Mike Love's Lyrics Are Underappreciated

[Don_Zabu]

One thing that made The Beach Boys so amazing is that, whatever subject any given song was about, that song was bound to say everything there was to say about it, all in the span of a few minutes. And the lyrics were one of the the biggest components of that.

Tony Asher's lyrics perfectly capsulized all the angst, wistfulness, and hope that Pet Sounds represented, and Van Dyke Parks's lyrics perfectly capsulized all the intelligent humor and grand emotional sweep that Smile represented.

But no matter how much people hate to admit it, the same goes for Mike Love; his lyrics were the perfect capsulization of all the energy and youthful positivity their early songs represented. Even when he tackled subjects not related to fun-in-the-sun, he could handle them skillfully if he tried. Think of "Let the Wind Blow" and "All I Wanna Do" and "Big Sur". All of them carry a natural grace and beauty, in no small part due to his lyrics.

And if you still doubt me, just remember:

"I don't know where, but she sends me there."

Mike Love wrote that.

[Mr. Cohen]

Down in Utah
The guys and I dig a city called Salt Lake
It's got the grooviest kids
That's why we never get tired of Salt Lake
And the way the kids talk so cool
Is an out of sight thing
And the number one radio station
Makes the town really swing yeah
Salt Lake City we'll be coming soon

There's a park near the city, yeah
All the kids dig the Lagoon now
It's full of all kinds of girls
And rides and we'll be flyin' there soon now
And girl for girl
They've got the cutest of the Western states
They got the sun in the summer
And winter time the skiing is great yeah
Salt Lake City we'll be coming soon

Salt Lake City we'll be coming soon

We'll be coming soon
We'll be coming soon
We'll be coming soon

[Don_Zabu]

I meant when he actually puts some effort into it.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Hey, I bet if you were a 13 year old carnival-head living in Salt Lake City when that song came out, you'd be a big fan of those lyrics! And to this day, they probably would still bring a smile!

[slothrop]

I'll be the first to admit that Brian is my favorite Beach Boy, mainly because I, like many, discovered his music before the other guys contributions. However, if there is one thing I don't like about Beach Boys fans, is that so many of them (especially said Brianistas) trash on Mike Love. Honestly, apart from what he is/was personally like, he's added a great amount to their legacy.

California Girls. Good Vibrations. Pretty much all of Wild Honey. All I Wanna Do. Big Sur. Mike has contributed great lyrics to many songs. He is, in my opinion, probably Brian's greatest collaborator.

And really I'm sure all of the guys, Brian included, did many things during their lives that would've made them difficult people to be around, intentional or not.

[Wirestone]

Have my issues with Mike personally and as an onstage figure, but his voice is essential, and more to the point, some of his 60s and 70s lyrics are really exceptional.

Good Vibrations could not have better lyrics than Mike's. Asher's are pedestrian. On some of the immediately pre-Pet Sounds stuff (Today, for instance) he and Brian are working on a really high level. Wild Honey, too, absolutely.

I think Mike's tragedy has been that his first collaborator was Brian. Everyone else was bound to be a letdown, and none of Mike's lyrics with other folks are anywhere near as good.

[Don_Zabu]

Good Vibrations could not have better lyrics than Mike's. Asher's are pedestrian.

You said it. Mike's version takes the exact same concept Brian was expressing and made it much better and more relevant than Asher's version. Did Asher just forget how rhymes work that day?

[?]

I think Mike was very inconsistent.  At his worst he could be pretty bad but I would never deny the quality of his lyrics on The Warmth of the Sun and Good Vibrations among others.  Side 2 of Today is especially good and makes me wonder how he would have fared had he been handed the task of writing Pet Sounds (I've never really been impressed with Asher's contributions).  I do think most of his later stuff, especially when he tried to be socially relevant, was pure hackwork.

[Wirestone]

Brian seems always to have selected collaborators based on personality (he likes assertive, verbal, quick-witted guys) than on actual talent. This has worked out well in some cases (Love, Parks, Bennett) and not so well in others (Kalinich, Thomas).

[Andrew G. Doe]

Brian seems always to have selected collaborators based on personality (he likes assertive, verbal, quick-witted guys) than on actual talent. This has worked out well in some cases (Love, Parks, Bennett) and not so well in others (Kalinich, Thomas).

Don't think Brian actually chose Joe Thomas - he just went along with the joke...

[The Shift]

Good Vibrations could not have better lyrics than Mike's. Asher's are pedestrian.

You said it. Mike's version takes the exact same concept Brian was expressing and made it much better and more relevant than Asher's version. Did Asher just forget how rhymes work that day?

I have no evidence to support my theory but I don't think those are Asher's lyrics. I suspect it's just Brian picking on words to lay down a guide vocal, nothing more. They're banal lyrics and were probably, in my opinion, never meant for release.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Good Vibrations could not have better lyrics than Mike's. Asher's are pedestrian.

You said it. Mike's version takes the exact same concept Brian was expressing and made it much better and more relevant than Asher's version. Did Asher just forget how rhymes work that day?

I have no evidence to support my theory but I don't think those are Asher's lyrics. I suspect it's just Brian picking on words to lay down a guide vocal, nothing more. They're banal lyrics and were probably, in my opinion, never meant for release.

[sigh]

I'll keep saying this until it penetrates - Asher's "GV" lyrics were nothing more than dummy lyrics, verbal placeholders. How can I be so sure ? I asked him. I never hear anyone giving Macca grief for "scambled eggs/oh my darling you've got lovely legs"...

[The Shift]

Ah -  so my theory's relatively half-okay about them being guides, just wrong about the author. Gonna reward my self with half a dose of Neurofen!

[Mike's Beard]

People beat Mike about the "fun in the sun" lyrics but look at the years they were written! Was anybody else writing deep meaningfull lyrics in pop music in 62-64? This was music for teenagers wrote by teenagers (or just past)! Granted he may have dragged his feet alittle on advancing around the "Summer Days!/Summer Nights! era but I also wonder how much of this was due to Capital putting pressure to essentially deliver another "All Summer Long" clone in time for the summer market?
People also say he wanted to revert lyrically around the Smile era. Seeing as the next record he wrote the majority of words for was "Wild Honey" I'm unclear as to why this keeps perpetrating? Spot the surfin' references on Wild Honey? There are none.
Hands down Mike has written some pearls.

[OneEar/OneEye]

That's one thing that always bugged when people would put the band down because the early songs had "corny" lyrics or whatever - I always would direct them to think about the time period.  And for the time period they were fine lyrics.  Mike was good, and he had some great moments too.  I still dispute some of his belated credit for songs that had always been solely BW compositions (cos I believe Brian was perfectly capable of writing decent lyrics), but whatever, it's all what it is at this point.
He did give the band a distinctive vocal signature with that voice of his as well, however - had Mike never been in the band (and i'm probably gonna get attacked for saying this) I think they would have been successful anyway - because Brian's music was simply that good.   It would have been a different band in some ways, but not one that "lacked" anything necessarily.   Brian should be everyone's favorite band member because without him there wouldn't have been a band in the first place. 
Mike was okay at lyrics, and the other guys were decent at what they did, but they'd all still be living in Hawthorne probably if it hadn't been for Brian.   I'm no "Brianista" by any means - but the reality is, they all should have bent over backwards to do anything he wanted musically - including that "weird" Smile thing, and they should have been damn happy and proud to have done it.
The one member that they could have utilized songwriting wise after brian retreated (Dennis) they didn't respect either.  He could have been - should have been their main writer at that point.
But Mike was good yeah, "Mr. Positivity"   

[Wirestone]

I give Asher a pass on them being dummy lyrics. Fine. Alright. But the Brian-industrial complex has insisted on them being a legit alternative (Smile 04, etc.). So it's only fair to compare them. And as far as scratch lyrics go -- didn't Mike say he came up with the words on the drive to the recording session? That doesn't sound like a lot of work on his end, yet they are the finest fusion of boy-girl BB-ness with subtle psychedelia you could want.

[adamghost]

I think it's fine to give Mike Love his due as a lyricist as long as we make a distinction between the work he did in the '60s and the work he did after.  Not that he never wrote a decent lyric after '70, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a lyricist in a major band that came up with more bad ones.

My vote for must underrated lyricist in the Beach Boys canon is -- wait for it -- Roger Christian.  As was accurately noted, people weren't writing lyrics for depth in the early '60s, and yet Christian's prose approached pure poetry even as he was writing about a drag race.  "Warmth Of The Sun" is great but I think "Shut Down" is one of the most brilliant lyrics the Beach Boys ever recorded -- the scansion, the urgency, the attention to detail, the realism, and there's not a cliche to be found anywhere, no moon/june or anything like that.  You're THERE at the drag race.  That took real talent.

[Andrew G. Doe]

I think it's fine to give Mike Love his due as a lyricist as long as we make a distinction between the work he did in the '60s and the work he did after.  Not that he never wrote a decent lyric after '70, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a lyricist in a major band that came up with more bad ones.

My vote for must underrated lyricist in the Beach Boys canon is -- wait for it -- Roger Christian.  As was accurately noted, people weren't writing lyrics for depth in the early '60s, and yet Christian's prose approached pure poetry even as he was writing about a drag race.  "Warmth Of The Sun" is great but I think "Shut Down" is one of the most brilliant lyrics the Beach Boys ever recorded -- the scansion, the urgency, the attention to detail, the realism, and there's not a cliche to be found anywhere, no moon/june or anything like that.  You're THERE at the drag race.  That took real talent.

Odd you should mention that, Adam... because that's exactly what they originally were - poems. Rog had a book full of 'em, which he showed to Brian. I'd give a lot to know who did the editing on "Shut Down", as the original is something of a sprawling mess, whereas the lyric is, as you rightly say, brilliant.

[adamghost]

Interesting...maybe it was Mike!  If so, then you're right, credit where credit is due.  Seems more likely to have been Brian though (since it would have most likely been edited to fit the music).  But surely it was one or the other of them, or Christian himself.

[Mr. Cohen]

Well, while I agree that Mike had some nice moments as a pop lyric writer in the early 60s, his writing was never very deep or insightful.  Yeah, he was good for his genre, just like R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series was good for the children's genre. Still, I'm not going to say that Stine should be held in as high of regard as, say, James Joyce just because he was wildly successful within his genre. Mike was a lightweight writer and, consequently, he thrived in a lightweight genre. Songs like "She Knows Me Too Well" and "Please Let Me Wonder" show Mike writing more substantial teen lyrics, but I can't help but feel that Brian provided most of the sentiments to those songs and Mike just made them work lyrically. Yes, "All I Wanna Do" is great. So is "The Warmth of the Sun", which has the feel of clear-headed, plain standard. The sentiments are broad, sweeping, and inexact, allowing the listener to put their own emotions and interpretations to it. As for "Let the Wind Blow"... I get what Mike is going for but the imagery is a little sloppy. If you just put the words on paper, without musical accompaniment, you'd be left scratching your head a little.

I like Mike. I don't think he's a bad guy or anything. But even as a Teen writer he was a lightweight.  Compare Mike's lyrics to the lyrics that were being written under the Phil Spector banner in the early-mid 60s. The lyrics in the Spector produced songs are like little teenage dramas, some of which have some interesting emotional contrasts. "He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss)" finds love in an abusive relationship and even a song like "The Best Part of Breakin' Up" has a lot more emotional realism than almost anything Mike wrote.  Throw in some maudlin arrangement touches and you can see why Brian was intimidated by those songs. As far as pop teenage love songs go, Brian never was able to quite top Spector (let's face it, the arrangements on Pet Sounds were too out there to make it a rival for Spector when it came to the teenage market), and you have to think that Mike's paper thin emotional sentiments were part of that.  When did he ever handle love in a realistic manner, aside from maybe the second side of Today! (the sentiments of which, as I said earlier, seem purely Brian) and "Let Him Run Wild"?

[TdHabib]

The lyrics for Brian's song are best when they don't get in the way of the music. From 1962-1970 Mike did this very well, but I will agree that he slipped significantly after that. Frankly, with the exception of the unbelievably decent "Rock and Roll to the Rescue" I'm hard pressed to find one Love lyric that does not make me cringe a little. Cheesy is an understatement.

And it's not just in the serious songs, compare "Add Some Music" (which has some Mike lyrics and Brian often states has the best lyrics of any BB song) to "Getcha Back." One is a great, lighthearted tribute to music itself and the other is "when we cried all night because we'd gone too far."

[Reggie Dunbar]

"Drive In" and songs in that vein definitely have the bearded ones greasy fingerprints all over them. If prepubescent / adolescent lyrics are your forte', he's the man with the goods - to be sure. Certainly no one would pigeonhole him with the myriad of serious collaborators that worked with the group, such as Parks, Kalinich and even Rieley. Verbose and flowery he was not - but I concur with the sentiment that he was effective in the early sixties before the world got serious.

[Magic Transistor Radio]

To be fair, I think that Brian and Al's lyrics have been just as bad as Mike's in the last 30 years.

[Mike's Beard]

I still can't decide if the "Student Demonstration Time" lyrics are masterful or terrible. Or both.

[adamghost]

To be fair, I think that Brian and Al's lyrics have been just as bad as Mike's in the last 30 years.

You may be right, though I've often thought that Al is a more interesting lyricist than Mike (or at least has better poetic instincts) even when he's doing something bad.  The difference - though it might not be relevant in this discussion - is Mike makes a point of promoting his skills as a lyricist, whereas Al and Brian don't.