Pet Sounds: Most Overrated Album of All Time?

Good post @lonemountain. I was a huge Beach Boys fan through the All Summer Long album (1964), and they were the first group I saw live (that summer). I had a ticket to see The Beatles on their ’64 tour, but decided to pass. I wasn’t yet sold on them, but did see them the following summer.

The next BB album was The Beach Boys Today in March of ’65, and by the time it came out Pop music had changed dramatically, the harder sound of the British Invasion bands making the BB’s sound passe’, far too gentle and "white". I never even heard the next album Summer Days, and The Beach Boys were effectively dead to me.

No one I knew bought Pet Sounds when it was released in ’66, and I heard it only after accidentally getting a copy of Smiley Smile in early ’68. In the midst of the Blues revival and psychedelic madness of 1968, here comes the strangest music I had ever heard. I became obsessed with SS, and Brian Wilson in general. So I then bought all the albums I had missed after All Summer Long, including of course Pet Sounds.

The album is rather poorly recorded, making it hard to hear all the marvelous voicings in Brian’s piano playing, or to fully appreciate the sublime chord progressions (I consider "God Only Knows" a masterpiece of a song, one of the best written in the 20th century) and orchestration he wrote for The Wrecking Crew musicians to play. You have to work to hear through the "fog" (lack of transparency and inner detail) of the recording, but it’s worth it.

As far as I know Epstein never had anything to do with recording the Beatles other than managing and helping them secure a recording contract. He was never an engineer or producer. George Martin produced and Geoff Emerick engineered. The Beatles were also very involved by asking the pair to produce certain sounds for them to create the record the way they heard it in their head.

@johnto - indeed, Brian Epstein was the manager and had nothing to do with the recordings. Martin and Emerick it was! 

I agree with you. I also have tried to listen to PS but don't hear what the hoopla is about. Sir George is wrong, pepper is by far superior. 

Geez, if George Martin and Paul McCartney were heaping praise all over an album, and I didn't "hear what all the hoopla is about", I would not admit it in public. ;-)

I'm in the minority (though not alone) in considering Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album the most over-rated album in Pop music history. Both Rubber Soul and Revolver are better albums. IMO. 

I love how Pet Sounds ends: with the sound of a far-away train clattering down the tracks, a distant dog barking in response. When I was a little kid, we lived a few blocks from the train tracks that run alongside San Fernando Blvd. in the Valley, and I awoke every morning to that exact sound. If that ending doesn't give you a clue as to what the album is about, and the emotional response the music is intended to evoke in the listener, I don't believe I'm interested in knowing you. No offense intended.