The Smiley Smile Message Board

A year ago today, I met the girl that I thought was my everything. We shared everything in common, and lived the Beach Boys. Before things went wrong, and my life became a train wreck and everything between us ended horribly, I heard my favorite Beach Boys song the night we met, on March 21st, 2014. The song was Kiss Me, Baby. Even a year later, I still listen to the song constantly, even though I still think of her.

Sorry to give you a sob story, but what I'm getting at is, share your experience hearing your favorite BB song for the first time, and tell about all the memories you remember when you hear that song.

I discovered almost all of the major hits when I was younger than 10, so they didn't mean as much to me when I first heard them even though a lot of them are my favorites. 

Two recent discoveries for me are Let Him Run Wild and Sherry She Needs Me.  For the former, the "Guess you know I..." part sounds so amazing to me.  This won't make sense to you guys, but subconsciously (or maybe not since I've thought about it) I'll create little snippets of songs in my head and that part of LHRW was exactly one of those snippets.  It sounds perfect to my ears. 

As for SSNM, the backing track is everything I love about the BBs from the Christmas album to SD(SN).  Plus I love Brian's vocal, it's rough but he can still hit the high notes like a champ.  The added ending fits in so perfectly as well. 

One of my favorite moments from Today!

A long time ago, my girlfriend and I were on a road trip to Texas. We had decided to move there and start fresh, and everything seemed perfect. I had prepared an mp3 CD with a bunch of random favorites on it for the occasion, and at one point "You're So Good to Me" started playing and it really captured how I felt at the time. I'll always remember looking at her, holding her hand and being so happy I could hardly contain myself, while that song played in the background. Probably the happiest I've ever been. Now when I listen to it I can't help but smile and feel good. It has been my favorite Beach Boys song ever since.

It's funny, I also associate the Beach Boys with a relationship. The same time I really fell in love for the first time was just when I started to really get into Pet Sounds, and now the album always just reminds of laying around and talking with her as it played in the background...

Listing to TWGMTR for the first time, baked to the gills. I thought the album was ending with the "Goodbye" at the end of PCH. Oh my god, the Beach Boys just said goodbye.

 Then the wind chimes, tack piano, and...Summer's Gone.

Actually, it's on Summer Days Summer Nights, but I'm guessing you have the twofer?

Anyway, my favorite song is the Stephen Desper mix of Til I Die. Not sure I have any great stories to go with it. Some my find the song depressing, but I think it is an accurate description of humanity in the universe. A humility quite rare in pop music and miles away from the braggert lyrics of the early albums.

The first time I listened to Pet Sounds, I wasn't feeling it untill "I Know There's An Answer", and suddenly the whole project made sense intuitively. So I would think of this thread as how your favorite song is the one that makes you alive to a whole range of new music, raising your listening ability several notches.

Similarly, I can see how Kiss Me Baby unlocks for a listener the whole of Brian's genius pre-Pet Sounds, realizing that he'd already written 30+ great songs by mid-1965

I remember hearing Surf's Up for the first time and pretty much laying in my bed by the end staring up at the ceiling. I had just graduated from college and didn't have a job lined up yet.

Something just sort of clicked I guess.

I was amazed at the melody and how great Brian and Carl sounded. I was so amazed that these guys made this amazing piece of music when they were 23 years old? It just really made me think about a lot of things.

Tell us about how your life became a train wreck, and how things ended horribly with your girlfriend at the time.

It's really hard to say if it's my 'favourite' Beach Boys' song (can YOU pick one song? JUST one?), but it's certainly in the Top 5 or 10 at worst: Don't Talk.

I was listening to Pet Sounds for the first time, wondering if it could possibly be all it was cracked up to be. I already knew Wouldn't It Be Nice. You Still Believe In Me absolutely knocked my socks off, and proved to me that this was indeed an album to be reckoned with (that track is one of my Top 10 Brian tunes, as well). After how good that was, That's Not Me seemed slightly underwhelming (and still doesn't really do it for me - probably my least favourite track on the album, though I still like it). But THEN... that church-like organ started up... and Brian's heartfelt vocal. I was instantly hooked. I think it's tracks like these that make people give Imagination a hard time, or complain about how bits of No Pier Pressure seem MOR or plasticky. Me, I *love* cheesy, plasticky pop. But with his best tracks, Brian seems to tap so effortlessly into heartfelt emotions and put them to music so completely and effectively that almost anything else seems rather trite and 'surface' by comparison, even other parts of his own back catalogue.

Don't Talk achieves this high standard for me; I place it in the higher stratosphere of songwriting, performance, production and sound-scuplting. Straight away, it seemed to me like the perfect expression in music of how a couple in love feels just sitting close, each totally into the other. You don't need to talk; there's so much feeling, talk isn't required. Our own AGD wrote years ago in print that the sense of emotion in this track is almost overwhelming. I would agree, but I always felt (possibly wrongly) that he meant that as a bad thing, whereas I've always thought it's a stunning achievement. Writing overwhelming emotional songs that deeply move people isn't simple; it's all too easy to cross the line into kitsch or over-sentimentality. Somehow, Brian managed the balancing act in a way I don't think anyone has really surpassed. The music just nails those feelings. Adding an emotive string section to the bridge, in the hands of a less skilled composer, could have over-egged the song. But it comes across, to me at least, as perfectly pitched, just enough and no more; a true expression of what experiencing those emotions feels like.

And sure... It must have helped that Brian wrote this when he was in love, experiencing those feelings himself. And equally, I'm sure it helps that I was *listening* to it for the first time when *I* was deeply in love for the first time, 20 years ago now, with the lady who is now my wife. I'm sure that made it click more effectively with me; I'm happy to hold my hand up to that. Some Beach Boys fans I know think this track is a bit of a dirge. What can I say? I connect with it; I guess it didn't do the same for them, or not to the same extent.

After listening to Pet Sounds, I realised... this guy didn't just achieve this standard in that song. He did it for years! And he's still going! I had the same kind of instant connections with songs like With Me Tonight, God Only Knows (especially the Wally Heider version, for some reason...), She Knows Me Too Well, All I Wanna Do... the list just goes on. But the first one to hit me like that was Don't Talk. And if it isn't my favourite every day... it's always damn close. Perhaps I'm just remembering the massive impact it had on me that first time.

Or maybe... it really IS that good.

Nice topic. My all-time fave is "At My Window". I don't rmbr my 1st impression or special memory, but instead when I listen to it, I get this whole picture of band shooting a clip for a song in the meadows doing their shtick, with my on & off cameo appearance.

I'm a fan of benign music, and AMW is the best, most beautiful example of that.

I remember hearing Don't Worry Baby for the first time, it was on an Greatest Hits Cassette in the 90's! I then heard it on an 8-Track of Endless Summer and I was fooling around with my Stereo's Channel knob. I found out that by turning the knob to the left you could just hear Brian and then by turning to the right you could just the background vocals. This blew my mind! I then got the Surfer Girl/Shut Down Vol. 2 Twofer on CD and heard the song through head phones and thought it sounded weird by the mixing. That and Warmth of The Sun sounded weird. I do love the Mono Mixes though! It wasn't until I got older that I found out some of the Multi-Tracks were missing at Capitol to remix it properly. When I heard the new 2009 Stereo Mix it sounded amazing, it now replaces the 1964 Stereo Mix for me! Hearing those Backgrounds sing around Brian instead of on the Right, just fit better.  Then we got the Session Highlights last year of the boys recording the track and Backgrounds, it just made the song so much better for me! I obsess over little details on who played what and what instruments were used. We should do a thread of hearing our favorite songs in Stereo for the first time!