Weekly Album of the Week #6

This album's history is almost as interesting as the album itself. In 1966 the Beach Boys lead songwriter (and arguably one of the only good singers in the group) Brian Wilson has a nervous breakdown. The cause: too many drugs and too much competition from the Beatles. Their 1966 album Pet Sounds was the impetus behind the Beatle's Sgt. Pepper and Brian Wilson was working on his "responce" to the Beatles entitled "SMiLE" (Wilson was even featured on Leonard Bernstein's show playing some songs that would have been on SMiLE).

Long story short: The album became increasingly incoherrant as Wilson also became increasingly incoherrant and eventually Brian Wilson took a vacation from the Beach Boys at which time he was replaced by Bruce (whatever his last name is) and SMiLE was released as a vastly inferior Beach Boys album and effectively took them off the radar as an important band.

Fast forward to 2003. Brian Wilson is approached by his biographer and asks him if he would ever consider revisiting the songs he wrote and rerecording them the way he intended them. It took awhile to convince him but he eventually relented and the result is one of 2004's most incredible albums. SMiLE is an awesome piece of work and full of symphonic beauty that really caught my ear. Check it out here. The new version of Good Vibrations (with different lyrics than the Beach Boys version) is my favorite.