The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations

When I look in her eyes she goes with me to a blossom world.

Album: Good Vibrations EP
Recorded: Los Angeles, California
Genre: Art Pop, Sunshine Pop, Baroque Pop
Single Release: October 10th 1966
Length: 3:39
Producer: Brian Wilson [age 24]
Vocalist: Brian Wilson & Carl Wilson
Label: Capitol Records

Music Video


Audio


Live on the Ed O'Sullivan Show in 1968


From Live Aid in 1985

Charts, Streams & Sales

Australia (singles): #2
Canada (singles): #2
UK (singles): #1 [x1 platinum]
USA (singles): #1 [x1 platinum]
New Zealand (singles): #1
Spotify: 434,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 90,000,000 +
Grammy Awards Nominee 1967: Best Performance by a Vocal Group
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (2010): #6

Credits

Bass [x3], bongos, cello, clarinet, double bass, drums, flute, guitar [x3], harmonica [x2], harpsichord, harp, organ, piano, saxophone, tambourine, theremin

Details

• The 'Good Vibrations' in the title refers to both the vibes you get from a person as well as the vibrations which cause sound. The song includes the use of a theremin, which is an instrument played without touch, or, as strange as it sounds, by vibes. It picks up adjustments in the electro-magnetic field caused by body movement and makes according changes to its pitch and volume. So, if you're far away, it won't make a sound but if you're close and your hands are in a certain position it will produce a loud, low pitched noise or a quiet, high pitched one etc.
  
  
• 'Smile' was the album that made Brian Wilson go mad. He was trying to keep up with the revolutionary production techniques innovated by The Beatles and with 'Good Vibrations' (1966) he arguably surpassed them, but at the cost of his mind. Vibrations was the prototype for what 'Smile' would become but the album, which Wilson described as a teenage symphony to God, wouldn't be released until 2004, 38 years after he started working on it.
  
  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.
  
  
  
  'Good Vibrations' didn't appear on the album 'Pet Sounds' but both records were released in 1966 and came from the same period of manic creativity. The Beach Boys made the song by recording over 70 hours of music and edited it down to the final 3 and a half minutes. More than 20 session musicians were employed and the song featured many instruments not found in traditional rock including the saxophone, cello, flute and the clarinet to name but a few. The song had everything and the recording process made 'Good Vibrations' the most expensive track ever produced at the time, costing $50,000, or adjusted for inflation [2024], $485,000. They spent nearly half a million to make one song.
  
  Both 'Pet Sounds' and 'Good Vibrations' were ambitious, sophisticated and radical in terms of their production and musical complexity. When people had became comfortable with guys and guitars, The Beach Boys once again put popular music in the hands of the composer. 'Good Vibrations' is closer to being a symphony that something a garage rock band would produce and was a significant change in direction for the group towards a more production-heavy sound.
  
  Even though it's now lauded as one of the most important songs in the history of music, at the time, many fans were unsure what to make of it. Guitars were cool, not the clarinet. 'Good Vibrations' sold well but 'Pet Sounds' didn't.
  
  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