Brian's improved voice on M.I.U. - mystery solved?

[Jon Stebbins]

Agreed. The lyrics to "Feel Flows" and "Long Promised Road" are laughably bad. It always surprises me that more people don't give them the ridicule they deserve -- "So hard to laugh a childlike giggle" -- really?

Wow...with all of the frighteningly bad lyrics in the Beach Boys catalog (mostly from Mike and Brian) you think these two stand out? I'd say they are about average, maybe LPR is above average. Love wrote so many embarrassing lyrics it actually makes it difficult to be a Beach Boys fan and not get made fun of by other people. That's an accomplishment. I doubt anyone is gonna ever ridicule you for liking LPR. But the list of ridicule worthy Love lyrics is decades long. And yeah...he wrote some good ones too...no lie.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Agreed. The lyrics to "Feel Flows" and "Long Promised Road" are laughably bad. It always surprises me that more people don't give them the ridicule they deserve -- "So hard to laugh a childlike giggle" -- really?

Sure, if you isolate them from the songs, they're not that good. But... can you imagine "FF" or "LPR" with different words ?  Anyway, the words don't matter, it's the impression, the effect.

And since were talking 'laughably bad' lyrics here - "My friend Bob/he has a job", anyone ?

[Wirestone]

And since were talking 'laughably bad' lyrics here - "My friend Bob/he has a job", anyone ?

That wasn't actually released on a BB album, though, was it?

[Paulos]

Bad Beach Boys lyrics could be a whole other thread....

[Andrew G. Doe]

And since were talking 'laughably bad' lyrics here - "My friend Bob/he has a job", anyone ?

That wasn't actually released on a BB album, though, was it?

Gee, can't guess why not... 

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Two-step sidestep, anyone?

[hypehat]

Y'know the old cliche 'That Carl Wilson sings so fine, I could listen to him sing a shopping list!'

Well, Feel Flows and Long Promised Road are the closest we have.... 

They're just words that sound good coming out his mouth, which seeing as he and Reilly were blasted on coke whilst writing them, is probably all the consideration they got. I like those songs, but the lyrics might be the worst part. I would advise anyone dissing Reilly's lyricism to remember 'The Trader' (especially the second section) and 'Life Of A Tree'.... his best, i think.

No-one else really inspired Carl to write until about 78, though, so how bad was Reilly really? (not easy to say, that)

Mike Love has written MANY bad lyrics. I can't believe, even as hardcore fans, that this is being disputed.

[oldsurferdude]

I think I can hear it through the layers of years gone by-wait! No it cannot really be...they wouldn't, no they didn't...
don't tell me that-don't even pretend !-Feel Flows, The Trader, Long Promised Road and even The Day in the Life of a Tree-with LYRICS BY MYK LUHV. "oh if we only could start over again".

[CenturyDeprived]

I'll defend Rieley's lyrics on CW's songs...

While they could be considered "pretentious" and a bit rambling, it's a nice change of pace to have some $25 words in BB lyrics, which is sort of how I feel about some of VDP's lyrics on BW's songs.

I'd take some literate pretentiousness over the extreme cheese that has too often plagued otherwise stellar BB backing tracks (Salt Lake City anyone?) (I know, different era, different vibe, but man do those lyrics suck, you don't rhyme Salt Lake with Salt Lake

[GLarson432]

Thank you, thank you, thank you... for spelling Jack RIELEY's last name correctly!!

[CenturyDeprived]

I googled the spelling first!

[BBLB]

Mike Love has written MANY bad lyrics. I can't believe, even as hardcore fans, that this is being disputed.

I have no issues with the lyrics to FF and LPR.  I am however interested in hearing which Mike Love penned lyrics were embassingly bad by the time of the Surf's Up album.  After Holland is another story but prior to 71 which ones are the real stinkers.

Beach Boys Lovin Bob

[Myk Luhv]

The lyrics to "Feel Flows" and "Long Promised Road" are definitely pretentious. Do you know why? Because they pretend to be something they're not. What is it that they pretend? Literariness. Do you know why? Because they make no sense and have no meaning for something that is supposedly "literate". Yeah, the Beach Boys -- all of them individually and collectively as a group -- are not known for intelligent lyrics per se, but they are for the most part perfectly adept at expressing universal sentiments in ordinary language. Heck, the lyrics to "Don't Go Near The Water", "Big Sur", "Lookin' At Tomorrow", and "Take A Load Off Your Feet" are superior to either of Carl's songs because these two previously-mentioned qualities (more or less) obtain. The Boys were (and are) anti-intellectual in a very good way, I think, and I suspect they knew that.

[Curtis Leon]

Mike Love has written MANY bad lyrics. I can't believe, even as hardcore fans, that this is being disputed.

I have no issues with the lyrics to FF and LPR.  I am however interested in hearing which Mike Love penned lyrics were embassingly bad by the time of the Surf's Up album.  After Holland is another story but prior to 71 which ones are the real stinkers.

Beach Boys Lovin Bob

Student Demonstration Time and Don't Go Near the Water. For the latter, it nearly ruins the song, because the melody is actually great on it. At least the former is a COMPLETE pile of feces.

He Come Down is pretty bad too.

[Wirestone]

They pretend to be something they're not. What is it that they pretend? Literariness. Do you know why? Because they make no sense and have no meaning for something that is supposedly "literate". Yeah, the Beach Boys -- all of them individually and collectively as a group -- are not known for intelligent lyrics per se, but they are for the most part perfectly adept at expressing universal sentiments in ordinary language.

This is, exactly, why I hate those two sets of lyrics so very, very much.

Van Dyke, for all of his literary bent, wrote lyrics that actually had meaning -- sometimes layers of it. His words sounded good, yes, but they rewarded deeper inspection. He was playing a dangerous game with a song like Surf's Up, though -- and he knew it.

Because the temptation is, when people see dense, good-sounding poetry, to think that it's all about those good sounds, the aural sensations. The meaning -- however carefully threaded through -- can be too easily lost. So someone like Jack R. comes along, and tries to ape the style without saying or meaning anything. And you get songs that are actually empty. All of the meaning in FF or LPR is conveyed through Carl's performance. Virtually nothing through the words.

This isn't to say Jack didn't have some chops. I think Trader (it has a subject!) actually works, as does some of Funky Pretty.

[Jay]

I think Long Promised Road is one of the better compositions I have heard. There is more meaning and depth in this song than most of us could come up with.

[Andrew G. Doe]

I would advise anyone dissing Reilly's lyricism to remember 'The Trader' (especially the second section) and 'Life Of A Tree'.... his best, i think.

"LPR" & "FF" are, undeniably, a bitch to actually sing, even with a cheat sheet, but singing "Trader" is just a complete blast. Like "Sail On, Sailor", it pretty well sings itself, actually.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

What does anyone think a Bob Dylan penned song custom made for the BB from that time period would've sound like?

GREAT point on SOS, Andrew, it's blast!

[Mike's Beard]

I think the words to Feel Flows are beautiful. May not translate too well on paper, but the way they meld and flow as Carl sings them makes them transend all literary meaning. They just become an expression of feeling which is probably exactly what Carl and Jack were aiming for.

[BJL]

I love Jack Rieley's lyrics.  They flow beautifully with Carl's voice; as mike's beard said, they don't look great on paper, but that's true of almost all wordy lyrics.  Even Dylan at his best often looks awkward on paper...visions of johanna comes to mind; song lyrics and poetry just aren't the same thing.  And I think the meaning definitely comes across in both songs.  In Long Promised Road the sense of how life can drag you down but you somehow find the will to keep going and even to succeed, and how that is powerful and beautiful, and also a little sad, because there's definitely a part of you that wants to give up. 

I think Trader, though, is one of the greatest songs ever written, music and lyrics.  Really. 
Here you have a band, which spent a good part of their career celebrating a vision of california which was very much a twist no the frontier myth in the United States, this idea of endless possibility, building a new life in california, a middle class expanding to include everybody, etc.  And part of what made their music so powerful was in celebrating this distinctly american ideal, they tapped into a universal joy and love, and also tapped into a deep sense of sorrow and longing, rooted in part in the fact that the american dream was and is a mirage in many ways.  And then you have this same band, a few years later, looking back at this myth, and saying, well, what were the costs, what does it mean that entire peoples were literally exterminated to make room for this ethic of progress and manifest destiny.  And the Beach Boys do a better job of confronting this question, as white people, as americans, than almost any one else I've ever heard.  In the first part of the song they tell the story with words, and as you listen to it the story propels along and you get in your head what happened, and all the questions it raises about colonialism and the cost of american expansionism etc. etc., and then there's a momentary pause, and Carl Wilson tries to answer those questions, and because they're such hard questions, and they don't have good answers, he answers them spiritually.  At this point the lyrics seek to matter, they stop telling a story and start going on about making it softly and finding reason to live, and there are these amazing harmonies and it just, makes the politics real, and tries to confront these issues spiritually in a way no other popular artist of the time, to my knowledge, ever did. 

In my opinion, if the Beach Boys reputation rested solely on this song and it was all they ever released, they would still be an incredibly important band, because of all the musicians who then and to this day have written about poverty and political issues, no one has succeeded they way they did at taking an incredibly difficult political topic, and confronting it musically so that the music actually tried to address the question, rather than the usual approach which was to graft political lyrics on ordinary songs. 

So yea, I think pretty highly of the Carl Wilson/Jack Rieley partnership. 

[Mike's Beard]

I think you've done a stellar job of nailing down "The Trader" with that post.

[Smilin Ed H]

"No-one else really inspired Carl to write until about 78"

No-one else inspired Carl to write anything that good. Ever.

[adamghost]

I would advise anyone dissing Reilly's lyricism to remember 'The Trader' (especially the second section) and 'Life Of A Tree'.... his best, i think.

"LPR" & "FF" are, undeniably, a bitch to actually sing, even with a cheat sheet, but singing "Trader" is just a complete blast. Like "Sail On, Sailor", it pretty well sings itself, actually.

Evie Sands would beg to differ!

[Andrew G. Doe]

I would advise anyone dissing Reilly's lyricism to remember 'The Trader' (especially the second section) and 'Life Of A Tree'.... his best, i think.

"LPR" & "FF" are, undeniably, a bitch to actually sing, even with a cheat sheet, but singing "Trader" is just a complete blast. Like "Sail On, Sailor", it pretty well sings itself, actually.

Evie Sands would beg to differ!

Which reminds me - must have a word with young Ms. Sands. Since hearing the version she did with some disreputable bar band, I now find myself using her phrasing, and that just confuses the hell out of everyone. Especially me.