Monday, May 25, 2026

Smile

I'm not immersed in music lore, and didn't recall having heard of the never-quite-converged "SMiLE" Beach Boys album. I gather that at least some of the peices existed in multiple versions, and the group hadn't decided on what to pick.

I was curious. It exists on Youtube.

It feels sloppy, and I can easily believe they didn't yet know where they were going. Good Vibrations ends the set--the contrast seems stark. They experimented with all kinds of instrumentation and musical ideas, but it didn't seem confident and ready to me.

Sometimes you need to respect an author's privacy about "unfinished works." There's likely a reason the thing wasn't finished.

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