Why are the Beach Boys charting so high at the moment?

[rab2591]

Don, post of the year. Well said, indeed.

[guitarfool2002]

Having the Brent Wilson doc playing on PBS is huge in terms of explaining the Brian Wilson story to the general public. 

I think that is indeed the reason why the resurgence on the charts happened now, absolutely with Pet Sounds as more people saw the doc on PBS and sought out the music, even moreso than the Stranger Things soundtrack. Thank you for that reminder of the recent PBS airings.

[chimpkelly]

Hi happy to be a new member here. Have enjoyed this board for years. Anyway, it seems most of you missed it that God Only Knows played a prominent role in the shocking season final of The Good Doctor. Happy and tragic . Probably contributing to the Best Of Collections AND Pet Sounds being back on the charts.Catch the episode  if you can. Here is the last two minutes or so , will be hard to understand what is going on if you don't watch the show regularly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3aCRWoe9-Y

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Hi happy to be a new member here. Have enjoyed this board for years. Anyway, it seems most of you missed it that God Only Knows played a prominent role in the shocking season final of The Good Doctor. Happy and tragic . Probably contributing to the Best Of Collections AND Pet Sounds being back on the charts.Catch the episode  if you can. Here is the last two minutes or so , will be hard to understand what is going on if you don't watch the show regularly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3aCRWoe9-Y

Welcome to the board!

I completely missed this season because Shaun’s girlfriend REALLY rubbed me the wrong way the previous season so I kinda skipped out. Wow…that gave me ER flashbacks .

[Awesoman]

Sorry for the stupid thread but I noticed three different Beach Boys albums are in the top 50 of itunes at the moment. Also charting very high on amazon. Did I miss something?

It would seem the music industry has been having an identity crisis in the past few years.  A lot of older artists are seeing their albums reenter the charts seemingly apropos of nothing.  I think there's a nostalgia for simpler times and a lot of that older music still holds up.  And with the Beach Boys entering their 60th anniversary with a couple of high profile releases including last year's Feel Flows box set and this year's expanded Sounds Of Summer compilation, it isn't all that surprising that their music is getting some attention.  

I can't really think of any current artist that has done anything noteworthy lately, with maybe the exception of that Bruno Mars super group album Silk Sonic that came out last year.  But even that didn't seem to get the attention it deserved.

[Alex]

As I stated in the other thread (the SOS thread), the tide has been turning for the band for a while now. It’s mostly due to the millennials and Gen Z folks. This is a band that averaged a gain of 1500-2000 new Spotify followers a *day* for about 6 month’s time (currently averaging 1500 new a day per Chartmetric).  It’s even higher on YouTube. The age group of their fan base is younger compared to their peers in the 60s and 70s .

I’ve seen more than one post here and the other place  stating The Beach Boys would never been ranked along the classic rock greats like the Beatles and the Stones . Crazy part is, these are the only two places that say that ! Pretty much everyone else already has them on the same level. It seems like the only people who don’t give The Beach Boys their proper respect are their own fans

Yep. It’s like a part of the fandom has resigned itself to thinking that the Boys will never get respect.  And this why some of us are frustrated.  Saying the BB are “kitsch” really is an insult to The Beach Boys, their music, their artistry, and their talent.  The thing that Howie and others are trying to say is that the Boys DESERVE to be mentioned in the same breath as the Beatles and the Stones.  Their body of work is every bit as great as the Beatles et. al and has had almost as much as a cultural impact, too.  Calling them “kitsch” or “malt shop memories” sells their art and short and I, as a fan, am glad that there are people who are trying to change that.

I think a big part of the BBs' "dismissal", at least in the US, comes down to the fact that they generally didn't get airplay on classic rock radio stations.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

I wonder if they get play on classic rock satellite radio (besides the obvious BB Sirius channel). I mainly listen to new music these days so not sure if that’s the case

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Also the fact that songs like this are popular with the younger set currently helps
https://youtu.be/MlThQTo6D8A

[HeyJude]

There are folks more familiar with the last several decades of radio than I, but I listened to a lot of classic rock radio back in the 80s and 90s, and even when they were playing mostly 60s and maybe some 70s stuff, there was like essentially *zero* Beach Boys being played. These days, "Classic Rock" is like Hootie and Blowfish and Bon Jovi, so even stuff that *was* being played back in the 90s on "Classic Rock" radio has been pushed out by newer stuff.

From what I've heard (I haven't listened to much "oldies" radio in decades), the BBs have even been edged out to some degree on "oldies" radio as well, with fewer songs in rotation than 10-20-30 years ago.

Satellite radio obviously has more flexibility on their play lists, but I doubt like the standard "Classic Rock" or decade-by-decade channels are playing a lot of BBs, certainly when it comes to post-60s material.

Currently, I'm seeing "California Dreamin'" has surpassed "Kokomo" as the most popular Beach Boys track on Spotify, and "Kokomo" has been at the top for as long as I can remember. If there's any "external" factors leading to a jump in interest in the BBs, that connection via being the opening song on the uber-popular "Stranger Things" has certainly played a role I would imagine.

Whereas the Kate Bush song getting huge numbers thanks to "Stranger Things" has led to a bunch of articles and Bush herself commenting, I haven't seen any of the actual BBs comment on "California Dreamin'"; I'm sure we'd already see a dozen articles with Mike commenting if the show had used "Kokomo." As it is, "California Dreamin'" is a relatively uniquely Al-centric Beach Boys track, and Al never seems to be on top of this kind of modern trending stuff, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised he's not talking much if at all about it, let alone adding it to the live setlist (his own or Brian's). Mike's probably still doing the song live as he has done since the 90s.

[SMiLE-addict]

Sorry for the stupid thread but I noticed three different Beach Boys albums are in the top 50 of itunes at the moment. Also charting very high on amazon. Did I miss something?

It's summer, and people want to listen to summer-y music. Kinda like how Christmas music starts topping the charts after Thanksgiving.

I think I've noticed the BB's going up in the charts during previous summers.

[chimpkelly]

Thanks for the welcome.  I get what you mean about the girlfriend. That ending caught me totally off guard. I was so happy to hear God Only Knows playing at the wedding only to see it morph into the scene on floor below and then in the echo as it switched back to the wedding was really disturbing but I thought it was a great use of the song. It is amazing how this band with no hit singles since Kokomo is still important in the music world and appealing to yet another new generation of people. The music of the Beach Boys truly is timeless .

Hi happy to be a new member here. Have enjoyed this board for years. Anyway, it seems most of you missed it that God Only Knows played a prominent role in the shocking season final of The Good Doctor. Happy and tragic . Probably contributing to the Best Of Collections AND Pet Sounds being back on the charts.Catch the episode  if you can. Here is the last two minutes or so , will be hard to understand what is going on if you don't watch the show regularly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3aCRWoe9-Y

Welcome to the board!

I completely missed this season because Shaun’s girlfriend REALLY rubbed me the wrong way the previous season so I kinda skipped out. Wow…that gave me ER flashbacks .

[guitarfool2002]

The name of the game today for legacy artists is song placement. If you get a song in a popular movie, TV show, or video game, or even in a TikTok video that goes viral, the numbers are going to soar. All of the examples of BB's music being featured in these various outlets recently (including the PBS Brian Wilson documentary tie-in promotion) seem to be the main catalysts for this current climb in the charts. It's much higher now than what it has been in previous summers when the songs were not featured in other media. And the "charts" are for streaming media and downloads, in terms of numbers that digital format simply dominates the music markets today, like it or not. People hear a song on a favorite show or game, they head right to the streaming services to get it.