The Smiley Smile Message Board

Digging the DE of NPP, and lovely song The Right Time in particular! Just love those ascending falsetto lines in the chorus! Haven't read the liner notes, or listened carefully enough, but can Brian really sing that high now? It's amazing that he can pull off such a song 54 years into his career, the mark of a true genius. He has no competition in music nowadays. Nobody else can record a 16 track no-filler album, it just isn't done! NPP is ace, and The Right Time may be my favorite Brian solo moment!

I like The Right Time too, but have to go with Midnight's Another Day as a whole.

Good choice, too! Very epic and dramatic, the best thing on TLOS.

Agreed. Far and away the best solo song.

Completing, performing, and releasing such a good version of Smile that it seemed worthy of 37 years of hype seems to me his crowning achievement. But in terms of a new solo song, put me in the MAD camp. Speed Turtle a close second. 😉

Best solo song - "Lay Down Burden"
Best solo vocal - tie between "Heaven" and "Colors Of The Wind"
Best moment(s) - that note near the end of "The First Noel" and the harmonies that follow at the fade-out

Rio Grande is the one I return the most to, but Midnight's Another Day is the one that gets me the most emotional.

If I had to pick just one....

I know it's still pretty fresh, but my favorite might be Sail Away.  I love hearing Blondie, Al, and Brian on the same track, and it has such a lively joyous sound to it. 

Tough call because he's so diverse...We have the remarkable "Smile" - as was pointed out above - something like that is normally a major disappointment, as people have built the fantasy so large in their heads, but it was a sublime experience to hear completed...dumbfounding.

Then again, over the decades, he's stacked his own vocals so superbly for various artists (my personal favorites are "Adios," "Delirious Love," "Hand on My Shoulder" with Blondie, and "Orange Crate Art" (possibly the train sound on "San Francisco" is my favorite).  I think "Hand on My Shoulder" may win for me in that group, but Brian and Ronstadt?  Jeez!

TLOS and Gershwin were both stunning efforts.

And now we have the Suite from TWGMTR and NPP as the icing on the cake...too many special moments to pick one.  I can't even pick a SONG from the Suite and NPP... 

Do I have to choose?  Brian's work is a series of remarkable moments, so I pick the whole series.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Melt Away outro. With the original 1988 unremastered mix. Unbeatable BW solo musical moment, up there with the Til I Die tag.

Some great stuff, in there. As far as classics, two I can think of:

Love and Mercy
Midnight's another day

Seeing the world premiere of Smile, and having my two favorite musical obsessions co-mingle..The Brian Wilson Sings Gershwin album :)

Agreed-there have been a lot of great moments since 1988.  Which is why I am surprised at how many negative posts always greet new BW releases on this board!  I guess people keep hoping Brian will do Pet Sounds Part II instead of being happy with what we have been offered.  Personally-I think Brian Wilson, Smile 2004 and TLOS are the best Beach Boys related new releases since Love You and Pacific Ocean Blue.  Hell-Imagination is better than Summer in Paradise!!

I keep thinking of the Sail Away on OCA.

MAD and most of the first album, Cry, Lay Down Burden and a few more

Caroline No. The (mostly) dreck he has put out in the last 15 years can't hold a candle to it.

I agree with the sentiment that there are too many great moments to be able to pick just one.

Favorite album: Orange Crate Art
Best song: Midnight's Another Day
Best tour: BWPS
Best non-album track: What Love Can Do

I'm not familiar enough with Brian's solo career stuff to choose from it, so I'll go with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTifX3mpnV4
   

It is still unreleased - The Paley Sessions. The original crazy You're Still a Mystery is superior to the calm rerecording on Made In California.

This is just an opinion, of course, but an opinion I wholeheartly share. Actually, it is one of the very few tracks with a piano-based arrangement that I truly love listening to, along with REM's "Nightswimming" and the outro music to the Charlie Brown cartoon "He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown".

Love &  Mercy is a song that really gets to me . The album Orange Crate Art also affects me the same way .

Yep That's another one.

"San Francisco" - one of my favorite California-based songs. About city that people call "the Paris of America" (heard it said by panelist Martin Gabel in the best game show "What's My Line?"). And ofc new album stuff - Sail Away, Tell Me Why, Don't Worry etc.

Yay.  A fellow fan of Don't Worry.  I didn't think much of it the first time I heard it, but I like it more each time I hear it.  Just a fun song. 

Agree, as without a doubt mine would be the same choice. Brian at his best via his greatest solo moment imo.

(http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/y395/Rich199/3a2ec0cc-453c-48fb-a673-31f35b36ba95.jpg)

If you are just looking for moments two come to mind:

1. "The river is deep" section of "Rio Grande".

2. The translation  in " Blue Hawaii" from "in the pink" to "I lose a dream". It's like!egoing from Hell to Heaven.

If a had to pick a moment...it was when he hit the road in '99. Milwaukee was the second night of that 1st solo tour and I was there. NEVER thought I would see that.

Where can I find "What Love Can Do"?

"Moment" as written in the heading is open to interpretation - could be part of a song, a whole song, or some other event. Glad people see it that way, great choices so far! Makes me want to go back an reassess some stuff.

Favorite album: That Lucky Old Sun
Favorite song: You're Still a Mystery
Favorite moment: Middle eight of "It ain't necessarily So" (To get into heaven...)

I love Melt Away and think the 1988 album is his best (or new material) overall, despite the production.

TLOS would be a strong second.

I think his strongest solo songs were all on the 1st album - L&M, Melt Away, Baby Let Your Hair Grow Long, Little Children, and Rio Grande. They're every bit as strong as his songs on an album like Sunflower.

I agree. Even Rolling Stone magazine called it the best BB's album since Sunflower. TLOS would be second on my list, although OCA is very special to me, but that's sort of a separate category - Brian singing Van Dyke's words and music.

Midnight's Another Day

... but when its comes to "music which is art that transcends all other crap" it has to be the second movement of SMiLE.

Here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8A_J4KSvRg

Thanks, yeahh, I recognize it now, from a VA album, got it!

I was at that show too...something I never, ever thought I would see. Brian has come a long way performance-wise since then.

Wow! I wish NPP would sound like that.