"Wouldn't It Be Nice" (The Beach Boys)

"Wouldn't It Be Nice" easily is one of the best album openers in rock music history.  The moment you hear the dreamy guitar intro, you can sense that Pet Sounds (1966) is not going to be another Beach Boys album filled with songs about hot rods and big waves.
Brian Wilson's God-given ability to not only craft amazing melodies but to also translate the sounds in his head into multi-layered, nuanced arrangements/orchestrations is on full display here.  The upbeat verses, which feature a carnival-like mix of tack piano, brass, woodwinds, drums, timpani, and twin accordions, are perfectly offset by the ethereal bridges, where the key shifts, the beat is suspended, and the guitar sings like plucked harp strings.
The lyrics, penned by Wilson's collaborator Tony Asher, perfectly match the mood of the music, conveying the emotions of young lovers who dream of the day they can get married and be together, forever.  It's teenage fantasy elevated to high art.
So who was this lucky bastard named Asher?
He was an ad copywriter whose agency had assigned him to write lyrics for advertising jingles.  As he told Rockcellar magazine in 2013, he happened to be at Hollywood's United Western Recorders studio one morning, supervising the recording of a new jingle, when he ran into Wilson at the water cooler during a break.  They struck up a conversation, which quickly turned to music, and ended up popping into an unused studio to play each other snippets of songs they each were working on.  
Eventually, Asher was summoned back to his client's ad jingle session, and he chalked up his chance meeting with Wilson to fodder for cocktail party conversation.
But then Wilson unexpectedly gave Asher a call and expressed his intentions to make a new album with a completely different tone and direction for The Beach Boys.  And he wanted Asher's help.
Says Asher, "He didn’t say, 'Do you want to try writing one song?'  He said, 'Do you want to write this album with me?'"