Pet Sounds: Most Overrated Album of All Time?

Just because the techniques were pioneering does not make the album "great."

The songs are mostly mediocre pop songs, pumped up by arrangements and a format that were new to pop music. The songs themselves do not compare to other Beach Boys records.

This makes Pet Sounds "influential," and reaffirms the greatness of Brian Wilson in the R&R world, but the album itself is not great. Others took the new style and made much better records.

You can't erase the fact that your listening today has matured and benifitted by forty some odd years of musical evolution (whether you were here and listening all that time or not) since these record had their inception.

The hard part of understanding these landmark albums can be enhanced if one did not experience them during their time of introduction, in context to what music was currently in rotation, going back and listening to the billboard hits of that era and realizing the music and social conscience of that moment. You may well be surprised just how revolutionary the concepts and how dwarfing the musicianship and production skills in juxtaposition. But sitting here in 2009 saying "I don't get it" may just be not understanding the context.

With the benifit of Pet Sounds and SPLHCB in retrospect, why does it still seem to be so illusive, creating such a work out of thin air?

Happy Listening!

Its definitely not overrated in terms of its impact and influence at time and in terms of the innovative aspect of its production I suppose.

But I've personally always felt that SPLHCB then took things to a new level of overall success.

One of the things that the Beatles (with the help of George Martin) did to better effect than perhaps any other act ever is take elements of music and production that already existed elsewhere in bits and pieces and apply them in a new musical formula of their own that had tremendous mass appeal, hence their commercial success.

PS was a much needed radical and innovative departure for the Beach Boys from their prior work, which was very much cookie cutter and becoming dated in nature despite its merits. My impression has always been that PS is as much rough around the edges as it is refined though. The Beatles took things to a much more refined and higher level and continued to raise the bar of commercial success as well.

By the way, Abba is another act that came into their own after the Beatles that continued to move things forward and achieved huge commercial success, even though the music's content and meaning might be considered fluff in comparison to the BEatles by some.

The funny thing is if you go to Metacritic.com, Smile is the highest rated album ever (as far as their reviews go back). I have to admit it's pretty good but I don't get the "100" rating.

Not a big fan of "Smile".

It has some stellar moments but is much too erratic and disjointed to be considered a work of art or one of the greatest.

It's hardly in the same class as Sergeant Pepper, Highway 61, Let it Bleed, etc.

IMO of course.