#466: The Beach Boys, 'The Beach Boys Today!'

Capitol, 1965

I was about 15 years old when my dad told me The Beach Boys weren’t actually “beach boys.” None of them surfed. They weren’t suntanned California bros riding the waves, meeting up with Gidget and Moondoggy and complaining about tourists messing up the beaches. 

They were really just nerdy music boys who loved a melody and were good at harmonies and writing catchy hooks.

Did I feel lied to? No. But this was the beginning of my life shadowed by skepticism around how the world is presented.

This whole album, “The Beach Boys Today” stabilizes the ruse. Songs like, “I’m too young” about being too young to get married and “Help me Rhonda” about needing to jump to another hot girl after getting dumped. Real play boys who only care about a good Saturday night and getting the girl. 

This album is part of the act and plays to that time’s pop music narratives. There is nothing deep or really heartfelt in these dewy eyed teen romances but we see that this branding bought Brian Wilson and the band freedom to get very creative later on with Pet Sounds and all of his other work. Their later work is deep, some of the most beautiful love songs ever written and some of the most tragic and creative instrumental choices done to date. Even Paul McCartney credits “God only knows” as the greatest song ever written. 

Their later work doesn’t speak to this “Moondoggy and I are having a real beachin’ time tonight at the old sunset bbq.” They were allowed to put the brand to sleep when they wanted and still had ownership of how they were perceived.

Conversations around the Beach Boys often turn to conversations surrounding their commercial brand vs the songwriting innovation. A sort of push and pull between a commercial hook vs artist heart as demonstrated through the songwriting partnership of Mike Love (the commercial, hooky guy) and Brian Wilson (the ethereal visionary). 

This tension is actually not a contention, even though fans want it to be. Brian Wilson worked with actual jingle writers when writing “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Good Vibrations,” tracks on later and edgier albums. 

In a world before social media and personal branding, The Beach Boys somehow never limited their creativity to the expectations of being consistent with their brand. 

It felt like only a small part of the bands’ identity was a California-based parody of what people outside America thought American life was. The majority of their lives was still quiet and private and limitless. 

I feel stuck in a place where I am obligated to present a chosen brand consistently in nine out of ten dimensions of my daily life. The obligation is clear when job applications ask how many followers I have on social media. It is clear when editors think followers equals readers and push to hire freelancers who already have a substantial following. My writing and self-expression are swallowed by the need to commodify it. I don’t know how Brian Wilson played that line so well. 

Is it reasonable to have a healthy tension with commercialization and art in order to push our own boundaries? Or is that how NFTs are made and other things that people cannot actually use? Have we left that place where we can sit on that line and use commercialization to push us to create better? Or have we molded a world where branding is identity and commodification is status? 

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Top songs: Do You Wanna Dance?, Help Me, Rhonda