The Beach Boys - good vibrations, 1966

"The maestro has passed - the man was a open heart with two legs - with an ear that heard the angels. Quite literally. Love and Mercy for you and yours tonight. RIP Brian."

The Beach Boys - surfin usa, 1963

 

"I was going with a girl named Judy Bowles, and her brother Jimmy was a surfer. He knew all the surfing spots. I started humming the melody to 'Sweet Little Sixteen' and I got fascinated with the fact of doing it, and I thought to myself, 'God! What about trying to put surf lyrics to 'Sweet Little Sixteen's melody? The concept was about, 'They are doing this in this city, and they're doing that in that city' So I said to Jimmy, 'Hey Jimmy, I want to do a song mentioning all the surf spots.' So he gave me a list."

The Beach Boys - wouldn't it be nice, 1966

"what a glorious soundtrack it is, both musically and lyrically, in which everything works as layer upon layer of irony. From the album’s opening line of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” to the closing number, “Caroline No,” Wilson upends and overturns every Beach Boys cliché, exposing the hollowness at their core."

Brian Wilson - god only knows live, 2020

"The first time I heard it, Brian played it for me at the piano. And I went, "Oh my god, he's talking about God in a record." It was pretty daring to me. And it was another time I thought to myself, "Oh, boy, he's really taking a chance." I thought it was almost too religious. Too square."

The Shadows - good vibrations cover, 1973

"Good, good, good, good vibrations." He started telling me the story about his mother. ... He said he'd always thought that it would be fun to write a song about vibes and picking them up from other people. ... So as we started to work, he played this little rhythmic pattern—a riff on the piano, the thing that goes under the chorus."

The Beach Boys - god only knows, 1966

"it is a baroque-style love song distinguished for its harmonic innovation and complexity, unusual instrumentation, and subversion of typical popular music conventions, both lyrically and musically. It is often praised as one of the greatest songs of all time and as the Beach Boys' finest record."

The Beach Boys - sloop john b, 1966

"Sloop John B" (originally published as "The John B. Sails") is a Bahamian folk song from Nassau. A transcription was published in 1916 by Richard Le Gallienne, and Carl Sandburg included a version in his The American Songbag in 1927. There have been many recordings of the song since the early 1950s, with variant titles including "I Want to Go Home" and "Wreck of the John B".

Saint Etienne - wouldn't it be nice cover, 2012

"He'd stop in the middle of writing a song or a conversation or whatever and start going on about Diane, about how innocent, sweet, and beautiful she was. I'd be thinking, 'Huh! Your wife's in the next room, and you're talking about her sister!'"

The Shadows - god only knows cover, 1975

"The song's musical sophistication is demonstrated by its three contrapuntal vocal parts and weak tonal center (competing between the keys of E and A)."