Which BB song is YOUR "Be My Baby"?

The original question in this thread has ended up being answered by a lot of people as if it was 'Which BB song do you like the best'. The original question was phrased differently: "Which BB song is your 'Be My Baby'?" and "which one do you never get tired of".

I have to answer that in two different ways, as to me it's two different questions. I now never seem to get tired of listening to 'God Only Knows', but I wasn't instantly taken with it; it took quite a few plays for it to have that effect on me, and seemed to wash over me at first.

By contrast, we all know the story about the effect that Be My Baby had on Brian; he was supposedly so affected by hearing it on the radio while driving that he had to pull his car over, and he experienced an instant rush of astonishment at how good the track was which got stronger and stronger as the track was still playing. Has any Beach Boys track had THAT effect on you, the first time you heard it? That's a different question to answer.

For me, two Beach Boys tracks had that effect on me the first time: You Still Believe In Me and Heroes and Villains (the 45 version). The open-piano string and vocal intro to YSBIM hooked me instantly, then Brian's heartfelt vocal added to my interest. The unexpected chord change under the word 'fail' in the first verse lifted my interest higher, and when the Beach Boys came in on the refrain a few seconds later, it felt like the top of my head was coming off. I was so excited at the end of the song, I just wanted to hear it again.

Heroes and Villains was similar: the track hits you like a train going at 150 miles an hour, Brian is belting out a tremendous vocal, descending over an octave as he goes, and garnering accompaniment from one of the Beach Boys' most brilliant barbershop backing vocal arrangements along the way. Then it all drops away for the chorus, this moody, thrumming, minor key Greek chorus masterpiece that sounds like a hive of angry wasps stuck inside a harpsichord, decorated and punctuated with the Beach Boys' percussive vocals. And then THAT's gone too, everything fading back to a single electromechanical organ drone — before the original verse backing track bursts back in, blowing you away again. If that wasn't already enough to hook you (it was for me), there are a couple of passages featuring extraordinarily beautiful, economically written vocal harmonies before coming to a dead-air dead stop that had me wondering for a second if my CD player had stopped working, before the track plays out on that evil-sounding, droning chorus again. I think I played the track four times in a row the first time I heard it. I couldn't get enough of it for a few days, for sure.

I think a lot of posters here have experienced that excitement of wanting to play Beach Boys tracks over and over after hearing them — perhaps oddly, that has also happened to me with 'Catch A Wave' and (true confession time) 'Johnny Carson' — but not the very first time I heard them, so for me they don't qualify for this thread. So who else can tell a tale of completely being blown away by a Beach Boys track on *very first listening*, just like Brian with Be My Baby?

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