Mike's switch from booze/mary jane to meditation killed his lyrics.

[AndrewHickey]

Really, were Mike's lyrics ever "good"?

Yes.
Even ignoring the songs on which his authorship is disputed, like Kiss Me Baby or Please Let Me Wonder, which are both good lyrics by any standards, Good Vibrations is a very, very, *very* well-crafted lyric, far more so than anyone gives it credit for (the way it moves from being grounded in the sensory world in the first verse to the extra-sensory world of the chorus and second verse is the cleverest thing in any Beach Boys lyric not written by Van Dyke Parks). Fun Fun Fun is a clever, witty lyric.
Even the lyrics he wrote which sound dumb are immensely singable -- he's very good on a basic technical level to this day. For all that I dislike a lot of his lyrics since about 1980, he never makes the basic mistakes of craft a lot of much more respected lyricists do -- he never has to torture the syntax, or have the scansion of the lyrics go against the melody.
(Student Demonstration Time is the one exception to this I can think of -- a lyric that just fails on the most basic levels).
Even at his worst, which is most of the time, he manages to have lyrics with a fairly conversational, natural tone, that rhyme and scan and are singable -- that is, sad to say, a pretty high bar. Something like Summer Of Love is a nasty, nasty piece of work, aesthetically revolting, but it's a nasty piece of work by someone who wanted to write a song precisely that horrible and managed to do so.

So very, very occasionally, he used to rise not only to good but to great. He still probably could if someone strapped him to a chair and gave him electric shocks of increasing voltage every time he used the title of an old song, the word "beach" or anything the Maharishi had ever said.

[Mr. Cohen]

When people keep saying Mike was great up to Surf's Up or whatever, here is what he wrote from 20/20 up to Surf's Up:

"Do It Again"
"Add Some Music to Your Day" 
"All I Wanna Do" 
"Cool, Cool Water" 
"Don't Go Near the Water" 
"Student Demonstration Time" 

Overall, I would say his work was solid ("All I Wanna Do" is great, if esoteric), but if you think that's anything close to what he was doing before, I'd have to disagree.  Already the cheese is starting to really creep in. Of course it wouldn't compare to what would come after Endless Summer, but still. I'd take one "Darlin'" over all that.

[clack]

Mike was one of the best pop lyricists going, from 'Warmth of the Sun' right through to the Wild Honey lp. I'd rank him up there, during those years (63-67), with Eddie Holland and Hal David. Memorable phrasing, conversational lines, fresh subject matter.

Who knows what happened. Maybe he just ran out of things to say?

[Shady]

Mike was one of the best pop lyricists going, from 'Warmth of the Sun' right through to the Wild Honey lp. I'd rank him up there, during those years (63-67), with Eddie Holland and Hal David. Memorable phrasing, conversational lines, fresh subject matter.

Who knows what happened. Maybe he just ran out of things to say?

100% agree. Incredible lyricist for a few years.

I guess we'll never know why Mike lost it, if he knows nobody will ever have the balls to ask him.

It doesn't matter though, he gave us more than enough.

Today could be a lot of fun
 And precious one
 I'd feel good just to walk with you

 Tonight will be a special treat
 You're so sweet
 And I feel good just to talk with you

Those opening lines and Mike's vocal make me feel a happiness no other song cold ever match.

[Puggal]

I always thought his lyrics on Anna Lee were pretty good though

[SenorPotatoHead]

One thing I'll take issue with is Mike's claim that he concocted the "boy/girl" scenario for the lyrics of Good Vibrations.  If the original, more ESP oriented, lyrics ("I only looked in her eyes and I picked up something I just can't explain" etc) were written by Tony Asher, then it is he, not Mike Love, who should be granted the acknowledgement for deciding that, to make such a "weird" track as 'Vibrations' relatable  to all those poor confused Beach Boys fans, it ought to have a "boy/girl" lyric.  What Mike Love did do was alter the verses from the questioning mind ("I wonder what she's picking up from me?") to the more comment oriented nature of the lyric we all know and Love.  For example:  he Loves the wonderful clothes she wears, and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair.   Unlike the character of the Asher lyric (..."something I just can't explain"), Mike's character knows exactly what is, and unlike the Asher character, Mike's isn't questioning any of it, but rather is going with the flow; he is accepting of it all ("I don't know where, but she takes me there.") .  It's a good lyric and fits the song smartly.    Mike Love of course (and as he so Loves to remind everyone) also came up with the lyric for the bass line of the chorus.  He often gets chided for supposedly inventing a word simply to make a rhyme.   That word being "excitations".    However I believe that people have misconstrued two words for one.   Even Mike Love is too humble to cop to such a stroke of Genius as this!  You see, what the lyric actually is, is "ex citations".   Now we all know what an "ex" is, it's a former lover.  A "citation" however, can be a bad thing  , and it also can be a good thing; a positive recommendation or review, for example.   Mike's character says, "she's giving me ex citations".  So, what Mike was actually saying is that not only does this chick have wonderful clothes, and sunlit hair, etc, but she also comes with references!     Brilliant!  

[filledeplage]

Really, were Mike's lyrics ever "good"?

Yes.
Even ignoring the songs on which his authorship is disputed, like Kiss Me Baby or Please Let Me Wonder, which are both good lyrics by any standards, Good Vibrations is a very, very, *very* well-crafted lyric, far more so than anyone gives it credit for (the way it moves from being grounded in the sensory world in the first verse to the extra-sensory world of the chorus and second verse is the cleverest thing in any Beach Boys lyric not written by Van Dyke Parks). Fun Fun Fun is a clever, witty lyric.
Even the lyrics he wrote which sound dumb are immensely singable -- he's very good on a basic technical level to this day. For all that I dislike a lot of his lyrics since about 1980, he never makes the basic mistakes of craft a lot of much more respected lyricists do -- he never has to torture the syntax, or have the scansion of the lyrics go against the melody.

(Student Demonstration Time is the one exception to this I can think of -- a lyric that just fails on the most basic levels).
Even at his worst, which is most of the time, he manages to have lyrics with a fairly conversational, natural tone, that rhyme and scan and are singable -- that is, sad to say, a pretty high bar. Something like Summer Of Love is a nasty, nasty piece of work, aesthetically revolting, but it's a nasty piece of work by someone who wanted to write a song precisely that horrible and managed to do so.

So very, very occasionally, he used to rise not only to good but to great. He still probably could if someone strapped him to a chair and gave him electric shocks of increasing voltage every time he used the title of an old song, the word "beach" or anything the Maharishi had ever said.

SDT is such a hotbed of controversy.   I hate to pull the "I was there" card, but to have been an American student, in America during that era, and be a Boys fan, is often to feel a true sense of gratitude that it became a part of the corpus.  

It was an indescribable song of support, that those "car-surf-girls" guys really "got" the impossibility of our positions, as generally law abiding baby boomers, children of those American veterans, in WWII, and question the folly of the US presence in Vietnam, and castigated for our American right under the First Amendment, to speak, to assemble lawfully, etc.  We questioned the authorities in a way our parents never dared to.  

It isn't about the song.  It is what it represented.  It stood (alongside Crosby, Stills and Nash's "Four Dead in Ohio") which articulated the killings of four students protesting on a college campus.

Our Band took a stand, with this harsh song, juxtaposed against the lusher work.  Too miss that meaning, is to miss the point of why Carl was a Conscientious Objector to the War, looking through a lens himself, questioning concepts such as colonialism, in The Trader, while fighting his own draft status.  It was the grown up Beach Boys.  

[Don Malcolm]

(Student Demonstration Time is the one exception to this I can think of -- a lyric that just fails on the most basic levels).
Even at his worst, which is most of the time, he manages to have lyrics with a fairly conversational, natural tone, that rhyme and scan and are singable -- that is, sad to say, a pretty high bar. Something like Summer Of Love is a nasty, nasty piece of work, aesthetically revolting, but it's a nasty piece of work by someone who wanted to write a song precisely that horrible and managed to do so.

So very, very occasionally, he used to rise not only to good but to great. He still probably could if someone strapped him to a chair and gave him electric shocks of increasing voltage every time he used the title of an old song, the word "beach" or anything the Maharishi had ever said.

SDT is such a hotbed of controversy.   I hate to pull the "I was there" card, but to have been an American student, in America during that era, and be a Boys fan, is often to feel a true sense of gratitude that it became a part of the corpus.  

It was an indescribable song of support, that those "car-surf-girls" guys really "got" the impossibility of our positions, as generally law abiding baby boomers, children of those American veterans, in WWII, and question the folly of the US presence in Vietnam, and castigated for our American right under the First Amendment, to speak, to assemble lawfully, etc.  We questioned the authorities in a way our parents never dared to.  

It isn't about the song.  It is what it represented.  It stood (alongside Crosby, Stills and Nash's "Four Dead in Ohio") which articulated the killings of four students protesting on a college campus.

Our Band took a stand, with this harsh song, juxtaposed against the lusher work.  Too miss that meaning, is to miss the point of why Carl was a Conscientious Objector to the War, looking through a lens himself, questioning concepts such as colonialism, in The Trader, while fighting his own draft status.  It was the grown up Beach Boys.  

Mike is too glib to be writing lyrics with any kind of social edge. Those need to be on one extreme or the other--either very basic and to the point, or packed with rhetorical flourishes, allegory, and metaphor. Mike can do the former when he's writing lyrics for love songs, or "lifestyle" songs. The lyrics to GV don't get in the way of the transcendent musical wizardry; he captures the essential mystery/ecstasy with "I don't know where but she sends me there" and that dovetails wonderfully with the orgasmic middle section, but the rest of it is (IMO) merely serviceable.

He has a real hot streak on Wild Honey, lays low for most of the next two LPs, then has a couple of nice moments on Sunflower. His lyrics on Surf's Up are problematic, and when we get through to Holland we suddenly realize that he hasn't been working with Brian much for quite awhile (replaced primarily by Jack Reiley, who among other things may have been running a bit of interference between Brian and Mike). His best work on Holland is with (of all people) Dennis.

I agree with filledeplage that SDT opened some doors with the counterculture that had swung firmly shut in 1967-69. Remember that even in his rave review of Sunflower for Rolling Stone, Jim Miller called the music "decadent fluff." He went on to say that it was brilliant fluff, but the noun is what characterized the band for all too many at the time. SDT, "Long Promised Road," and "Feel Flows" (which also got a pretty good smattering of FM airplay at the time) were the portions of Surf's Up that helped knock down some of the roadblocks. Artiness, quirkiness, a pinch of nostalgia, and a shot of rock'n'roll was a winning combination in the fall of '71: the boys covered all the bases and the worst of their problems were past (until Endless Summer, of course).

SDT hasn't worn well, to say the least; taken out of the context of its times, it's hard to defend. Whenever Mike dusts this one off now, he just goes back to the "Riot In Cell Block 9" lyrics that he replaced originally, and there are few if any hackles.

[clack]

SDT was lyrically strained and clunky, Mike trying to get hip with the kids. Post '67, he lost touch with the youth culture zeitgeist. He was a pretend hippie -- not quite Sonny Bono in beads or Sammy Davis Jr in a Nehru jacket, but coming uncomfortably close.

It's a bum rap though to accuse him, after 'Endless Summer', of resorting to "fun at the beach" formula. Throughout the 70's he was really extending his lyrical subject matter -- think of 'Pitter Patter', 'Matchpoint of Your Love' or 'Bells of Paris'. Again, the lyrics were strained and clunky, but they were still a long way away from 'Still Surfin' or 'Beaches in Mind'.

[ontor pertawst]

SDT was lyrically strained and clunky, Mike trying to get hip with the kids. Post '67, he lost touch with the youth culture zeitgeist. He was a pretend hippie -- not quite Sonny Bono in beads or Sammy Davis Jr in a Nehru jacket, but coming uncomfortably close.

Amusingly, if you google nehru jacket you get stuff like:

"Named after Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, the mens Nehru Collar jacket is a hip-length jacket with stand up collar and without lapels. Soon after coming on the pages of "Vogue" magazine, the Nehru jacket  found its way onto a wide variety of personalities including the Beatles, Johnny Carson, Sammy Davis Jr., and the Beach Boys' Mike Love."

Who's the guy that we admire? Michael Edward Love is a real live wire!

SDT makes me itchy. I wish they just kept the original lyrics.

[runnersdialzero]

Really, were Mike's lyrics ever "good"?

[Yorick]

Wrong thread.

[Mike's Beard]

Why stop praising the man at Surf's Up? I thought with All This Is That he wrote the best set of lyrics to grace C&TP by a country mile. And this is coming from a guy who usually shudders at TM inspired lyrics. He wasn't exactly dead weight on Holland either.

[Nicko1234]

Why stop praising the man at Surf's Up? I thought with All This Is That he wrote the best set of lyrics to grace C&TP by a country mile. And this is coming from a guy who usually shudders at TM inspired lyrics. He wasn't exactly dead weight on Holland either.

Absolutely.

Mike was still busy in 1974 I guess writing lyrics for Earthquake Time, Our Life Our Love Our Land, Don't Let Me Go etc. I've no idea whether these were recorded or have survived but would be interesting to see what sort of stuff he was writing then.

[filledeplage]

SDT was lyrically strained and clunky, Mike trying to get hip with the kids. Post '67, he lost touch with the youth culture zeitgeist. He was a pretend hippie -- not quite Sonny Bono in beads or Sammy Davis Jr in a Nehru jacket, but coming uncomfortably close.

It's a bum rap though to accuse him, after 'Endless Summer', of resorting to "fun at the beach" formula. Throughout the 70's he was really extending his lyrical subject matter -- think of 'Pitter Patter', 'Matchpoint of Your Love' or 'Bells of Paris'. Again, the lyrics were strained and clunky, but they were still a long way away from 'Still Surfin' or 'Beaches in Mind'.

During the SDT era, Mike was still technically, under 30 so he was a "kid" himself.  You didn't need to be a real "hippie" to wear beads or a headband or a Nehru jacket.  There was a lot of "hippie-inspired" fashion.  Mike did wear some interesting stuff, but was the front man for the band.

The other guys, to a greater extent didn't seem to have that "onstage" gregarious manner, necessary to keep an audience engaged.  People who are confined in a seat, have the attention span of a flea.  Mike kept and keeps the show in a good flow-mode. 

[MBE]

Though I am firmly of the mind that there is nothing wrong with a good drink and/or joint, I think Mike's writing was more effected by Endless Summer than anything else. Besides Mike did still drink and smoke pot in the early seventies, check the 1971 Central Park show out-he takes a quick toke on stage.