Brian Wilson’s death on Wednesday at the age of 82 heralds an end to one idea of Southern California — as the temperate paradise of ascendant Americana. Exuberance and dreaminess, writerly sophistication and technical ambition, drugs and madness: Wilson’s exquisite craft captured all of it, with his band the Beach Boys leaving behind a singularly inventive and exultant body of work, one that scripted and embodied California to the world.
His vast catalog of incomparable achievement also contained thwarted hopes and despair amid his drug abuse and mental illness. It should be revisited in its full range today. These are a few of his hallmark accomplishments as a writer, arranger and performer.
‘Surfer Girl’ (1963)Unbelievably, impossibly the first single that Brian Wilson ever wrote. So sophisticated and delicate in its moon-eyed teenage passions, full of artful melodic moves bolstered by the pure-water harmonies that would define the group. The song that set the template for a SoCal subculture, and a band to eventually rival the Beatles.
‘In My Room’ (1963)Perfectly captures the loneliness and sanctity of young solitude over a lovely doo-wop arpeggio. It’s a bracingly vulnerable track for a boy band to write in any era of masculinity.
‘The Warmth of the Sun’ (1964)What a beautiful composition to come right in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. Soaked with loss, redeemed by those radiant chord changes showing Wilson’s escalating ambitions as a writer, here with Mike Love.
‘Don’t Worry Baby’ (1964)Riffing off the Ronettes’ hit the year before, this early cut served double duty as a sincere portrait of romantic comfort and safety, and a reassurance for Wilson’s own insecurities as a performer on stage and in life. The regal vocal here proved it worked.
‘Please Let Me Wonder’ (1965)An absolute swoon. Wilson was ramping up to the sonic inventions of “Pet Sounds,” but this era-transitional single captured the old lovelorn magic and dreaminess in an increasingly robust arrangement.
‘California Girls’ (1965)Written with Love after the Beach Boys’ first European tour, this hallmark single is diabolical in its sincerity and craftsmanship, a gobsmacked appreciation for all the world’s women that probably did as much to build the Golden State’s global reputation as Hollywood and the microchip.
‘Caroline, No’ (1966)It’s hard not to pack this list with songs from “Pet Sounds,” but this one stands out for its poignancy about time passing and the grind of life changing a lost love. Wilson regarded it as one of his best, and with its striking instrumental palette of harpsichord and flutes, it’s easy to agree.
‘God Only Knows’ (1966)From the opening bait-and-switch lyric to the quiet, tidal shifts in tone and that regal outro, it may be the emblematic Beach Boys song. It will never lose its potency as a crowing statement of devotion. Go get married to it, or ponder its existential desperation.
‘Good Vibrations’ (1966)Probably the definitive Beach Boys single in that it has absolutely everything they’re beloved for — compositional genius, technical invention and immaculate performances spliced from four different studios into one incandescent, emblematic single.
‘Darlin’’ (1967)The Beach Boys were in decline by 1967 — in health and hipness alike. Wilson revamped a song he wrote with Mike Love (for what became Three Dog Night). Now as a rollicking horn-driven soul number (with a great vocal from Carl Wilson), it became an unexpected highlight of this era for the band.
‘Cabin Essence’ (1969 and 2004)A core piece of the mangled, unfinished “Smile” sessions, the song took Wilson four decades to get right and finally release as part of his own effort to finish the LP. It’s packed with ideas from all over the American songbook — Aaron Copland and western folk, run through with Wilson’s own cracked impressionist view of life on the rails.
‘Surf’s Up’ (1971)“A blind class aristocracy, back through the opera glass you see / The pit and the pendulum drawn.” An elegy for the hopeful ‘60s, with a wry title that lays the band’s old sunny optimism in the grave.
‘’Til I Die’ (1971)A wrenching composition evoking a declining Wilson’s hopelessness and despair, all the more striking for its exuberant production. It feels even weightier on today of all days — “How deep is the ocean, I’ve lost my way.”
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