A Musical Descent to the Mind of Brian Wilson, the Other Beach Boys’ Masterpiece

that sounds as I'm sure you're aware is often considered to be one of if not the best albums of all time and right in the middle of the track listing is a song that is equally considered to be one of if not the best pop songs of all time God only knows I would definitely argue that that is one of Brian's masterpieces but for this video I think that there's another song off another album that definitely doesn't get the credit it deserves and of course I'm talking about the album Surfs Up Now to talk about this song it's important to get into the right context the final three tracks on the album are often considered to be a descent into the mind of Brian Wilson and I can think of no better place to start than the first of those tracks a day in the life of a tree now if you've ever seen the Fantastic biopic of Brian Wilson's life love and mercy you'll know that the movie essentially claims that the fundamental cause of Brian's downward spiral was his inability to complete the album smile and of course smiley smile was the released unfinished remnants of the album that was supposed to be his magnum opus smile okay time for some context you may very well already know smile and smiley smile are two completely different records after releasing Pet Sounds in May of 1966 Brian and company started compiling new songs for the album that would be known as smile Good Vibrations was released in October of 66 which set the tone for the aforementioned release Brian said the album would be 18 age Symphony to God and several well-known Beach Boys tracks were written during this period primarily through Brian's collaboration with Van Dyke Parks tracks such as heroes and villains cabinessence and Surfs Up during the creation process several factors became obstacles preventing the completion of the record such as Brian's increased mental instability and legal trouble with their record label Capital needless to say smile was scrapped and smiley smile took its place now smiley smile featured some of the tracks intended for smile but not all of them and the ones that did overlap were allegedly changed quite substantially from their original intentions the quality difference between smile and smiley smile is one often mentioned when talking about the Beach Boys as many fans and even Brian himself believe that smile was to not only be far superior to smiley smile but that smile was to Eclipse Pet Sounds Well Pet Sounds everybody like of course people love Pet Sounds but if you want to put it on a scale of one to ten I'd get pest sounds of four and smile at 10. that's how much I rate it others like Bruce Johnston claim smiley smile was far superior to smile saying that it was a thousand times better than smile and that smile was over indulgent Brian eventually recorded a rendition of the completed smile record in 2004 and there was a Smile Sessions box set released back in 2011. hi everybody this is the Beach Boys box set how about that look at it I think it lights up yeah it lights up see if it lights up real beautifully but as the original concept was never completed as intended the world may never know what smile was intended to be and while that certainly played a role in the Big Sleep as I'll call it a period where Brian spent three years in bed smiley smile was in 1967 and the Big Sleep didn't start until 1973. six years later during this period Brian had varying levels of participation in the studio some albums he was almost wholly absent and some like friends he was incredibly present so much so that he considers that to be his second solo album after Pet Sounds but that all brings us to the sunflower sessions of 1969. sunflower was the album that directly preceded Surfs Up and during this time Brian was very present in the studio in August of 1969 however things started to get quite a bit worse for Brian as the company that held the rights to the Beach Boys catalog was sold to Irving Almo music something very much against Brian's desire and on top of that sunflower once finished became the lowest charting Beach Boys album to date in the United States yeah even Stars and Stripes volume 1 beated on the charts okay needless to say this caused Brian to become increasingly reclusive and during the Surf's Up sessions Brian was quite absent so a day in the life of a tree this was a song that Brian co-wrote with the manager at the time Jack Riley Jack was a songwriter as well as their manager and he even provided lead vocals to the song musically the song is quite sparse with the vast majority of the song having only real input from chords from a pipe organ creating a very mysterious and sort of miserable atmosphere lyrically the track is less of a day in the life of a tree and more of the end of the life of a tree Brian's lyrics lamenting trees like me weren't meant to live if all this world can give pollution and slow death taken literally this is a very environmentalist track something definitely not out of place on the album along with the opening track Don't Go Near The Water but I think it's even more interesting considering Brian's comparison to his own life something that he has been known to do in songs of course after the loss of smile and the commercial catastrophe of sunflower it's very reasonable to expect that Brian saw his work as something unappreciated by the world and even some of his closest relations Brian's work used to be appreciated for years my limbs stretched to the sky as a nest for birds to sit and sing but now he's sort of slipping away but now my branches suffer and my leaves don't offer poetry to Men of song admittedly this is one of my least listened to tracks off the whole album as an you know I'm never really in the mood to throw it on as an individual track it's being that it's so sparse both lyrically and musically but it is a fundamentally important song for the progression of the album and it sets up the next track absolutely perfectly till I die something that I neglected to mention about the sunflower sessions was that Brian was actually depressed I will say for YouTube's sake during this period of his life he did just about every drug he could find wish to drive his car off a cliff and asked his Gardener to dig his grave in the backyard the track till I die is one of the only Beach Boy songs solely credited to Brian musically the track is much more intense than a day in the life of a tree and it's much more musical in the vocal delivery as well Brian proclaiming I'm a cork on the ocean floating over the Raging Sea how deep is the ocean I lost my way I don't think that there's much need to delve deep into the lyrics Here Brian is merely furthering his thesis from the previous song questioning his existence and importance to the world and that thesis leads us to the conclusion but a very convoluted conclusion and my personal favorite song of all time Surfs Up if you were to walk up to random people and ask them what they think the song Surfs Up by the beach boy sounds like they would probably give you something along the lines of their earlier surf Rock because I mean what else would you expect but that couldn't be further from the truth here Surf's Up is a dark it's a gloomy it's a it's a prophetic but it's hypnotic masterful track and I mean it's so just starting with the title Surfs Up as a phrase typically means something like it's it's time to do something the the Surf's Up therefore it's time to go surfing but here the the word up takes a very different meaning it's more like the phrase The Jig Is up meaning something's over you've lost Surf's Up The Beach Boys aren't what they were before it's so subversive but just perfect in the context of everything the track itself is divided into three sections very distinct from one another musically going from dense orchestral arrangements to sparse piano driven Madness concluding with a spiral of vocal Harmony that is just it's absolutely hypnotic and when taken literally which is something very difficult to do for this song the lyrics speak of a man's religious Awakening at a concert hall who turns himself back to God but there are so many other ways to interpret it and I think that even individual lines of this track just as an example the line The Pit and the Pendulum drawn the pit in the pendulum is a story by Edgar Allan Poe which works as an analysis of the effect of the fear of death and torture on a person so what does that mean in the context of this song is the narrator becoming overburdened with the falseness of the Opera in other words Brian's disconnect with the falseness of the Beach Boys Surfer persona or is the narrator yearning for a less torturous form of punishment than the decimation of his world I guess this could relate to Brian's search for a better fate than bathing Into Obscurity is characterized by the previous two songs the song also has a lot of references to sleep or awaken this something clearly represented in the literal analysis of the man taking faith in God but the pit in the pendulum also has a lot of references to sleep and sleep is a fundamental plot element to the story as well and I suppose that that may tie back to Brian's change in songwriting as well all of that is it's just fascinating to me but it becomes so much more convoluted when you remember that this was written for the Smile Sessions in 1967 whoa okay so the initial intended position of the track on smile is fairly disputed some such as Brian's formal personal assistant Michael Voss claimed that the song was meant to close the album however on Brian's 2004 solo album smile the track has been featured right about the middle of the album concluding the part two of the record but regardless of the position in the album the song could easily be written off as Brian's acknowledgment of the Beach Boys change away from their initial surf persona but the inclusion of the track on Surfs Up the record is so remarkable because of how it changes its meaning The Beach Boys had heavily Diversified their sound already by 1971 going head on into r b for wild honey and pretty much abandoning their surf Persona at this point but because of that Surfs Up just from it Still Remains a mystery to me we know that Brian didn't participate as heavily in the making of This Record as he did on other records so that leads me to assume that he might not have been the one to formulate the track listing so could that mean that it's maybe a hope that Brian would come out of his depressed state from the other band members I mean regardless of that this song is so interesting to me musically it's like extremely diverse The Melodies are catchy and extremely varied with lyrics that may never ever be deciphered at least by me so what do you think about the track or even the album you have any theories on what it could mean because I'd love to read them in the comments maybe I'm crazy for looking this far into it after all Van Dyke Parks has been known to be sort of a a goofster shall we say when it comes to writing purposefully enigmatic songs with no real purpose at all but as it stands I think this is one of the most interesting and appealing songs of all time and hopefully I've convinced you to either give it a listen for the first time or revisit it I know that the Beach Boys are a very mischaracterized group sometimes at the fault of their own but I think I'm seeing a reevaluation of their work from a commercial stance that hopefully continues because I think I truly think that they are one of the best fans of all time this was sort of an experiment for the channel and I I hope you enjoyed it what do you want to see in the future from this channel do you want more essay Style videos such as this maybe deep dives into artists catalog let me know because I could pretty much do whatever whatever you guys want me to do and uh thank you for watching I hope you found it useful [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Aggressive Communication in Braille

Views: 78,836

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Id: cAHRKUJVy_4

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023