Pet Sounds: Most Overrated Album of All Time?

@stuartk: Amen, brother! Rubber Soul and Revolver are much better. 

Lots of interesting comments.  They simply show how divergent opinions can be.

I alway considered "Pet Sounds" to be an OK album, but never to the high esteem some place it.  I wonder if some revere it just because it was said to influence the Beatles, and who could debut them? ;^)

Pet Sounds... ZZZZZZZZZZ...

"The Beach Boys are the greatest American rock band of all time",

Not intending to pick on anybody here, but the above statement is a good illustration of one of the main difficulties of threads such as this: the very strong tendency for we humans to confuse the subjective and the objective. I'd argue that we all do it to some degree, at least some of the time. If something aesthetic conforms to our personal tastes, we assume it must therefore have some sort of objective, universal merit. 

Those of us with any sort of artistic training are perhaps more practiced in evaluating art from the standpoint of craft, which is not the same thing as 

"I like it-- it's good; I don't like it-- it's bad". 

@martykl:

"Rock is a reductionist/primitivist art form which isn't really complicated."

Sure-- if all you're talking about is the 50's. Otherwise, where have you been?????