#4. "Good Vibrations" (The Beach Boys)

At age 10, I was obsessed with the song "Good Vibrations."  The watery-sounding organ, the buzzsaw cellos, the eerie Electro-Theremin, and those sunny layers of signature Beach Boys vocals.  
Actually, I still can't get enough of that moment before the last chorus, where the group hits that ahhhhhh! and it hangs in the air like mist, just before the hook comes exploding back in.  Gives me chills, every time.
Throughout our 4th grade year, my buddy Bill and I would trade mixtapes, sharing whatever we were listening to at the time.  Usually, it was stuff like The Fat Boys, Beastie Boys, or Run DMC.  But, this one time, Bill got really into surf music right before Spring Break, and he brought me this mix of Jan & Dean and Beach Boys songs, dubbed from his mom's old vinyl.  I remember he kind of front-loaded the tape with their early 60s "party songs" ("Surfin' Safari," "Surfin' USA," "Surf City").  But then sitting in the middle of the mix was also the 1966 single "Good Vibrations."
Now, it's not as if it was the first time I'd heard "Good Vibrations"; it was a staple on oldies radio.  But there was something about hearing it in context of those other songs.  It was richer, deeper.  Important.  It seemed so out of place, I even wondered if Bill had let the tape run and recorded it by accident.  
In fact, the more I listened to the track (and I listened to it/analyzed it dozens of times that Spring Break), the more it reminded me of a slightly-psychedelic reimagining of my favorite piece of classical music as a kid: George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."  Both songs seemed to be built from carefully constructed segments, which, taken on their own, were stunning in their level of detail.  But when the pieces were assembled, end-to-end, the result was even more astounding.
It didn't surprise me at all when the mastermind behind "Good Vibrations," Brian Wilson, recorded a solo tribute album to Gershwin in 2010 and had this to say about "Rhapsody in Blue" to NPR's Audie Cornish: "(When I was 4) my grandmother put on 'Rhapsody in Blue' for me, and had me lay down by the record player.  I just remember I loved it so much…The arranging, the impetus, the excitement, the beauty.  It was just an absolute work of art."
After hearing that conversation on All Things Considered, I started looking for more articles and interviews about Wilson's process.  And I discovered that my observations at age 10 weren't that far off.
Wilson worked on "Good Vibrations" in modules, breaking the song down into small bits, which he'd pore over with his group of choice studio musicians ("The Wrecking Crew"), sometimes recording a section a dozen times at one of four different recording studios around Los Angeles before they achieved the sound he heard in his head.  Then, when all of the individual pieces were recorded to his liking, he connected them all into what he called his "pocket symphony."  
In all, it took seven months of work and $50K—the most ever spent recording a "pop" single at that point—before "Good Vibrations" saw the light of day in October 1966.  But, in the end, who really cares about facts and figures when you're talking about something this timeless and priceless?
All I can say is, the world will always be a little better off because of the genius of Brian Wilson.

"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?'"

"Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)" (The Beach Boys)

If there were any doubt about Brian Wilson being a genius, "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)" puts all uncertainties to rest.
Wilson and lyricist Tony Asher penned the song for The Beach Boys' groundbreaking album Pet Sounds (1966).  Just like the album's closing track, "Caroline, No," Wilson performed the piece as a solo number without the rest of the group; it's only his double-tracked vocal accompanied by The Wrecking Crew that you hear on the recording. 
Compositionally, it's an otherworldly hybrid of vocal jazz, doo-wop, and classical music.  There are glimmers of groups like The Four Freshmen and The Platters in Wilson's vocal treatment, along with rhythmic and melodic nods to J.S. Bach's arrangement of Italian composer Alessandro Marcello's achingly beautiful "Concerto for Oboe & Strings in D Minor."  
Production-wise, Wilson was taking cues from Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.  Touches like having Carole Kaye's electric bass and Lyle Ritz's upright bass doubling the throbbing bassline, which mimics a beating heart as Wilson pleads Listen to my heart beat, are right out of Spector's hit-making playbook.  But Wilson even takes Spector's techniques a step further, demonstrating that he truly understood how to arrange music on a level that bridges pop and classical conventions.  For example, having the vocals drop out and strings swell after he beckons us to Listen, listen, listen is like something Verdi or Puccini would do for dramatic effect in an opera.  As you listen, it hits you that you're literally hearing the love in Wilson's heart, translated into melody.  That section chokes me up sometimes if I'm not careful.
Amazingly, there are bits of the recording that Wilson opted to leave on the cutting room floor.  Specifically, he recorded—by himself—an intricate set of a cappella vocal harmonies for the song (ostensibly as a roadmap to show the session musicians the kind of sound and feel he was driving for) that he never included in the final edit.  You can hear his chill-inducing, 8-part harmony vocals here.

"Surf's Up" (The Beach Boys)

"Surf's Up," a 1966 composition by Brian Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks, was slated to be a focal point of the ambitious SMiLE—a song cycle that was, as Wilson called it, a "teenage symphony to God" and the intended follow up to Pet Sounds (1965).

Using clever wordplay, the song's lyrics describe someone feeling hollow inside after watching a staged performance, questioning the meaning of existence and human constructs, and then having a spiritual, transcendental awakening after hearing children singing.  
Quite simply, it's about death and rebirth.  Literally, a migration away from the surfing songs that had made them famous into something brand new.

But Wilson's new compositions for SMiLE, particularly "Surf's Up," sparked ire within the band.  It was especially hated by Wilson's bandmate/cousin, Mike Love.  

As Parks recounts in the 2004 documentary Beautiful Dreamer about the making—and Wilson's eventual 2004 revival—of SMiLE, Love took Parks to task for the lyrics of "Surf's Up," feeling the words were purposely inscrutable and too artsy for The Beach Boys' longtime fans.

Parks comments, "It sure is tedious to have to explain lyrics to people, and it wasn't something I wanted to do for a living."

Unfortunately, the SMiLE project was abandoned by Wilson before its completion.  Record label pressure to deliver the album, tensions within the band about his new art pop leanings (and his growing use of psychedelic drugs), as well as his deteriorating mental state all fueled the decision to shelve the album, which he deemed "inappropriate music."

(Regarding Wilson's mental health: one of the portentous events that led to the project's and his own breakdown was the recording of an evocative, chaotic instrumental piece for SMiLE called "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow," named for the infamous bovine that knocked over a gas lantern and sparked the 1871 Great Chicago Fire.  Intended as a symbolic embodiment of "fire" for a suite called "The Elements," Wilson convinced himself that the song had caused—on some metaphysical level—a warehouse across the street from the recording studio to burn to the ground, as well as a string of other fires across Los Angeles.  The incident marked the beginning of a slide into depression, culminating in Wilson retreating from both songwriting and the public eye for several years.)

After the project disintegrated, snippets of SMiLE popped up on various Beach Boys albums, including 1967's Smiley Smile—a disjointed, gutted version of Wilson's vision.  In 1971, Wilson's younger brother, Carl, worked to resurrect "Surf's Up" for an album of the same name, recording new vocals over existing backing tracks.  While that version is respectable, actually hearing the track in the context of Wilson's SMiLE from 2004 and being able to connect the dots musically to other tracks in the work (especially a song called "Child Is Father of the Man," which is reprised in the coda of "Surf's Up") illuminates the true genius of its creator.

(There are a number of versions of "Surf's Up" out there on the web, including "official" versions that people have edited together from 1966 demo tapes and the 1971 recording.  The one below appeared on 2011's The SMiLE Sessions, an album featuring outtakes, snippets, and songs that were awaiting final mixing from the SMiLE project.  This version is the closest to the arrangement on 2004's SMiLE and features the vocals of the band in its prime.)

"Caroline, No" (The Beach Boys) & "A Day in the Life" (The Beatles)

So it's common knowledge that The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and--to a somewhat lesser extent--Revolver were influenced by The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds, which itself was influenced by The Beatles' Rubber Soul.  
The Beach Boys' resident genius and primary songwriter Brian Wilson had been impressed by the cohesive nature of 1965's Rubber Soul, considering that most pop albums of the day were typically a loose collection of singles and "filler," slapped together by record company execs without any real regard to continuity.  (Although, it could be argued that the American version of Rubber Soul still bore the heavy-handed imprint of Capitol execs, who replaced 4 songs from the official British release with selections from the Help! soundtrack to cash in on the growing popularity of folk-rock in the States...)  
In any case, Wilson sensed that Rubber Soul had exploded the boundaries of what rock and pop music could be: The Beatles had written every song themselves, played every note themselves, and had expanded the sonic palette of pop music, throwing in everything from sitars to Baroque piano.  It triggered such a reaction in Wilson that he immediately set out to create "the greatest rock album ever made."  Thus commenced the great creative rivalry between The Beach Boys and The Beatles from 1965-7, each trying to best the other on the charts while also racing to the top of a creative Everest.  
Paul McCartney and John Lennon heard Pet Sounds for the first time at a party in London in 1966, where The Beach Boys' Bruce Johnston (who took over Brian Wilson's vocal and bass-playing duties on the road when Wilson stopped touring in 1965) played the album for them in its entirety.  Twice.  The album instantly inspired McCartney to create "Here, There, and Everywhere," a track found on Revolver that pays tribute to Wilson's compositional style and The Beach Boys' close vocal harmonies. 
Fast on the heels of Revolver's release, The Beach Boys' single "Good Vibrations" hit the airwaves in October 1966, followed in February 1967 by The Beatles' single "Strawberry Fields Forever."  Although Wilson's mental state was already fragile--largely the result of record company pressures, creative disagreements within the band, increasing drug use, and his own perfectionism/self-doubt, "Strawberry Fields Forever" might have been final coffin nail.   
In Director David Leaf's 2004 documentary Beautiful Dreamer, Wilson's friend Michael Vosse recounts riding in Wilson's car in early 1967 and hearing "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the radio for the first time.  The song so affected Wilson that he pulled the car to the side of the road and rather cryptically said, "They did it all already.  They did what I wanted to do with SMiLE."
Ultimately, SMiLE was shelved until 2004, and The Beach Boys/Beatles rivalry came to a close with the final, thundering piano chord at the end of "A Day in the Life."

So, with that, I present "A Day in the Life" and "Caroline, No" for your consideration.
There are a few small similarities between the two songs.  In addition to being the final track on each of their respective albums, both feature observational lyrics about relatable aspects of life: Lennon/McCartney wryly recounting headlines from the newspaper, which range from shocking to the mundane; Wilson/Asher exploring the topic of running into an old flame after many years, only to find that she has lost her spark and innocence.  Then there are the sound effects that close each track: snippets of random Beatle chatter, chopped and spliced into a mishmash of noise, running ad infinitum in the runout groove; Wilson's dogs, Banana and Louie, barking at the sound of a passing train.
In other aspects, the songs are vast worlds apart.  "A Day in the Life" is epic, dramatic, and orgasmic.  Its gradual sonic swell and Lennon's cheeky sex/drugs double-entendre, expressing his desire to "turn on" anyone within earshot before the whole affair erupts in a cacophony of horns and strings, is the aural equivalent of stoned coitus in the middle of Piccadilly Circus at rush hour.
"Caroline, No," on the other hand, is a guy sitting in his dusty attic, leafing through an old yearbook with a dim flashlight that's about to run out of battery power.  In the way "A Day in the Life" beckons the world to tune in and turn on, "Caroline, No" quietly asks the world to go away.  It's an intimate lament for fleeting beauty.
In many ways, I think these 2 songs underpin the psyche of the late 1960s: a simultaneous desire to shed the old while also pining for innocence and simplicity of bygone days.  (From a musical standpoint, it's that bi-directional pull that eventually spawned the heavy/light dichotomy that is heard on The Beatles' "white album" and that characterized the entire aesthete of bands like Led Zeppelin at the turn of the decade.)