The Smiley Smile Message Board

I was just playing some Youtube clips of 12 Sides of Summer to my coworkers, and sadly there were indeed some cringing faces in the room. Including mine. I concur with GF that Girl From Ipanema is the best track on there, and perhaps the only wholly listenable one, even though there are bits and parts of other songs that are ok.

I then asked my coworker whether he'd rather listen to any of the 12 Sides of Summer recordings again in their entirety, or listen to Smart Girls in its entirety.
My coworker picked Smart Girls, because my coworker at least gives that song credit for being an original idea.

After my morning coffee, I legit started pondering the lyrical ideas/themes in Smart Girls, and it made me wonder:

Brian sings about basically being immature and superficial in his youth (his youth being represented by song lyrics from BBs songs he wrote at a younger age)  by being interested in superficial aspects of ladies. Mike, of course, wrote a great many/most of the lyrics that would probably be most stereotypically associated with that particular type of song. Being as the Sweet Insanity album had very specific digs against Brian's entire family/band, such as on the song "Brian", it almost seems like Smart Girls was a specific attempt to diss those types songs - and subtly, diss the lyricist of those types of songs. Brian was in full-on diss mode at that time, it seems.

Of course, Brian was also calling back to clips from those very songs within Smart Girls, so it's not like was outright dissing them to a point where he was saying they should be banished or anything like that. Brian (or Brian via Landy's direction) wasn't going to outright distance himself from those older songs, since they were a perpetual money-making machine. But it still seems as though the song was an attempt to jokingly say something Brian was actually quite serious about, much in the way I'm Bugged at My Old Man could be said to do the same.

I haven't been able to give a good think to the issue you raise, primarily because I'm more interested in another question:  is your workplace hiring?  You really have these kinds of discussions with co-workers? Lucky.  I once mentioned to a colleague that I was going to see Brian Wilson perform a concert that weekend and he responded by saying "that's the guy from the Beach Boys, right".  Your work is obviously cooler than mine...

 :lol I regularly torture my coworkers by playing them "interesting" deep cuts from the catalog, such as Hey Little Tomboy, Summer of Love, etc.

Do you work in the Intelligence Community?

Of course, since everyone is smarter after listening to Smart Girls  :hat