The Smiley Smile Message Board

I just noticed a strange thing about music composed by Brian, i.e. I never experienced an "earworm" caused by one of his songs. On the contrary, I can use one of his tunes to counter an earworm.
Is it only me?

lol, probably just you.

There's even an episode of the Big Bang Theory about one of Brian's earworms, it's so entrenched in popular culture.

Yeah, it's definitely only you. LOL.  
I even find myself involuntarily humming sections of such Wilsonian arcana as "Still I Dream of It" and "The Spirit of Rock and Roll."

"Desert Drive" and a lot of the BB Smile backing vocals for me.

I suppose I don't get BB songs stuck in my head as often as some other stuff, but I do on occasion get them stuck anyway.

I had City Blues stuck in my head for a while in 2004

Ding Dang is the BIG OL EARWORM!

A few years back, during a particularly stressful time, I would wake up to the refrain to “Hawaii”. Lasted for months before it went away. :spin

That's a good one.  I don't get annoyed by it, but I get the non-verbal vocal descending line from Barnyard in my head sometimes

So many . . .

Don’t Worry Baby
Time to Get Alone
Wendy
She Knows Me Too Well
Good to My Baby
California Girls
Country Air
Aren’t You Glad

Old thread, but Im gonna defend the OP's take actually. If you're referring to Brian's music with the Beach Boys proper, then I certainly join the majority in disagreeing. HOWEVER, if you're referring to Brian's solo output, I absolutely share your opinion. It gives me no pleasure to say it, but I find most of Brian's solo career very bland and forgettable, no offense to the man himself. (He's more than earned his place as my favorite and arguably the best composer of our times but that doesn't mean everything he did was beyond reproach and I pride myself on being brutally honest, even where my hero is concerned.)

One thing I noticed with all Brian's solo stuff (sans TLOS and some of the Paley sessions) is how there's no hook, nothing to get me singing along in the shower a week later, so to speak. No "I'm picking up good vibrations..." nor "well since ya put me down..." catchy lyrical phrases. The greatest irony of listening to Brian's solo work is that it made me miss Mike Love, it dispelled the "Brian didn't need those guys, he should've just went solo, they only held him back" narrative I used to believe. Literally if you want a new fan to appreciate what the other guys brought to the table, play Mike's version of Good Vibes back to back with Tony Ashers. Play the "corny" early hits immediately after VDP's "deep" Orange Crate Art and see which of them sticks with you the next day. Try to remember even one song from Imagination compared to "Looking Back With Love" (it may not be a good song technically, but I still catch myself singing "fear and loathing in the woodstock nation" even years later from one single listen!)

Mike, by himself, makes let's say lowbrow stuff compared to Brian's genius, but the man had a penchant for earworms. (And the lyrics he wrote for "I'm Waiting for the Day," are as good as anything on Pet Sounds, so much so that I had no idea they weren't Asher's for years, they blend right in!)

Julia, first of all thanks for joining, or re-joining (I don't know) our forum., and thanks for defending my take.
Said that, I fear there is a misunderstanding here.
I meant the "no earworm" as a compliment to Brian, because I hate when great music become "earworms". Just as an example, I think the "Blue Jays"  album by Justin Hayward snd John Lodge, two of the Moody Blues, is a masterpiece. Imho it's the GOAT In its style, romantic/symphonic rock. My only problem with it is that if I listen to it too much, practically every track on it becomes an "earworm". I can't shake them off... they are TOO catchy, too "hooky". The same for most of the music i love most.
Except Brian. From "Surfer Girl" to the tracks of the criminally undervalued "Long Promised Road" soundtrack, never an "earworm" for me. To my ears, Brian 's music far too subtle, too gentle, too nuanced, too ethereal (EVEN WHEN IT ROCKS) to become something as blatant and intrusive as an "earworm".
By the way, I agree with you about Mike's merits (no surprise here, I guess) and can add to said merits that he is remarkably earworm-free, too, for me. Not even "Kokomo", though it's as catchy as they come. Maybe, after co-authoring so many songs, some of Brian's unique magic remained attached to Mike.
I fear that you, like so (too) many people, strongly undervalue Brian's after-1966/1967 work, and in particular his "solo output". I won't try to convince anybody, but it's a pity. There's a motherlode of gems there.

Thanks, I appreciate the welcome! I dont know how frequently I'll be at it but for the time being, while the group is on my mind again for the first time in many years, it's nice to be back. Sorry to see how slow things have gotten, but I guess with reddit and discord (to say nothing of the ~4 forums we've got now) the community is pretty fractured these days.

Huh, that's interesting you say you don't consider Mike's lyrics earworms because to me they are the very definition. I don't mean that disrespectfully, in fact as my other post was trying to say, I think it's a quality sorely lacking in the later era BB stuff and solo careers. I'm not the biggest Kokomo fan (don't hate it but wouldn't put it on to entertain guests) but "Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya..." has got to be among the catchiest hooks ever written. That's the kind of thing that takes a "pretty song" and turns it into a bona fide HIT and Mike was great at that. (Sometimes it may have come at the expense of the "art" but this is a business and if you're not selling records, you don't get to make anything.)

When it comes to the post-66 stuff, for the record, I have mixed feelings. Smiley Smile is a twisted work of genius whose sole sore spot is the forced inclusion of GV which Brian fought against. Wild Honey, Friends and 20/20 are imperfect but there's some great tracks on there--especially WH itself, Darlin', Busy Doin' Nothing, Little Bird and I Was Made to Love Her. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the best tracks from this era (Been Way Too Long, Cool Cool Water) are not only SMiLE leftovers but remained in the vaults for reasons unknown. I'm not the biggest fan of Sunflower, Surf's Up (imo the most overrated album in their discography) and CATP:ST but they have their moments too. Holland is fantastic and for me that's when they finally found their footing again as a band, like Dark Side of the Moon was for Pink Floyd after Syd Barrett left. Then 15BOs is trash (sorry if others like it, but I dont) and killed the revival they had going. Love You is brilliant, maybe not quite Pet Sounds level but definitely cut from the same cloth, a lot of fun and perhaps the best demonstration of Brian's quirky humor. Mt Vernon is a really charming idea and I wanted to like it more than I did. I think the music, concept and narration are great but the script needed some work and it should've either been tightened up to a song or fleshed out into a whole album; as an EP it's both too long and not enough to tell the story properly, finding a way of being meandering and anticlimactic at the same time.

Everything after that is extremely mediocre for me, with a few exceptions like Pacific Ocean Blue, the Paley Sessions, BWPS, TLOS and TWGMTR. I wanted to like Brian Wilson '88, Imagination, No Pier Pressure and his other stuff but I just don't. I'll try to give it another chance one of these days but I think he was mostly let down by poor collaborators (Landy, Thomas) and just not having the same "juice" in him anymore after all the trauma and damage from medical malpractice. I'm not trying to be harsh and I'm glad if other people can enjoy those albums but I can't. Overall, it just feels like the best stuff stayed unreleased far too often, or they'd find a promising groove (psychedelic production in the PS-SMiLE Eras, Blondie and Ricky, Brian's Back) but abandon it just as it was bearing fruit, and the two best songwriters of the group (Brian, Dennis) weren't supported to the extent they should've been. Pacific Ocean Blue and Dennis' unreleased stuff should've been on proper BB albums. Adult/Child, while I'm not the biggest fan, should've been allowed to come out if that's where Brian's muse was taking him. (After realizing by then they should've supported SMiLE more, and relying on his "return" for commercial clout, they owed him that much. I'm sure Brian felt the same and that's probably why he stopped being a big creative force in the group after that--plus Landy of course).