Though I hold Brian Wilson in as high esteem as anyone, and consider him to have written a fair number of the best songs I’ve ever heard. I don’t love Pet Sounds as much as I am "suppose to". I had loved All Summer Long, but didn’t at all like it’s two follow-ups. The British Invasion had really "toughened-up" white Rock ’n’ Roll, putting Blues back in the mix, and by 1965/6 The Beach Boys already sounded like an oldies act---passe’. By the time of Pet Sounds’ release, I wasn’t even interested enough to check it out; no one I knew did.
But then by way of a fluke (too long a story to recount), in early 1968 I happened to hear Smiley Smile (the watered-down version of the Smile album, which was to be the follow-up to Pet Sounds), and my little teenage mind was blown! There was a lot of acid-drenched music being made in 1968, but SS was more mind-altered than anything else I had heard. Very odd, deeply-revolutionary music. Give a listen to "Heroes & Villains" and "Fall Breaks And Back To Winter (W. Woodpecker Symphony)". Brian Wilson had truly---to quote BB singer Mike Love---f*cked with the formula. Their structures are more akin to Classical compositions than songs. The music on Smiley Smile make Hendrix, Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, or any other psychedelic music (except for perhaps the 2nd and 3rd Grateful Dead albums) sound downright traditional in comparison. In my opinion, the collapse of the Smile album is the artistic tragedy of our lifetimes. Am I being too dramatic? ;-)