Listen to Monkeberry Moon Delight, Nineteen Hundred Eighty Five, Temporary Secretary, and I Will side by side. You'll see what I'm talking about. Maybe Carti took some inspo from this.
Both Carti and Drake kinda had the same MO here. They flooded the market with countless songs they've been cooking up for a while, but I think Drake was a bit more clever to divide that into three albums instead of just putting it all on one album as each of the three albums were kind of different genres. MUSIC was a sonic mess (I like a decent amount of songs on MUSIC but they just felt sonically all over the place), looking back maybe Carti could've done what Drake did imo.
On a couple of the albums here I replaced the non-musical/non-lyric album outros with the song right before it as the outro for that respective album.
So with that being said, for me it's currently:
Louie, Louie (Shut Down Volume 2)
Whistle In (Smiley Smile)
The Shift (Surfin' Safari)
Finders Keepers (Surfin U.S.A)
Custom Machine (Little Deuce Coupe)
Auld Lang Syne (The Beach Boys' Christmas Album)
Don't Back Down (All Summer Long)
Barbara Ann (Beach Boys Party!)
Cuddle Up (Carl & The Passions So Tough)
Just Once In My Life (15 Big Ones)
Mama Says (Wild Honey)
Love Is A Woman (The Beach Boys Love You)
Transcendental Meditation (Friends)
And Your Dream Comes True (Summer Days and Summer Nights!!)
Cool, Cool Water (Sunflower)
Funky Pretty (Holland)
Still I Dream Of It (Adult/Child)
Cabinessence (20/20)
Your Summer Dream (Surfer Girl)
In The Back Of My Mind (The Beach Boys Today!)
Caroline, No (Pet Sounds)
Good Vibrations (SMiLE/BWPS/TSS)
Surf's Up (Surf's Up)
What are your album outro rankings for all The Beach Boys albums made between 1962-1977?
I think they have three classic albums
The classics -
I don't even need to explain, this is THE unanimous classic in The Beach Boys discography no question about that, AND FOR GOOD REASON.
This album is a personal classic for me. Friends has no skips imo (yes, even Transcendental Meditation grew on me). Songs ranging from solid to god tier the whole way through. A good amount of killer and no real filler. This was the last album until 1976 where Brian truly steered the ship in terms of the band's creative process.
Surf's Up is my other personal classic album of theirs and it's my second favorite released album in the whole BB's catalogue. I don't like Student Demonstration Time but the other 9 songs with a good chunk of those 9 songs being SO STRONG on this record make it a classic for me, ESPECIALLY the last 3 songs on this album. Those closing 3 songs alone are strong enough to make Surf's Up a classic for me and I personally think 'Til I Die and the title track are better than ANYTHING on Pet Sounds. In fact the whole Side B of this album is already a 12/10 masterpiece and that's not to mention the other fantastic Side A songs on this album like Long Promised Road, etc. that add to its classic status even more for me. Even Take A Load Off Your Feet is a guilty pleasure of mine. Hot take but I think Feet actually thematically fits on this album as it talks about self care and has that same socially conscious cynicism that's shown on pretty much all of the other Surf's Up songs on the chorus of this song. Feet sounds like the most fun song on this whole album and yes some of its lyrics are silly, but I think there's a whole lot more to this song than people tend to give it credit for.
Furthermore, I feel like Surf's Up could've been seen as a unanimous classic, potentially on the level of Pet Sounds, if the album had better song sequencing on Side A (for example what was Carl and Jack thinking when they put Long Promised Road and Feet next to each other, they're both good songs but they don't fit side by side sonically and subject matter wise if you want a cohesive album listening experience) and had Dennis's 2 or 3 songs that got scrapped from this album to replace Student Demonstration Time.
The runner ups to classic -
I think Holland would've also been at the very least a personal classic for me if they reworked Beak Of Eagles and made that into a full blown song with some better lyrics, and if they replaced Only With You with a stronger song (I don't think Only With You is a bad song but I view it as the weakest song on all of Holland and it sounds like a CATP leftover).
Side B of this album is phenomenal (excluding Bull Session as this album's outro didn't need to be a spoken word filler track), but Side A has some real filler. In The Back Of My Mind would've been a perfect closer for Today!
The big what if, the obvious elephant in the room -
I think SMiLE is already seen as THE CLASSIC of all unfinished albums, it's commonly ranked as the #1 unreleased album in modern music history. If it was finished and released in 1967 it could've rivaled Pet Sounds in classic status among lots of music listeners, and if not it would've probably been seen as a classic in the avant-garde pop music scene at the very least. It's definitely not an officially released "classic" though cause it never truly released and it still sounded very unfinished at the time of its abandonment, TSS and BWPS doesn't change this fact.
So what about you guys? How many classics do you think The Beach Boys have, and which are these classic albums to you?
Brian Wilson's creative genius peaked here, you can't convince me otherwise. In fact, this song was so glorious that even Mike Love (who at times had major creative differences with Brian) decided to pay homage to it!
I saw this video on his Instagram page and decided to screen record it cause I thought it was really weird. The script he is reading feels like an ad read for UMG’s Vinylphile. What makes it weirder is the description also reading like an ad, and the comment from the Beach Boys account. The only other thing I could find that resembles a disclosure is an Instagram story Anthony posted after he posted this video, which mentions the official umg and beach boys accounts. I’m confused and please feel free to tell me off if I’m missing something, but is this not just an ad (or a partnership or some sort)? Shouldn’t there be a disclaimer for this??
The Beach Boys with:
or Taylor Swift with:
If you personally ask me I think this is TRULY one of the easiest song batch competitions OAT but what do you all think? Brian was an amazingly terrible songwriter but TLOAS era Taylor Swift is the greatest songwriter to ever grace this planet. So give me which batch wins for u 🫵
The Beach Boys with:
or Taylor Swift with:
If you personally ask me I think this is TRULY one of the toughest song batch competitions OAT but what do you all think? Brian was amazing songwriter but TLOAS era Taylor Swift might just be the greatest songwriter to ever grace this planet. So give me which batch wins for u 🫵
Of these 5 dudes who do you think wins? And rank them too!
With all the talk about the new Micheal Jackson biopic going on, especially that one scene where The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson is mentioned in the biopic, it just reminded me of this interesting fact revealed in Thomas Dolby's 2016 autobiography that Micheal Jackson was a fan of Surf's Up by The Beach Boys back in 1982. It's kind of crazy to know that the legend MJ was listening to Surf's Up just as much as we do here.
MJ also felt terrible about the struggles Brian Wilson and Dennis Wilson were dealing with at the time in 1982.
Excerpt from Dolby's autobiography shown here: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/inside-michael-jacksons-mansion-thomas-dolby-recalls-surreal-visit-192458/
I liked Carl's vocal performance on the 1971 studio version of Surf's Up (I still prefer Brian's voice for this but Carl did decent on that version) but this right here from 1974 knocks that 1971 vocal version out of the water easily imo.