The Smiley Smile Message Board

Ive red this before and now I get it. The 20/20 album was less of a proper studio album but a collection of singles, outtakes and leftovers. The singles A and B sides of Do it Again, I can hear music and Bluebirds,,,Brians outtakes of Time to get alone and I went to Sleep and the Smile tracks Cabinessence and Our prayer...its clearly a studio lp but not in the same way as Sunflower and Friends etc correct?

Pretty much. Not a cohesive project I suppose. Odds and ends with some new stuff. I wouldn't put it in the same category as a hits collection though. In hindsight it's one of the best albums from the late 60s, in my opinion.

I think Dennis said in an interview that he hated the album for that reason.

Not in the same way as Friends, CATP, Holland, Party!, Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, but actually more or less in the same way as Sunflower, and a little bit like Surf's Up too.

I tend to skip Bluebirds but other than that I love every song on it. Considering the way it was made it works remarkably well as a cohesive album experience, for me anyway. The Friends / 20/20 twofer is definitely one of the most-played records in my entire collection.

I feel like the only real conceived albums after Friends were Holland, 15 Big Ones, and Love You.

The songs individually on 20/20 are some of the group's best, but the album just has no flow to it. Cabinessence feels totally out of place on this album; I Went to Sleep and Time to Get Alone kind of go together; but this album is all over the place. Friends, Sunflower and Wild Honey feel like albums made as albums.

It's a bunch of pieces that don't fit together, but a lot of those pieces happen to be really really good.

I think people saying that "I Went to Sleep" is an outtake is a falsehood that's been thrown around for a while without looking closer at the facts. If one looks at the sessions, "I Went to Sleep" was NOT a Friends outtake as some have surmised. It was recorded long after the Friends sessions in the company of recordings of "Do It Again", "We're Together Again" and "Sail Plane Song" amongst others. So really, it seems it was recorded for the album after Friends, which ultimately became 20/20.

And BB85, perhaps?

It was Odds and Sods before Odds and Sods. Best contractual obligation album ever.

You are correct, but not every album has to flow like a concept album. If you think about it, 20/20's unevenness is due to it being the first full-fledged album by committee. Every member either wrote or picked the songs to be recorded. The tracks had different producers. It was a bit of an experimental piece that they were later able to perfect with Sunflower.

Collection sums it up for me.

It was a good deal back in the day.     all of those good songs for 4 times the price of the ICHM single.    And 2 SMiLE tracks prev un released.      I also bought Rolling Stones collections.    Flowers and High Tides.     sh*t.  Minimum wage was a dollar back then!    who had money for albums with dumb filler? :p

I'm not sure if I remember this right, but I believe the Boys couldn't get a more "real" album out of it because they had to tour. Didn't Stephen Desper write something like that in his thread?