I read your article and one element I think you might be missing, is the impact that Pet Sounds had on music production.
A Love Supreme is great, but it is pretty simple from a production standpoint. A group of talented musicians playing great music together.
Pet Sounds, on the other hand, is IMO widely regarded as an innovative musical production masterpiece. So leaving the quality of the songs aside, I recommend re-listening (maybe on high-end headphones) to how each of the sounds has been placed and fit together. I think often when people describe the album as being ‘symphonic’ they are in some way referring to the fact that this is a piece of pop music that feels like it holds a similar breadth and sophistication as an orchestra in terms of the raw sound.
I don’t know that it will change the overall argument, but I thought you might be interested.
What about Like a Rolling Stone? This has a full wall of sound that has space for all the instruments, and that seems hard to achieve. It was recorded in 1965, a year before before Pet Sounds.
There is so much going on:
Dylan’s turn into electric sound and the issues with that
Its negative, scornful theme and ambiguity of its subject.
It clocked in at a impractically long 6 minute time.
These choices should have really hurt commercially, and looked pretty crazy at the time.
Now it’s like the canonical rock song of all time.
I thought more and now I think Jack Gillespie’s comment above is right, and my reply above is wrong.
Jack’s comment also answers Holden’s question about what Holden is overlooking about Pet Sounds.
I think the idea is that:
Brian Wilson, by creating Pet Sounds, was a builder. He innovated and created a new “technology” that others could build off of.
In contrast, Bob Dylan is a “harvester”—his innovations laid fewer foundations for others to work.
(I am writing the above as a Dylan fan and not liking the pop aesthetic of Pet Sounds.)
I’m not fully sure, but my guess is that we can’t see this because many of the new ideas in Pet sounds have become cliches (overproduced shopping mall music) or used by others.
More datapoints:
The composer, Philip Glass, who is pretty cerebral, says this about Pet Sounds:
Philip Glass referred to “its willingness to abandon formula in favor of structural innovation, the introduction of classical elements in the arrangements, [and] production concepts in terms of overall sound which were novel at the time”.
Also:
In August, the Beatles performed their last live show of their final tour, at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. And as 1966 neared its end, the group began work on “Strawberry Fields Forever,” a song written by Lennon that would guide the band’s musical direction in the coming year.
In 1967, when Brian Wilson first heard the song, he pulled over in his car, broke down in tears and said, ’They got there first.”
This sort of awareness suggests how Brian Wilson is a lot more than a tinkerer or just has good instincts with melody.
It’s inexplicable how Holden overlooks Brian Wilson’s contributions, especially since he sticks in a giant quote with links showing the influence of Pet Sounds:
Promoted there as “the most progressive pop album ever”, Pet Sounds garnered recognition for its ambitious production, sophisticated music, and emotional lyric content. It is considered to be among the most influential albums in music history …
Holden uses Coltrane’s musical content as a contrast:
Pet Sounds came out more than a year after legendary jazz album A Love Supreme! I don’t want to get carried away about what my subjective taste says, but … even if A Love Supreme isn’t your cup of tea, I’d guess you’ll think it’s a great deal more complex, cohesive, impressive, and interesting in just about every way (other than the lack of prominent “studio effects”) than Pet Sounds. And it’s not even clearly less accessible—looks like they sold a similar number of copies?3
So I’m probably going to get black balled from future funding, but I don’t understand jazz or Coltrane. My knowledge of jazz comes from La La Land:
But my guess for what is going on that Coltrane is different in style and has a more cerebral focus on musical content, so it’s unfair and prejudicial to use it as a lens to judge Brian Wilson’s contributions (in studio production, popular music and psychedelic music, etc).
I read your article and one element I think you might be missing, is the impact that Pet Sounds had on music production.
A Love Supreme is great, but it is pretty simple from a production standpoint. A group of talented musicians playing great music together.
Pet Sounds, on the other hand, is IMO widely regarded as an innovative musical production masterpiece. So leaving the quality of the songs aside, I recommend re-listening (maybe on high-end headphones) to how each of the sounds has been placed and fit together. I think often when people describe the album as being ‘symphonic’ they are in some way referring to the fact that this is a piece of pop music that feels like it holds a similar breadth and sophistication as an orchestra in terms of the raw sound.
I don’t know that it will change the overall argument, but I thought you might be interested.
I don’t really get it.
Pet sounds seems like cute radio perfect hits.
What about Like a Rolling Stone? This has a full wall of sound that has space for all the instruments, and that seems hard to achieve. It was recorded in 1965, a year before before Pet Sounds.
There is so much going on:
Dylan’s turn into electric sound and the issues with that
Its negative, scornful theme and ambiguity of its subject.
It clocked in at a impractically long 6 minute time.
These choices should have really hurt commercially, and looked pretty crazy at the time.
Now it’s like the canonical rock song of all time.
I thought more and now I think Jack Gillespie’s comment above is right, and my reply above is wrong.
Jack’s comment also answers Holden’s question about what Holden is overlooking about Pet Sounds.
I think the idea is that:
Brian Wilson, by creating Pet Sounds, was a builder. He innovated and created a new “technology” that others could build off of.
In contrast, Bob Dylan is a “harvester”—his innovations laid fewer foundations for others to work.
(I am writing the above as a Dylan fan and not liking the pop aesthetic of Pet Sounds.)
I’m not fully sure, but my guess is that we can’t see this because many of the new ideas in Pet sounds have become cliches (overproduced shopping mall music) or used by others.
More datapoints:
The composer, Philip Glass, who is pretty cerebral, says this about Pet Sounds:
Also:
This sort of awareness suggests how Brian Wilson is a lot more than a tinkerer or just has good instincts with melody.
It’s inexplicable how Holden overlooks Brian Wilson’s contributions, especially since he sticks in a giant quote with links showing the influence of Pet Sounds:
Holden uses Coltrane’s musical content as a contrast:
So I’m probably going to get black balled from future funding, but I don’t understand jazz or Coltrane. My knowledge of jazz comes from La La Land:
But my guess for what is going on that Coltrane is different in style and has a more cerebral focus on musical content, so it’s unfair and prejudicial to use it as a lens to judge Brian Wilson’s contributions (in studio production, popular music and psychedelic music, etc).