The Smiley Smile Message Board

I'm pretty certain this hasn't been posted before, the search function didn't bring up any results.  I thought this was pretty interesting, and was fairly surprised to find Wild Honey, of all the Beach Boys' albums, on this list.  Enjoy!

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/the-10-coolest-summer-albums-of-all-time-20120718/the-beach-boys-wild-honey-1967-19691231

Strange list but it's always cool seeing one of the BB's best getting some props

I don't get a summer vibe or feeling at all from Wild Honey. Wierd. Maybe that's just me - I get a' stoned-white-boys-wanting-to-make-an-R&B-album' feeling throughout the entire album.

I would fully support Today! or All Summer Long in this position, though.

Wild Honey reminds me of autumn more than anything. Country Air just has a Fall vibe to me.

But yeah, it's nice to see them getting well deserved attention.

Wild Honey definitely is a summer album to me. And a great one at that.
Weird choice (of all choices BBs album-wise) for such a list though. But one way or another - Wild Honey sure deserves more attention from the general public. A properly remixed reissue might just do the trick...

(http://www.flipter.com/media/photos/praying.jpg)

Thanks for posting the link.  Very cool to see Wild Honey at #2.

Odd choice indeed. It doesn't feel summery at all to me.  And, I don't rate it as one of the Beach Boy's top-10 albums.

So very cool to see this! I feel like this album never gets a mention anywhere (outside of places like this). #2 Coolest Summer Album. Wow!
Man I want to hear it in stereo.

It took me awhile to "warm up" to Wild Honey, but I now consider it to be just under the "top five" (PS, Sunflower, Today, SD/SN, 20/20). It seems like the writer/reviewer is indulging in what we might call "counterintuitivity"  (sp? more to the point, is it even a word??) but whatever the motive for mentioning it, it's nice to see it appreciated.

Just what the doctor ordered-a list of what albums sound good in each season-What will sound good in fall, winter and spring? Glad to see they're thinking about the boys, but WH, among many of their others, is an album for all seasons.

Winter is Smiley Smile or Surfs Up.

weird, as this album was originally released in December. 'Friends' came the following summer ...

I tend to play it most during spring time.

For me...

Smiley/Smile = Winter
Love You = Spring
Friends = Summer
Pet Sounds = Fall

Friends = spring
Summer Days = summer
Wild Honey = late summer/early fall
Sunflower = early fall
Surf's Up = late fall/winter
Smiley Smile = winter

Love You + Holland = all seasons

Is Wild Honey a summer album?? As has been said here, it feels more autumn-y (good word!) to me (still at least they didn't pick Holland, which is the most autumn-y feeling of all BB albums...).
I guess Rolling Stone just don't consider genuine summer albums like ASL and SDASN 'cool' enough to make the list, which is a bit sad (not unhappy-sad, just parents-dancing-in-front-of-their-kids-sad).
Nevertheless, it's great to see the Beach Boys in such a high placing and Wild Honey in particular, which really is a superb album. In the ongoing 'Smiley Smile vs Wild Honey' debate it's comes in for some stick from some board members which left me frankly baffled - it's ten white-hot BB songs (plus a great SMiLE snippet) brilliantly sung and tightly played throughout, all in the space of 24 excstatic minutes. What on earth is there not to love about that?

I definitely get the summer vibe from this album. That weird buzzing sound from the organ just sounds like bees making honey to me.

Why on earth is Sgt. Peppers on there?! Goes to show that every list Rolling Stones makes MUST have the Beatles plastered on it. Christ.

Summer - All Summer Long, duh :)
Fall        - Smile/Smiley Smile
Winter   - Surf's Up/So tough/Holland
Spring   - Sunflower

All year - Pet Sounds, Love You, Today

Should have went with Sunflower, or Friends.

We're arguing opinions here anyway, but damn that just doesn't feel right at all to me. On the surface it would seem to suggest whoever compiled that list is trying to be the hipster championing the underdog, forgotten or ignored entry because to pick an obvious, universally accepted candidate would reduce their image as having a superior musical taste and knowledge. If I want that, there are plenty of mags and forums where championing the underdog or the unexpected is of utmost importance to maintain the cred.

Having said that...I never heard Wild Honey as a summer album. It sounds like a confined studio sound to me. The Beach Boys...c'mon, how about "All Summer Long", "Shut Down vol.2", "Summer Days..."? These albums almost elevated the notion of what the Beach Boys were celebrating in their music from the simple ideas of "surfing" "cars" and "girls" to a celebration of summer as a state of mind, as an ideal above and beyond the activities being described in the music. And the music just *sounds* like a young person's summer mindset in those cases enough to further elevate it beyond saying "let's go surfin". Timeless, universal music.

Wild Honey is great, but not on that level where "summer" is a musical sound creating a state of mind you can conjure up any time you listen.

It's probably my favorite Beach Boys album and I'm happy that it gets attention outside of the fan world. I don't think there's anything summery about it but then I don't think of the Beach Boys as summer music. Wild Honey is a nice little R'n'B/Rock'n'Roll album with Brian and Mike's best collaborations stretched over a whole album

I hear ya

Let the moon glow, on the fallen snow...

My, my how summery.

Wild Honey is a very cool album, glad to see it getting mainstream press, but this is a pretty strange choice.

The reason why Sgt. Pepper is there is simply because it was released at the beginning of the summer in 1967 - not planned to be a heralded beginning to the "Summer Of Love" which was called that by the press well after the fact and out of convenience, but rather another case of a group like the Beatles having better timing in history than some of their peers. Again, through no grand scheme or plan, but it just worked out that way.

Take a look at summer 1967, and whether or not we agree about it the Pepper album was a constant presence and influence, and easily the most-talked-about release that summer and into the rest of that year. Something like that gets burned into the collective memory as being associated with "the summer" if it was coming out of radios and record players everywhere you turned in summer '67. And even with the lack of a "hit single", AM top 40 stations had the album cuts from Pepper in steady rotation, which was slightly unusual for that singles format.

More to do with timing and history than a perceived pro-Beatles bias, IMO.

Very, very true and I think I agree with your view that it was it's release that made it a "summer" album. But quite frankly, that's the worst reason to label it a summer album. It's like releasing an album called "Winter Hits, OR How I Like To Stay Cold" during 86 degree weather.

Wild Honey is an early Spring album to me. For what it's worth, I've played Pet Sounds at least once every summer for the last 14 years and this year's summer soundtrack has been TWGMTR. A better summer Beatles album for me would be Revolver as I discovered that album (watered down US version) some summers ago.

Worst reason? Not by a long shot: See the Wild Honey justification for that  :) !  You might be missing the point: If the Pepper album became the soundtrack of the summer of 1967, and that summer passed through history as the grand exalted "The Summer Of Love", and people told the stories of how Sgt. Pepper was heard everywhere that summer, it gets the instant connection to that summer and the impression that the album was one of the soundtracks to the so-called "Summer Of Love" became a powerful association which will always connect that album to summers in general.

It makes a lot more sense than Rolling Stone's grasping-at-straws approach to maintaining some hipster-underground cred by listing Wild Honey so high, an album that has *no connection* to anything resembling summer apart from maybe the bee on Marilyn's stained glass window, was released in late '67 just as fall 1967 was breaking into winter 1967, and above all the album's title and title song were less about the jar of honey and more about a girl ('honey') who was wild, and the guy who was wild for her.

I love Wild Honey, it's a great listen anytime, but talk about the worst reason...it has nothing to do with summer at all, especially in light of the other BB's albums that *do* celebrate the summer quite openly and honestly.

In Rolling Stone's defense maybe they're drinking too much Pabst.

Now that's a nice surprise on that list!
(eerr.. Sgt Pepper?)

A rare behind the scenes photo of the writers at Rolling Stone celebrating the on-schedule completion of the "10 Coolest Summer Albums" project:
(http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n295/guitarfool2002/pabst1a.jpg)

I think you're confusing Rolling Stone and Pitchfork...

If the photo were taken at Pitchfork they'd be holding bottles of Red Stripe.