52. The Beach Boys — The Beach Boys Today! (1965)
Published in
2 min readMay 8, 2020
- Another great example of the Album as a singular work. Here we have the Fun Beach Boys on Side A, filled with upbeat pop tunes, great melodies, and greater harmonies. Side B slows things down with a series of lovely, emotive ballads and some really interesting, honest lyricism. This is a quality album.
- “Do You Wanna Dance?” is just a blast, an exuberant way to open the album. “Help Me, Ronda” is a jam — so much so that they’d later re-record the same tune. “When I Grow Up” is a surprisingly introspective tune, with Wilson examining what kind of man he might be later in life; it’s almost jarring to hear such mature lyrics in such a bubblegum package, but that’s the point.
- Side B is all killer, no filler; the upbeat Beach Boys can sound a bit like a parody of itself at times, but Wilson’s production and harmonizing really lends itself to the ballads incredibly well. “Please Let Me Wonder” and “Kiss Me, Baby” tell tight stories of heartbreak and longing; “I’m So Young” is classic teenage yearning.
- All of this is wrapped up with excellent, Phil Spector-influenced production that sounds unlike so much of the rest of the rock and roll we hear here. Pretty fun to have gotten a Spector Christmas album earlier and be able to use that as a reference point here.
- A note on the book’s blurb: there’s some hot takes dropped about this album. The critic notes first that it contains perhaps the worst song in the entire book, which is one hell of a statement…and they don’t name that song! Offensive. They then proceed to say it’s a “cinch” to argue this album is better than Pet Sounds, which makes me question why this person was allowed to contribute at all (opinions may differ, but saying it’s a “cinch” is a galaxy-brain take). Sigh.
One Essential Song:
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