GOOD VIBRATIONS
THE BEACH BOYS (1966)

In 1966 Brian Wilson and Bob Dylan were the only real rivals to the hallowed Lennon-McCartney partnership and it is this record more than any other that cements the damaged Californian's reputation as symphonic pop auteur par excellence.
Pet Sounds, with its stunningly orchestrated and harmonic meditations on love and loss, had more than answered the Beatles' Rubber Soul and Wilson was scratching around obsessively for the follow-up; something more spectacular, profound and emotive, the piece of music that would definitively place him on a higher plain than his scouse counterparts.
Amazingly, it was a feat which he achieved, albeit temporarily. The recording of Good Vibrations was breathtakingly complex for the time, separate sections were recorded at different studios and various rough mixes and seemingly random effects edited together afterwards. Had this happened a year or so later, when Wilson's mental state was so fractious and warped, the result would have been an aimless and unfocussed mess. But at this moment in time Wilson was so driven by being the best that the perfectionism reaped enormous rewards. Everything about the track is inspired from the spooky theremin of the chorus to the chugging rhythm of a cello and the sheer audacity of packing so many musical sections and moods into one song. It truly is, as Wilson's publicist Derek Taylor asserted, 'a pocket symphony.'
Of course it was all too good to last. The praise lavished on him filled the song's composer with crippling terror that it was all downhill from here on. Which, sadly, it was; the interminable, increasingly demented sessions for Pet Sounds follow up Smile, the drug induced breakdowns, the shameless exploitation of a musical genius by his venal family and bandmates. But there will always be Good Vibrations, shining, shimmering and exploding through radios and Ipods till the end of time.