The Smiley Smile Message Board

Yeah, that's right. It bothers me. To me, these are pure expressions from one man's soul, that being Brian Wilson in this case, and if you hate these albums, well, I feel like you are rejecting Brian Wilson as a person. Yes, I feel it is that blunt of a statement. Honestly, I feel that by doing that, you reduce Brian to a commercial entity that you use purely for your own enjoyment.

Then again, I suppose that it is the purpose of pop music, isn't it? To make people serve us for our own enjoyment, to give what we used to call "court jesters" employment. When we don't like what they produce artistically, we don't hesitate to use harsh language to express our disapproval, to figuratively cut off their heads with popular opinion. Beyond even that, we pry into their personal lives and judge that as well for its moral content and entertainment value. It's sick and degrading. Then, ironically, we wonder aloud why Kurt Cobain kills himself or why Brian gives terrible, uninformative interviews. Did you ever stop to think that could it be that our tendency to fetishize musicians is unhealthy, both for ourselves and the musician, and that it causes so called rock stars to retreat or go insane? Could it be that we are propping people up so that we can exalt or destroy them for our own sense of gratification? I think so. I think fans here get gratification out of bashing Mike Love. I've come to think that it's sick to judge interpersonal relationships that we have only the slightest notion of.

Like so many rock stars plead, it should all be more about the music, shouldn't it? And, in just discussing the music, shouldn't we have some regard to people's feelings? Think about the torment bad reviews cause some people. What would it hurt if there was a little more love and acceptance? It would hurt nothing but our own sense of entitlement, that we reserve the right to negatively judge people to boost our own self-esteem.

So, keep bashing Smiley Smile or Love You while wondering at the same time why Brian retreated from life. Please, don't think for a second that you're part of the problem. It would defeat the whole purpose of this "rock star" act we've concocted. Bash away, my friends, bash away.

sorry to tell you but...smiley smile was done after BRIAN quit the SMILE album. The other boys were to put out a album legaly for capitol records so they made Smiley Smile. A waste of time because Smile was way better.

Loves You was made by BRIAN as part of therapy.. the other is that in 77 the boys were at the point of splitting so those 2 made Loves You..

I love Smiley Smile.   And personally I think the version of Wind Chimes on Smiley kicks the Smile version to the curb.  I like the version of Vegetables as well, and (dare I say it) I think the version of Wonderful on Smiley is great and unfairly maligned.  The Smile version(s) of Wonderful were/would have been awesome too, but I like this one as well.  Basically I like the whole album.    8)

Couldn't agree more, in fact the Smiley rendition of "Wind Chimes" might very well be among my top 10 BB songs ever.

Although they are very different from each other, & represent 2 distinct eras/approaches, both albums are among my favorites too.

DaDa while I agree with some aspects of your post I think you may be getting certain issues confused. Personally when I say that I find a big chunk of "Love You" to be a steaming pile of sh*t it's not because I am taking great delight in knocking B.W., it's because I find a hefty amount of songs on it to be the worst the Beach Boys ever put their name to.  While there are undoubtedly over zealous Brian fans out there who take great delight in slagging anything BB related he is not involved with because they can't stand Mike Love and enjoy letting it be known, there are also going to be those who simply do not enjoy "Summer In Paradise" because they feel that it is bad music. I have a hard time imagining Mr.L crying himself to sleep over this each night.

I think a good sized portion of your post reflects the modern media more than the modern fan. Newscasters fall over themselves to kick celebs when they are down. That whole Brittany Spears thing of a couple of years ago made me sick.  Also surely there should be strongly defined laws (esp in U.S of A) of what a member of the paparazzi can and cannot be allowed to do in regards to following celebs.

Hope I haven't come off as too much of a blowhard on this post.  I love a good debate me. ;) 

Dada (I love to write Dada), if you're addressing your post to the casual Beach Boy/pop music fan, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Sure, they're not going to like Smiley or Love You. We learned that in Beach Boys 101 in our freshman year, first semester. If it doesn't SOUND like the Beach Boys, people won't like it. They also don't "get it", but that's another issue.

If you're addressing your post to us nuts, well, a very, very large majority like both of  those albums. And, if they don't now, I really believe that some day they will. Eventually, Brian's gonna hook you, whether you want to be hooked or not.

I like Smiley but not Love You. That doesn't mean I don't like Brian or understand his story, I'm simply judging those records on their musical merits. I think Ike Turner acted like an ass most of his life but I still like his music. The personal life of someone is interesting but it doesn't really matter to me as far as what I like or don't.

It's interesting, on the case of Love You, i just have to plead ignorance. I've loved the album since about my fifth listen, and barely noticed it's flaws until I read up on my BB history. It's just blind love I guess. Play me anything else after 1976 with Brian or Dennis in less than stellar vocal form and I'll pick up on it, but with this one I don't care for some reason. Magic, I guess.

Amen. I resisted Smiley Smile for YEARS. But I'm finding myself being drawn into it more and more lately.

To paraphrase Linus van Pelt, I love "Love You", it's just a few of the songs on it I can't stand.

And I mean that seriously.

I love the Wilson brothers dearly -- my problem with Love You is that I heard really good versions of songs from it performed live by the BBs before the album was released. When the album came out, it was a huge let-down from what I'd heard live. I'm still no fan of LY to this day.

I do dig Smiley Smile, however.

Both of these albums were underwealming the first time I heard them. Smiley because I was expecting to hear more Smile like music, and Love You seemed very cheesey to me. Now I love Smiley and Love You is probably in my top 5 BBs albums along with Pet Sounds, Wild Honey, Friends and Surfs Up.

I'm surprised when anybody but me Likes Love You. Like one reason I love Brian so much is because it's almost like Love You was made for me, it's my quirky taste, weird lyrics, friggin' crazy music.

I don't try push Love You on anyone, even fellow Beach Boys fans, it's a very acquired taste  :hat

I guess, to me, Love You is a personal statement from Brian. He wasn't going to be the 'genius' you wanted him to be (we all saw how well that worked out for him), but if you stop and take the time to look and appreciate what's there, you'll find that the magic still lingers on.... No, he can't make a "Good Vibrations" now, but he's still the Brian you knew and loved.

I have grown to like Love You quite a bit over the years, but it took time.  But I find quirkiness appealing, so it was inevitable I would eventually appreciate it, I guess.

But I'm very sympathetic to people who love the Brian Wilson of Pet Sounds but can't stay in the same room with the Brian Wilson of Love You.  They're really two very different people, in a way, and they are most definitely two very different types of music. 

I've always loved Smiley Smile, from the first discovery of it.  In spite of the fact that it was a "bunt instead of a grand slam", it is still one of the weirdest, quirkiest, and stoned-est albums of the psychedelic era, truly an underappreciated gem of that period in pop music.

To me it feels different. It's like "let's put out anything Brian comes up with no matter how good or bad it is because he's marketable right now". I just don't think Love You lives up to Brian's previous work and I think he's bettered it several times since then. I actually like Adult Child a lot more because of the Dick Reynolds cuts.

I hated Love You until one day I was on a long road trip. My mind was exhausted from Driving all day and I listened to Love You. When it got to "Love is a Woman" and I heard the saxophones which sounded so sarcastic and mocking (the "One, Two Three" part) I suddenly "got it". That album is so Brian in it's hilarity and honesty. I love it now.

At first listen, i nearly wanted to barf from Love You.. 2 listens later and a mini obseesion begun....there are more melodies on that album, at any given moment, than I could come up with on my own in my entire life. Musically speaking I have a hard time understanding how fans can't appreciate it for what it is, if not liking it.

Smiliey Smile on the other hand is a tougher pill to swallow for some. I dig it, but I can see how more traditionalists have a hard time with it.

There is an underground band out there called the Danielson Famile. They are quite unique. However there is somewhat a resemblance to Love You to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZGneL0Orno

I bought Love You the day it was released. From Carl's first scream on "Let Us Go On This Way", I had a feeling that I was in for something fresh and new. The album rocks! It has an edge to it. It's quirky and funny. Some of Mike Love's best vocals  are on it. He is not as nasal as other post Holland albums. Rolling Stone even gave it a good review. I remember the caption "It may not be the Summer of Love, but The Beach Boys Love You, just the same". I consider it Brian's pre-New Wave album; raw and honest.

As for Smiley Smile, very trippy whether stoned or sober.

Excellent! I had the same experience as you.

I would define myself as a Brian evangelist of sorts, yet I didn't like either album at first. In fact, as I type this, I'm playing "smiley" on vinyl. I think people in general just need to lose any preconceptions of Brian's slick spector-esque productions, double-tracked harmonies, etc. before they hear those albums. They are both great albums (although Smiley wins by a mile in my book) if you can just get past the expectations you may have going in to it. Your mind must be a blank slate, which is so impossible with a band as famous and as pigeonholed as the BBs. I agree also about the smiley renditions being preferable to the SMiLE renditions at times. Both are very interesting and pleasurable records.

I like some songs on Love You a lot but I can't honestly say that it's a good album. I think one of the main reasons it gets so many gushing reviews is just because Brian wrote the songs rather than because of the overall quality. I don't see the album as being a personal statement either. I see it as having been hideously underproduced and underwritten in terms of the lyrics because Brian was in such a terrible place at the time. The band were also obviously in a terrible place too or they wouldn't have agreed to sing on some of the songs or then to release it in its final form.

If Adult/Child had been released it may well have a similar reputation but again it was another symptom that Brian wasn't doing well and neither were the group. Terribly halfhearted productions on some songs and abysmal lyrics.

M.I.U. probably gets such a bashing just because it's seen as being Mike and Al's album. While it's not good, it doesn't deserve quite the slating that it gets and at least it sounds like Al and Ron Altbach were actually putting some effort into the production side and all of the songs sound finished.

I agree with everything you said except for the quality of the songs. I think they're right up there with many of Brian's 60's tracks. Obviously, the lead vocals detract from the final product, but there's something about the melodies and arrangements that are special. I don't think Brian approached that quality since.

Much of "Love You" sounds like the musical equivalent of someone hit by a car learning how to walk all over again. That's the only way I can describe it. 

I've said it a million times on here, but Love You's songwriting is at least as technically interesting as anything on Today or PS. He's got major 7ths moving into minor 7ths with a 9th in the bass, which is pretty Bacharachian, and strange clustery chord sequences, so I cannot understand how these songs are frowned upon. Yeah, the productions aren't particularly dynamic, but the songs hold up.

I agree completely. In terms of chord changes and melodies, Brian's writing was as strong as it had ever been around the time of Love You (excepting maybe the Smile era). The difference is that he wasn't as interested in realizing his songwriting as a full production. So, instead, he built upon his basic piano "demos" with synthesizers and drum machines. He added a few real instruments in as overdubs, but it wasn't a common practice. Carl Wilson probably added most of the electric guitar parts without much, if any, oversight from Brian.

The very nature of synthesizers, being somewhat rigid sounding instruments (especially in the 70s), necessitated that Brian make simpler sounding arrangements. The crazy horn parts on some of the 15 Big Ones material (some of which wasn't released), as well as tracks like "Had To Phone Ya" or "Michael Row the Boat Ashore",  make me think that Brian could have come up with more complex arrangements if he wanted to. He just didn't feel like it. For whatever reason, it didn't excite him.  He was content to work with synthesizers. I also think that he avoided more intricate harmonies because that sweet sound hearkened back to the BBs early days, and I don't think Brian was eager to return to that sound. Things like the fade out to "Melt Away" or "One For the Boys" make me feel like Brian never really lost that ability, at least as much as some people thought.

What people don't know is that much of Smiley Smile, for example, was recorded in a similar manner. Brian would lay down a demo of a song on his detuned piano , after which he and the group would add various instrumental parts. Then, when they were finished, Brian would wipe most of, if not all of, the piano track off from the finished song. That droning Baldwin organ usually was all that was left to hold the tracks together after that, giving Smiley Smile it's characteristic sound. Basically, the piano functioned like a click track for the group to record to.

On some Love You tracks it was possible for Brian to wipe out the piano track, like on Airplane, but other songs needed it still to fill out the song. Again, though, you see that Brian hadn't really changed as much as you thought. He was basically already working that way as early as '67, when he was 'still' a genius.

So, ultimately, for me, it's easy to see how this is a natural extension of what Brian had always been doing, and not as out there as you might first be tempted think.

The first time I heard Love You I thought 'what the foda is this?'   ??? :o

It took until maybe the third or fourth listen when it suddenly clicked and I started grinning like a maniac, such a whacked out, sad, funny and intruiging album. Lyrically it sucks bad yet the naive charm of the lyrics somehow overcomes this.

As for Smiley Smile I think it was the second of the twofers that I got and I liked it immediately - trippy, sparse, funny and eerie all at once. When reading the booklet I was impatiently waiting for Leaf to shut up about whatever this SMiLE album was and to just tell me about Smiley! (I knew next to nothing about The Beach Boys back then  ;D).

Oh and it's probably blasphemy to say this but I far prefer Smiley Smile to Wild Honey.

This is really interesting thanks for the info.

Yes I hear a lot of complex quality in the Love You songs. Even the ones that sound dumb and out there like Johnny Carson have a lot of hidden depth and stand up to repeated listening imo. The more melancholy numbers from solar system on move me as much as his most brilliant pet sounds/smile era stuff - perhaps more as they just have so much sadness i them.


I don't agree at all. I think adult Child is clearly a weak set of songs with very few high points. Love You has a lot to offer if you can get past the production (which personally I enjoy).

No way! Smiley is WAY better.

Thats what I'm saying, Smiley Smile is great! It's just that it seems in Beach Boys fandom that Wild Honey is untouchable and someone on the shutdown board once described me not liking Wild Honey as 'horrific'!

Love You is supposed to sound the way it does. The songs were recorded that way on purpose. There wasn't slip shod production, etc.  No wonder The Beach Boys were never able to progress in the 70's.  You try to change your sound, give your vocals a bit of an edge and try to stay current, but you can't, because everyone expects your songs and your vocals to be a certain way. No wonder they soon became a traveling jukebox of hits. We caused it to happen. The main reason why I love the album so much is because it was raw, fresh and new sounding. It was the last really creative and exciting album that they made. This kind of thinking happens once you get pigeon-holed.

Another spot-on post about Love You, drbeachboy. The songs were recorded that way on purpose. I believe Brian was going for THAT sound - synthesizers, moog bass, minimal potato chip can drums, rougher vocals (which I don't especially like), adult/child lyrics, with an ATTITUDE. When I listen to Love You, which is more of a Brian Wilson solo album than his actual solo albums, I hear Brian's interpretation of what LOVE is to him - at that moment in time.  It's real. It's honest 1976 Brian Wilson - warts, craziness, heart, "fun", recovery, Beach Boys, and all. He laid out his soul on Love You. Yeah, he did it fast, probably didn't finish it, and split.

But, Brian always had a particular "sound" which he was going for in all of his albums. That's why they all sounded so different, so fresh, so new.  From the surf & turf rock & roll to the Spectorian Today/Summer Days/Pet Sounds trilogy to SMiLE. Even Wild Honey, Friends, and his his early 70's stuff had a unique "sound". He kept changing his sound all the way through to Love You. Then it stopped...

I remember interviews with both Carl & Mike, and how they explained how Brian heard everything in his head before he even went in the studio.  He knew exactly what he was going for when he recorded Love You. As for vocals, on songs like Let Us Go On This Way, with the arrangement that was used, I can't imagine the vocals being smooth and clean on this song. This is a punchy song that needed an edgy vocal. Even Roller Skating Child needs those edgy background vocals, especially the way the chorus rolls along. I think Brian & Dennis' background vocals sound is very cool on Honkin' Down The Highway. Brian's rough vocals keep I Bet He's Nice from becoming corny. He makes me believe he is singing from his heart and emotions. Same thing with Let's Put Our Hearts Together, only he and Marilyn could pull that song off. A sweet vocal on that tune has cornball written all over it. Brian's vocal makes me believe he meant every word in that song.  I would have took similar types of albums like Love You over anything they released after that point. All of their post Love You albums had their moments and flashes of genius, but were never as fun and inventive as this one. I wish The Beach Boys had moved a little toward New Wave; as most of it really is nothing more than a harder version of 60's 3 chord rock and roll. A New Wave album from The Beach Boys would have sold a million units. ;-)

Great post, drbeachboy!

Love You has been praised by a number of music critics as being musically prophetic of the synth-driven directions of 80s pop.  And interestingly enough, Brian in some ways took up right where Love You left off for his first official solo album.  He likes electronic keyboards, simple as that.  You can still hear it on that cute little "Love You-esque" snippet at the end of the Lucky Old Sun project.

I'd be not at all displeased to hear him do a whole new album of stuff like that.  It'd be fun.

(I'm listening to Love You as I add a few lines to this post.  It's strange how this album can either sound insane or sound like a work of sheer genius depending on your mood.  This is one of those times that it smacks of genius to me.  It's amazing, really.)

Brilliant posts, guys!

My thoughts on Smiley Smile are pretty well known for long-term viewers of BB message boards. Suffice it to say, it is the album that turned me on to the Beach Boys (after previously buying the 1988 solo album on cassette for 99 cents back in 1995).

Love You...well...I love it. In fact, the only thing that made me like it less was hear the Adult/Child tracks (esp. Everybody Wants to Live) and the cover of You've Lost that Lovin Feeling. Those tracks should have been released. And yeah, the vocals are part of its charm. But then I'm a fan of Tom Waits, so yeah...

Strangely, the simplistic synth melodies used on a lot of rap songs released in the last few years remind me of Love You. I'll hear them on the radio and just be astonished. It really makes Brian seem like some kind of crazy trailblazer, so crazy you could never follow him.

Yep.  Once you manage to get over the idea that Beach Boys always have to sound like Choir Boys, it begins to all make sense...

It should never bother anyone when someone states their opinion.  I happen to dislike both albums.  That's my opinion.  I've tried for many years to like Smiley.  Every so often I go back to it, just to make sure I'm not missing something, but to this day, it just doesn't cut it for me.  IMO, "Wonderful" and "Wind Chimes" on Smiley don't even come close to the SMiLE versions.  I do prefer the Smiley version of "Vegetables" though.  It sounds more cohesive than the demo-sounding SMiLE cut.  

Give me "Wild Honey" any day.  It rocks!

P.S. I would never discredit anyone for liking the above mentioned albums.  Diff'rent strokes, ya know!

Yes...and has anyone compared BWPS to Sufjan Stevens' last three projects?  I think the "crazy trailblazer" has a new follower in Sufjan.  Not that Sufjan sounds like a retread of Brian Wilson, but he seems to be taking a general artistic direction that further explores the "Americana" aspect of SMiLE in it's completed form, finding his inspiration from distinctly vintage American sources and creating a fresh lyrical and musical expression thereby.

I wish I could get into Stevens. As for Smiley, it is so mellow/trippy/odd/spooky sounding at times I thought I'd re-read this thread and play it again on vinyl before I teach. I teach middle school and have been playing the Pet Sounds A Capella stuff for the kids (especially "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", "Sloop John B", and "I throw in "Our Prayer") I have converted many of the younger generation! They ask for more...which I always oblige them of course.

Well, I'll admit that the topic post was a drunken screed of Lutherian proportions. It doesn't even really make sense to me. Why I wound up here when I was drunk I'll never know....

One last thing I'll say: imagine if "Roller Skating Child" had been released as a single like Brian wanted? Although I sincerely doubt it would have been a hit, I love that mental image of the song blasting out of people's car radios late at night.

Music is subjective so there is no right or wrong answer for if you like something or not (unless it's shite like The Black Eyed Peas). Having said that.....  ;)

I'm stunned whenever I hear all this praise for "Love You". Half of it I find good to great but the other half............  ??? Believe me I have tried over and over to appreciate the thing as a whole but the bad stuff I really just cannot stand. I think I have only physically been able to reach the end of "I Wanna Pick You Up" and "Solar System" about 3 times in my life. As I was particularly harsh on Love You not so long ago on a post, when this thread started I listened to the whole thing from start to finish for the first time in well over a year to see if my perspective had altered. It had. For the worse. I used to tolerate "Johnny Carson" but it had me positively cringing. I think I'll stick with my 8 song mini album I've created for my mp3 in the future and pretend the rest never existed! I just cannot see what others find endearing about lumpy, half finished 70's synth clunkers written by a mentally ill man who was often only writing so his shrink would let him take a hit off a joint. Enjoy!

mikes beard. Is that like John Oates mustache? ;-) Not everything is brilliant on Love You. Nothing cringe worthy to me as you put it, but it is not perfect. Don't forget, this was Group Therapy.

There's still time. There will come a time when you want a dose of Brian Wilson in the 70's (most of Sunflower was recorded in 1969) and you'll turn to Love You. The album will slowly creep up your personal charts, eventually sitting nicely in the Top 5, comfortably resting behind Pet Sounds, SMiLE, Today, and Summer Days.... :police:

If not before senility, then certainly by then, you will become a total Love You fan!

I don't know I've been a fan 22 years and have had people tell me this before. If anything I like it less then I used to. I like some of the goofy oddball stuff Brian has done like "My Solution" or "Rollin Up To Heaven" but songs like "I Wanna Pick You Up" just don't do it. I will say getting back to the original topic that Smiley has grown on me a lot over time.

If I had to pick one album that is unfairly overlooked it would be "Surfin' USA". 

I guess the goofiness of the lyrics don't bother me because I never found the BBs lyrics to be very good. I don't relate to their lyrics at all, except for the odd song or two. I mean, let's be honest, The BBs  don't hold much water from a literary perspective. I enjoy the BBs for their musical talents. At the least, the Love You lyrics are interesting in the sense that they are totally unique. I'll take that of the over the Jack Rieley 'stream of nonsense' style that dominated the BBs lyrics in the years prior to Brian's much ballyhooed return. Except, that is, for "A Day in the Life of a Tree". You have got to love that one.

Yes, and watching someone learning to walk again can be a very touching experience.

Bingo!  I think that's why it doesn't do anything for me.  Brian set such a high standard with the earlier albums, that it's hard for me to see it dropped down several notches.  It's like watching a train slip off the rail, car by car, and then after the dust clears, thinking wow, that used to be one awesome train!

Gotta love the metaphors that Love You creates for you: car accidents, train crashes...  :-\ But I do get your points.

I see that comparison, although Sufjan's musical direction is usually less trippy, more directly inspired by classical music (including 20th century classical music), and has folksy strains that remind me of Joni Mitchell. I can listen to it and say, "hey, that sounds just like Philip Glass", or "hey, that sounds just like Joni Mitchell". But, at the same time, his music is avant-garde at times and very much rooted in Americana. Still, I can't say "I've never heard anything like this before" like I can for some SMiLE music.

Bingo? Other than Pet Sounds, which other albums are there that everything on it is brilliant? None really! So, by your reply, then no other Beach Boys albums do anything for you? You don't like Love You? That's fine. Brilliance isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm that way with Pet Sounds. I mean, I like it, but other than Wouldn't It Be Nice, I really need to be in a certain mood to enjoy and really appreciate it.

What I think Love You has going for it that many BB albums don't is unity. Apart Good Time, all the songs sound like they belong together, and they were written by the same guy (which they were). It's a very honest record - a brilliant snapshot of Brian c.1977. It has a bingey, coke fried, cheap thrills sort of feel to it that almost (unintentionally of course) amounts to a unifying concept. It's the sound of somebody desperately trying to blot out the pain with dumb, happy, simple stuff like roller skating rinks and johnny carson, nursery rhyme ditties about space. In this context, the lazy, simple production reinforces the concept imo.

Then you have the slower, more melancholy songs where that pain is revealed a bit more clearly - Lyrics aside, the songs from The Night Was So Young through to Airplane all have a real sadness to them, and I think they're amongst the most beautiful he ever wrote.

You don't think the SMiLE material is brilliant?  Or Sunflower (and there was only a small amount of Brian on that one)?  Or what about all the pre-Party stuff?  No brilliance to be found?  If that's the way you see it, that's ok.  As I stated earlier, different strokes.  Everyone's gonna have different preferences.

I'm agreeing to disagree, as my wife always says!  :)

I think you've got some self-contradiction going on. If you want people's responses to be purely about the music, then it is irrelevant whether you reject Brian Wilson as a person or you critique that music harshly when the mood strikes you. If you, as listener, dislike the music and "it's purely about the music," then you have every right to reject that music as harshly as you want, even if it comes straight from the musician's soul or means you reject the musician himself. If it were more about affirming the musician's humanity, then what's the point of music--it would be something of a middle man getting in the way of our affirmations of one another as people. (The other assumption I think you're making that is quite a leap is that just because you think Smiley Smile and Love you are "pure expressions from [Brian's] soul," that they are those pure expressions. Anyway, I love Love You.

Ah, you missed the post where I said that the topic post was, quite literally, a drunken screed of "Lutherian" proportions and that it didn't even make sense to me.

Ah, did not read the whole thread.

@ sockittome

You said you did not like Love You, because you agreed with me saying "Not everything is brilliant...". Love You is an album. Smile is not. Yes, there is sheer brilliance on the Smile tracks.  There is brilliance on the Sunflower album, and there is brilliance on all of their studio albums. The difference though, is that not every track on any one album is brilliant, except maybe, Pet Sounds. I do think that every album has some brilliant tracks, but every track does not have to be brilliant to make for a good album. All of The Beach Boys best albums have a clunker of some kind. All Summer has Our Favorite Recording Sessions, Today has Bull Sessions etc. In my opinion Love You has Love Is A Woman and Ding Dang as so-so tracks. Like I said earlier, I have no problem with you not liking Love You. I was just questioning why an album has to be brilliant in order for you to like it. You are the one that answered "Bingo" to my post.

Ok, I just wrote this in an e-mail to someone who used to post here and I felt that I needed to also post it here for the anti-Love You gentiles:

"love you truly is a cosmic album full of joy. as rock journalist lester bangs described it, it sounds "like the great roller rink in the sky". the cover of love you sums up the sound of the music better than any other album cover i have ever seen. the music sounds pixelated. pixelation, according to wikipedia, "is an effect caused by displaying a bitmap or a section of a bitmap at such a large size that individual pixels, small single-colored square display elements that comprise the bitmap, are visible to the eye." and here we see brian distilling his complex melodic ideas into their purest form, three or four note huge sounding synth parts that still manage to carry the same amount of emotion as they would in a more complex form. it is the same process. i have also likened it to a boy genius hopped up on ritalin playing with his lite-brite late into the night. what we the listener get is a dazzling colorful mosaic, hypnotic in its simplicity and esoteric beauty. brian had to colonize the frontier of mars to create this music for us. no man, earthbound for his entire life, could have created it.

it is in parts inspired by phil spector's legendary wall of sound and by wendy carlos switched on bach (bach music performed entirely on 60s era synthesizers), yet entirely brian and within the classic beach boys idiom. this is the sound of brian having fun. fans can like "fire" more, and while i appreciate that song, i would rather hear the sound of brian, that celestial being that he is, having fun as opposed to hearing him have a breakdown. i think the moment of epiphany came to me when i heard the boogie woogie/honky tonk outro to "airplane". i was stoned, and when that started, i realized that love you was the work of that same brian we had always known and loved.

it doesn't hurt that the album is full of great chord changes and lifting melodies or that the lyrics are the most unique lyrics you will ever hear on a rock album. love you... i love you!"

Good stuff - enjoyed reading that, especially the pixellation analogy. I read the Lester Bangs review the other day and I think he nails it. I'd love to post it here but I think copyright laws probably prevent it. What I love about Love You is it has a hipness to it, and it's the hipness that always shined through when Brian was left to his own devices, free from constraints of making a commercial record. I think it has dated very well, ironically considering the period moog sounds - in fact if anything, those sounds make it seem more 'now'.