It captured the mumbled inarticulacy and heightened feelings of love, but also the sound of a culture changingRead our 100 greatest list as it counts downFew pop songs are as revered for their technical prowess as this post-Pet Sounds October 1966 release by the Beach Boys. With lyrics by Mike Love and writing and arrangement by Brian Wilson, who also produced, it was at the time the most expensive single ever made.
The song’s provenance was Wilson’s longstanding preoccupation with cosmic vibrations – a concept apparently introduced to him by his mother. After several mis-starts, Love claims to have written the lyrics on his drive to the studio. He wondered how the band’s fanbase, wooed by early hits such as Surfin’
USA and Help Me, Rhonda, would greet this new avant-garde production. His masterstroke was the familiar tale of boy-meets-girl at the heart of Good Vibrations – one simply recast in the haze of the psychedelic and flower-power movements then emerging along America’s west coast, to tell of “colourful clothes” and a “blossom world”.