Historical Background

It’s said that when Brian Wilson heard The Beatles’ U.S. release of Rubber Soul in 1965 he claimed: “That’s it. I really am challenged to do a great album.” With that Wilson dropped from active touring with the Beach Boys and retreated back to Hawthorne, California and into his studio and over the next year created what would ultimately become one of the most lauded albums in Western pop music history—Pet Sounds. Musically, it is the deepest and most complex cut of the Beach Boy’s oeuvre. This “challenge” from the Beatles lead Wilson to expand the pop idiom in new and strange ways through creative arrangement and advancing Phil Spector’s idea of the using of the studio as an instrument, and he did all of it with practically one ear!
However, it seems that a sense of tragic irony follows Mr. Wilson wherever he goes. Now considered absolute gold by critics, producers, arrangers, composers, lyricists, and regular listeners alike, when it was released by Capitol Records in 1966, though, it was considered a commercial failure in the U.S., only making it to #10 on the on the Top 40 charts. This lackluster welcome of his magnum opus sent Wilson Though, this now has now has commonly come to be understood as mostly Capitol’s fault for their lack of promotion and advertisement of the album, Pet Sounds only went platinum in 2000 (“Pet Sounds”, Stevens).
But the irony continues; in the UK the album was met much greater praise, reaching #2 on their LP charts, and Paul McCartney has been quoted in saying that “It blew me out of the water”. He continues on to say that “I've often played Pet Sounds and cried. I played it to John [Lennon] so much that it would be difficult for him to escape the influence ... it was the record of the time,” and thus what came out in response to Wilson’s magnum opus in 1967 is the prime candidate for greatest rock album of all time and probably will never be topped: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Brian Wilson).
Of all the songs on Pet Sounds there is one that has a special hold on this analyst as well as many others and is the one I will be analyzing; “God Only Knows” is the eighth track on the album and is the hidden gem of the album. McCartney has often also referred to “God Only Knows” as his top favorite song saying “ ‘ God Only Knows’ is one of the few songs that reduces me to tears every time I hear it. It’s really just a love song, but it’s brilliantly done. It shows the genius of Brian. I’ve actually performed it with him and I’m afraid to say that during the sound check I broke down. It was just too much to stand there singing this song that does my head in, and to stand there singing it with Brian”(“God Only Knows”). And he’s not the only one to think that and it hard not to see why. Simultaneously heartbreaking, uplifting, brilliantly recorded, ingeniously arranged and composed yet deceptively simple and baring this work is the most transparent in showing the depth and breadth of Brian Wilson’s innate ear for melody and prowess behind the boards in the studio.
One final yet important not about the song itself is the fact that is was one of the first to use the “God” in the title. At first, Wilson was reported to have not wanted to use it for fear it would be controversial and consequently limit its airplay. But as history would have it, this leap worked out for them and for the song.