The Beach Boys - God Only Knows

God only knows what I'd be without you

Album: Pet Sounds [11th album]
Recorded: Los Angeles, California
Genre: Art Pop, Sunshine Pop, Baroque Pop
Album Release: May 16th 1966
Album Release: May 18th 1966 [3rd single]
Length: 2:55
Producer: Brian Wilson [age 23]
Vocalist: Carl Wilson
Label: Capitol Records

Music Video


Live at Knebworth, England in 1980


Live on the Ed O'Sullivan Show in 1968


From Live Aid in 1985

Charts, Streams & Sales

Canada (singles): #6
Holland (singles): #4
UK (albums): #2
UK (singles): #2 [number #1 was 'Yellow Submarine' by The Beatles]
Spotify: 274,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 26,000,000 +
Consequence of Sounds 100 Greatest Songs of All Time: #1
Pitchfork's Best Songs of the 60s: #1
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (2021): #11

Credits

Accordion [x2], bass, cello, clarinet, double bass, drums, flute [x2], french horn, harpsichord, piano, saxophone, sleigh bells, tambourine, viola

Details

• Early Beach Boys songs were about cars, girls and surfing but Pet Sounds marked an undeniable change in direction for the band, moving away from surf rock into a symphonic world of lush intrumentals and complex vocal harmonies. Most of the songs were still fairly simple lyrically but they had an almost spiritual tone. It was around this time songwriter Brian Wilson had started taking LSD.
  
  In the book 'Anthems We Love' Wilson said
  
  "It came from God through me, I was 24 when I wrote 'God Only Knows' and the rest of Pet Sounds. All I know is I wrote what was in my heart. And the lyrics and the music just connect with people." 
  
  
• 'Smile' was the album that made Brian Wilson go mad but it started with the bands change in direction on 'Pet Sounds'. He was trying to keep up with the revolutionary production techniques innovated by The Beatles on their 1965 album 'Rubber Soul', but doing so would cost him his mind. 
  
  In 1964 Wilson had a nervous breakdown so while the rest of the band were touring he would stay home and compose. He built a literal sandbox in his house and put a grand piano in it so he could write music with the sand at his feet and the The Beach Boys on his mind. At the time, people thought him eccentric, in retrospect, the signs of his mental difficulties were obvious.
  
  
  
  'God Only Knows' features many unusual instruments not found on earlier Beach Boys albums such as the french horn, the viola and sleigh bells. More importantly however, is the way Brian Wilson used the recording studio as an instrument in and of itself. He pioneered new ways of layering clips [overdubbing] on top of one another and, alongside The Beatles, made the idea of manipulating sound in the studio mainstream.
  
  The home listening experience was no longer supposed to sound like the band playing live in your living room. Technological progress allowed music made in a studio to sound vastly different to that of a live band by using effects such as reverb, echo, delay and looping. These new recording techniques revolutionised music production and proved to be hugely influential on genres such as hip hop, dance and all forms of electronica.
  
  The entire 'Pet Sounds' album was ambitious, sophisticated and radical in terms of its production and musical complexity. When people had became comfortable with guys and guitars, The Beach Boys released music that was more like a composition. Even though it's now lauded as one of the most important albums in the history of music, at the time, many fans were unsure what to make of it. Guitars were cool, not the clarinet and the record didn't sell.
  
  The pressure of his band underperforming in the charts, mental health difficulties and increasing drug use saw Wilson institutionalized in 1968, beginning a decades long downward spiral that would see him placed under a conservatorship and begging for drugs on the streets of California.
  
  

Artwork