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Pet Sounds: Most Overrated Album of All Time?

Try as I might -- and I have tried very hard -- I just don't get the "genius" of this album. I know that George Martin said that Sgt Pepper would have never happened without Pet Sounds, but I don't think the two are even in the same league. What am I missing?
jeffreybowman2k
jaybo
4,478 posts
 
its still being played regularly 40 some years after the fact on my stereo for sure. however my favorite beach boys albums are sunflower(tremendous), 20/20(pieced together with sinles. b sides, and relics from the unreleased 'smile' it hangs together, and is still great,and friends(one of the great sunday morning albums ever)...i've heard friends is brian's as well......ps, the beach boys hold my personal record for live concert events. i saw them 19 times beginning in 65. after carl died, i called it quits....couldn't imagine the band playing on without him.
jaybo
4,478 posts
 
one more tidbit...pet sounds was a commercial failure at the time..the poorest selling lp the band had released to date(1966). it would years before many of their fans would come back to the band....and new lp sales never did. like hendrix, the stones, and others, you either 'get' the beach boys, or you don't. if you don't its not a high crime....thats just rock n roll.
mr_hosehead
210 posts
 
"What am I missing?" Well, for starters - just how old are you? If you weren't around then that explains a lot...

We're all a product of our experience, and the collective wisdom that identified this as one of the greatest all lived through that era. Narrod and Rar1 give a hint of some of the reasons - the Beach Boys were practically the major competitors in the U.S. to the Beatles (and Stones, maybe). They sounded like nothing else around (at the time...) and this did provide a significant spark for Dr. Pepper's.

Once you've heard so much that's been produced since that time then Pet Sounds may not seem like all that much - until you step back and realize that so much of what followed is often quite derivative in some way. This was such a change (as Jaybo noted) from the norm at that time that even many fans of the most popular group in the U.S. didn't get it nor buy it. It was just those guys like the Beatles, etc. who were knocked out by Pet Sounds and the rest has become history...
stevecham
3,340 posts
 
It took me many years before I began to "get" the Beach Boys and what Wilson contributed to pop music. One thing I will say for Brian and the Boys was that as a kid growing up in Marshfield, MA in the summer of 1965, hearing their music about Southern California on the family station wagon radio "transported" me there and when I finally got to visit that part of the country my expectations, based on that music alone, were right on.

That is the the power of great songwriting.
jafant's avatar
jafant
20,308 posts
 
Never. Concur w/ above, the album was envisioned as a complete work and enabled Brian to showcase his vocal arranging, production skills. One must closely listen to the many 'layers' of harmony...
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