The Smiley Smile Message Board

We continually read about how this track is thought of today always placing high on all time greatest singles lists.

I have it in my mind that back in 1966 God Only Knows was rated as the worst single of the year. My recollection it was Rolling Stone magazine. It may well have been some other magazine.
Does any of our members recall that or is it just my mind playing tricks on me?

For me it has always been one of my personal favourite Beach Boys track so that recollection has bugged my for a long time.

Can anyone put this to rest for me?

Pretty amazing, since the first issue of Rolling Stone wasn't published until November 1967.

Fake news!

Wasn't meant to be fake news. It was just a recollection I had from way back. Obviously not Rolling Stone and maybe no where else.  I guess I will go with my mind letting me down.

I believe "Eleanor Rigby" had that dubious honour in an NME poll.

I read all the UK weekly pop papers in those days and can't remember "GOK" getting any serious flak. Still, this was 50 years ago!     

Regarding Rolling Stone, granted they weren't around yet to pan God Only Knows when it came out, but if they were it would be no surprise since they're still a bunch of hacks over there.

Exactly.  It's really not even a music mag anymore. 

Worst vocal of the year, too. But that goes for pretty much anything sung by Carl Wilson.  :p

I was reading some site had an article on the worst 500 reviews ever written and it stated that the very early Rolling Stone reviews, from the first few issues apparently, were sometimes written by whomever was in the office, no prior experience or particular expertise required.  Like the person who opened the mail.  While I'm not totally opposed to hearing the opinion of an average fan, these reviews were usually taken by the reader to be written by someone "more qualified" to rate the music being reviewed and not presented as being reviewed by the secretary or mail room staff, for example.

Lately I have gone back and read some of the very early BB reviews in RS.  Some of them are laughably bad, the writing and the musical and cultural assumptions they made.  Like the Wild Honey review, the Boys were actually chastised for discovering soul music several years after the Beatles and Stones, as if the early copying of black pop music were the end all and be all of pop relevancy for white acts.  And I'm reasonably sure that the Boys had discovered black music very early on, as has been covered many times but I guess back then the reviewers were still pretending the Boys had never been anywhere in their lives but Bikini Beach.

Then later on, the Surf's Up review turns into a mini-review of Wild Honey all of a sudden (why I do not know), and extols the Beach Boys use of harmony on that (Wild Honey) album, while many other reviews have decried the lack of same harmonies on that album.

To be sure, some of the later RS reviews were thoughtful, mostly positive when called for and also negative when called for.  But boy, were the Boys so ever misunderstood during the late sixties.  Many of the albums, really just about all of them from Smiley Smile through 20/20 were at the time slammed for being too slight or scattered, etc.  I happen to think their run of albums from All Summer Long through Holland (excepting So Tough) was among the strongest of any groups of that era.

The phrase that stuck in my mind from the time I read it originally back in the day (1970) to the other day when I re-read it was "The Beach Boys are plastic madmen and rock and roll geniuses" from the mostly positive Sunflower review.  Probably in retrospect they were closer to actual madmen than plastic ones!  And though the genius eventually faded, they were close to being pop genius level for a good long stretch.

Worth mentioning that anyone writing record reviews late 60s - early 70s was probably high.