earlier hits in a song and making it work. Ringo's "Back Off Boogaloo" springs to mind.

[SamMcK]

This song is almost as bad as Santa's Goin' To Kokomo for me. What worries me about the latter is that it was written much more recently by Mike without the help of someone like Dr. Landy.

[Lowbacca]

Sigh. Can't believe my first post here is going to be about "Smart Girls"...

The song is ridiculous, but somehow it's just totally Brian for me. To my mind, actually sitting down and dedicating time to recording that song is not terribly different from doing the same with "Shortenin' Bread" or "Ding Dang", or, God help us all, "Santa's Got an Airplane". It's the kind of song which works as an example no matter what your thesis about Brian's post-SMiLE work may be. If you think he lost it and that, say, Love You is absolute dreck, this song solidifies that opinion. If you think he has a very funny, very dry sense of humor, and that he was being funny all of the times when he's just sort of burst out with a non-sequitur in the middle of a concert or interview, this song works as a big put-on too. If you think Landy was responsible for every poor artistic decision he made during those years, it works for that, because his name is on there.

I do seem to remember him talking about it in that interview when he was on the cooking show. He was very animated in that interview IIRC, and he even delivered the first "My name is Brian and I'm the man" part, after which I seem to remember the crowd cheering. Which probably made Brian think "hey, yeah, they like it!" because he's Brian.

The whole set of Sweet Insanity tracks to me is pretty much required listening if you want to have a full picture of Brian as an artist. It sort of provides the context for something like TLOS being a small miracle, really.

As long as we're discussing Brian's weird outtakes, I say next up should be "Life is for the Living".  

Thank you! And welcome to the madness that is smileymsile. 

[runnersdialzero]

This song is almost as bad as Santa's Goin' To Kokomo for me. What worries me about the latter is that it was written much more recently by Mike without the help of someone like Dr. Landy.

Having never heard "Santa's Goin' To Kokomo", I'm still going to disagree with you.

[37!ws]

BIG BRAINS ARE AWESOME, DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!