THE HIT HAMMER: The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations"
- Ryan Paris
- Jun 9, 2020
- 5 min read
(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please refer down below)
The Beach Boys - "Good Vibrations"
Hit Number 1: December 10, 1966
Stay at Number 1: 1 Week
Some songs make your day better just by listening to it. After the Beach Boys released their album Pet Sounds they were looking to build on the success of that album, but the group's leader, Brian Wilson, wanted to change his writing style. He used to do what a lot of other songwriters do, and brought a completely finished, written-out song to the studio, ready to record. During the Pet Sounds era, however, he would go about it way differently than anyone would expect. He would record a track that featured chord changes that he liked, take an acetate disc home, and then he would write the lyrics to the song and compose a melody. He said that when he was writing "Good Vibrations", he divided the song up into what he called "feels". These "feels" would reflect a certain mood or emotion that he had felt throughout his life, and he planned on fitting them together, in his words, "like a mosaic". An engineer by the name of Chuck Britz said that the song was Wilson's "whole life performance in one track". Wilson was also determined to make a track better than "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", a previous Phil Spector production. Needless to say, he came up with a song that changed pop music culture in the later 1960s, and a song that is impossible to place in one genre alone. "Good Vibrations" stands alone, with no other song worthy of being in the same conversation as it. This was something special that Wilson was working on.
Wilson has said in the past that the song was inspired by something his mother told him; about how dogs pick up "vibrations" from other people. He found it to be interesting that dogs would bark at some people, but wouldn't bark at others, as they would pick up "bad vibes" from bad people. He wanted to create a song about picking up vibes from other people, but didn't quite know where to go with it. He had a basic idea on what he wanted to do, but turned to lyricist Tony Asher, who had helped with Wilson and the Beach Boys on much of their Pet Sounds album. Asher didn't end up doing a whole lot in the contribution of the writing, as he knew what Wilson had was a song with high potential to be a hit, but he couldn't come up with an end result due to Wilson's primitive piano playing style. He did advise that Wilson change the title from "Good Vibes" to "Good Vibrations", to avoid what he called "lightweight use of the language". So, that's exactly what Wilson did.
While Wilson was responsible for most of the song's production and melody, Wilson's cousin and fellow band mate, Mike Love, was responsible for the lyrics. Love knew what Wilson was going for, with the concept of "vibrations", and he used that along with the rising "Flower Power" movement to come up with the story the song would tell. Overall, "Good Vibrations" tells a story about a guy who's picking up "good vibrations" from a certain girl, and how he loves the "colorful clothes" she wears, and how she helps take him to a "blossom world". The lyrics are definitely trippy, and Wilson said that there was some marijuana involved in the making of the song, but he flat out rejects the idea of the group using any LSD in the making of the track, which was commonly believed to be the case at the time. I think that the lyrics are pretty simple though, and the real complexity comes with the song's production.
When you hear "Good Vibrations", you are hearing bits and pieces of different recorded material being combined together to create one song. The sessions ranged from February to September of 1966, and used over 90 hours of magnetic recording tape, costing a grand total in the tens of thousands, making it the costliest single at that time. The group created countless vocal and instrumental tracks, some that were never even used in the final production of the song, along with a bunch of overdubbing. The other Beach Boys were confused by what it was Brian was going for, and even grew to be frustrated by repeating the same lines over and over for the sake of overdubbing. Brian was even at one point on the verge of giving the song away to a black R&B group, but was talked out of it, and was encouraged to keep working on the track by some friends of his. The end result features a wide variety of instruments: a Hammond organ, pianos, timpani drums, a cello, harmonica, electric as well as double-bass, a piccolo, and an Electro-Theremin that was played by its inventor, Paul Tanner.
After the pain-in-the-neck production that Wilson went through, everything was finally pieced together, and was consequently released. The public went crazy for it, and was the Beach Boys' first single to sell over a million copies. It even went to #1 in England. Other music critics constantly praise the song, and it's listed at #6 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and being featured on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll" list. Listening to the song once, it's easy to tell why this song gets so much praise. There's so much going on in this song. It almost feels like you're listening to several different songs in one, and was somehow fit into 3 minutes and 35 seconds. The song doesn't even sound like something that came from this Earth: the sci-fi sound of the Electro-Theremin, the group's other-worldly harmonies that are better on this song than any other, the constant changing moods and styles of the song, and still accomplishing the never-changing feel of a happy song. It's psychedelic, but still rock and roll at the same time. It's the kind of thing one could only create if they put a bunch of time into it, and in the case of "Good Vibrations", a bunch of funds as well.
While the production was certainly hectic, Brian Wilson must be pretty pleased with how "Good Vibrations" turned out. No other song takes you on such a journey quite like "Good Vibrations", and the overall positive feel of it, while still wondering what's going to happen next, is mind-altering. Especially since the song runs for the average amount of time as your ordinary song. Let's face it, the word "masterpiece" is probably way overused, and sometimes people claim something to be a masterpiece when it's really just a good song. Folks, "Good Vibrations" is a masterpiece.
GRADE: 10/10
JUST MISSED:
Donovan's pretty good, laid-back, psychedelic tune "Mellow Yellow" peaked at #2 behind "Good Vibrations". It's a 7.
SONGS REFERENCED:
The Righteous Brothers - "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"
MY INSPIRATION / MORE INFORMATION:
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