The Beach Boys song Mike Love called positivity incarnate: “It’s uplifting to people”
The Beach Boys have always radiated fun from the moment they started making music. As much as some younger audiences might see them as the nostalgia act that talked about having fun in the summertime and surfing 24 hours a day, Brian Wilson’s intent was always to make people smile with his music whenever he got the chance. A good half of their catalogue could serve as a pick-me-up for anybody, but Mike Love believes ‘Good Vibrations’ was so positive it practically had sunshine coming out of every instrument.
Outside of being one of their most celebrated hits, it’s worth taking a moment to address how much of a marvel this song is. Never minding the fact that it’s one of the catchiest Beach Boys tracks, the main reason why it ended up working so well is due to how each section could serve as a hit chorus on anyone else’s work.
Years before pieces like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ became a huge part of mainstream culture, ‘Good Vibrations’ was one of the first major songs to not have any set structure. Throughout the entire piece, the listener experiences the different layers of infatuation along with Wilson and the rest of the band, from the beginning excitations to wanting that kind of love to last forever and ever.
While Wilson came up with the glorious music behind everything, he couldn’t get there alone. Despite being known more as the mascot for The Beach Boys half the time when he’s onstage, Mike Love was responsible for putting the lyrics into perspective, also adding his signature touch to Pet Sounds deep cuts like ‘I’m Waiting for the Day’.
Still to this day, Love thinks that ‘Good Vibrations’ was created to try to make the world a more positive place, saying, “We do ‘Good Vibrations’, and it’s uplifting to people. And in this day and age, I think there’s so much negativity in the atmosphere, in the world, so much negativity, but our music brings positivity and harmony and love and hope…’Good Vibrations’ is positivity incarnate, and it’s so great,” he said at a press conference for the new Disney documentary, The Beach Boys, attended by Far Out.
Despite being one of the greatest songs ever written, ‘Good Vibrations’ is only a drop in the bucket of what the group have to offer. Throughout an album like Pet Sounds, Wilson created a masterpiece that deserves to be celebrated amongst the greatest artistic works of the 20th century, especially with his use of harmony and amazing harmonies on ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘Sloop John B’.
Even if no one bothered to listen to another Beach Boys song outside of ‘Good Vibrations’, they would still enjoy one of the finest pieces of music ever produced. Sure, it’s not necessarily the most coherent track in the world, and it takes some wild detours, but throughout those tight three minutes, the group are in their element and doing everything in their power to put a smile on people’s faces.
‘Good Vibrations’ is, by nature, a complex song, but that doesn’t mean the emotion behind it has to be that hard to figure out. The harmonies can often feel too complicated for words, but once you hear the lyrics in context, it makes all the sense in the world.