The Best of the Best: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds

    A new month means a new segment! Welcome to The Best of the Best where we will cover some of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time. I am using Acclaimed Music's list of albums. Which has a crazy amount of albums on it. I have listened to a large amount of the list. It's part of what inspired me to make this blog, so I could talk about them. 

    The album at the very apex of Acclaimed Music's list is none other than Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys. Which blew me away because I was for sure a Beatles album would top the list. Or that the top 10 would be entirely occupied by the Beatles. I knew some Beach Boys because my grandmother liked them, but I had never heard a whole album of theirs front to back before. So this was exciting.

    And of course the first song raised my expectations because who can't like (or who doesn't know?!) "Wouldn't It Be Nice?" I absolutely sang along with it. 

    I definitely get the hype of the album. It is a great album. Baroque pop isn't a genre I've explored often, but I do have to say that I love most of the outings that explore and implore it. Pet Sounds is no exception. 

    You can feel the band's ambition here, and I think that's really what makes the record shine. It pours out in everything from lyrics, vocal delivery, and of course the sound itself. The production itself sets itself apart from other albums from the 60s and heck, even the 70s. The Beach Boys' vocals all harmonize so well together. Their voices combine into one very distinctive voice that you could recognize anywhere on any song by them even if you didn't know it was their song. 

    There's also a complexity in the sound here with instruments that one wouldn't find standard like a bicycle bell. Which is just cool and a neat idea. I think you can really find the music in the average everyday. Whether its using pots and pans as drums or singing into a aluminum can so it sounds like autotune. (Yes, I have done that). It gives the record a new life and its own identity. 

    I also highly recommend everyone to read into the making of this album and the history behind it. The Wikipedia page is very, very long. It was specifically made to rival the Beatles' Rubber Soul. And there's also a religious aspect about it because Brian Wilson apparently saw God on an LSD trip. Oh yeah! And drugs were involved in the making of this album. Which kind of surprises me (but not really) due to the record's sophisticated sound. But there's also psychedelic rock featured here pretty heavily. Just look at "I Know There's an Answer." Then again I feel like where psychedelic rock can get pretty... Well, trippy, I think that here it is just elevated into a high society. Perhaps because of the lyrics and themes. 

    I guess all of this leads to this question: where does this album stand today in the 2020s? Without a doubt, it has withstood the test of time. I also like the similarities of times past and current times. The 60s was a time for singles. So many singles artists who were just trying to sell hits. Then you had albums artists (and artists that could create both hit singles and cohesive, great albums) like The Beatles and The Beach Boys. Does this sound familiar? Songs were shorter in length back in this time much like they are now. Most artists today just chase hit singles and won't release an album until they have a hit single. Then you have the flip side of artists who can't get hit singles, but still churn out and produce some respectable and entertaining pieces-of-art albums. (Or they can also do both!) Like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and SZA. I just find all of that fascinating. 

    In the end, I highly recommend giving this record a spin if you're interested in the history of pop music, and how we got here from there. And also if you just like great music. 

Rank: The Beach BoyS... Rank. Pet SoundS.

Recommendation: When you need a dose of the American 1960s.