Smile

Didn’t make me Smile! Just seemed like a hotch-porch of randomness. Improved very slightly on repeated listening. Was it all the bits the rest of the Beach Boys hated? 0.8/5

It’s so eerie and subtly weird what is going on

It's like nearly a whole album of rejected & unfinished Beach Boys songs. It's just not really good for 2004. Maybe if it was released 35 years earlier, I'd look a bit more fondly on it, but this just wasn't a hit for me. Also, it's just too long.

Maybe not better than the best of the beach boys, but Smile deserves to be here. Brain Wilson's personal project is filled with musical genius.

two tracks in and I got annoyed. It's so cheerful and the slide-whistle thing is just too twee.

I like the Beach Boys but this felt even more toned down. It was fine.

Good Vibrations is a masterpiece. The rest is crap.

no. shouldn't be on here. yeah brian wilson genius etc but not this album no no no

This is like commercials from the 60s. A jingly vibe that puts a smile in my face.

I have heard that younger people (younger in the 80s) liked the Beach Boys when they removed all the crazy background vocals. Which is funny because that's really the secret sauce. But also where things get weird. This update to the long shelved album comes out at a time when there was a reappraisal of the power of the human voice and about 10 years in to the critical and popular celebration of Pet Sounds specifically and the Beach Boys of the 60s generally - Kokomo and Mike love did a lot of damage to the legacy. Books have been written about the backstory to this album. To keep it simple - this album is a triumph in every way.

An interesting production from Wilson. A lot of lush sounds with harmonized singing which are a celebration of life.

Brian Wilson is clearly a genius. However my Beach Boys collection consists of Pet Sounds and a singles collection. I've never really felt like i was missing out on anything. I know the story behind Smile but this is the first time i've heard it. It's decent without being exceptional. The huge standout was Good Vibrations (a reasonable contender for greatest pop single of all time) even if the slightly different lyrics threw my attempts to singalong. Who knows..i will probably try and hear this again at which point it might move to 4 stars.

Just because you want something to be good doesn't mean it actually was or is. The Beach Boys produced very little past the "Good Vibrations" single that was even worthwhile. Smile is praised as a masterpiece largely to bolster their overall weak discography and sustain their status as a legendary band. This particular version of Smile certainly isn't better than the Smiley Smile tracks, or the original versions they used as filler on subsequent albums.

I like the Beach Boys music, I didn't like this. Heard it before? ❌ Listen again? ❌ Rating out of ten? 3️⃣

I’m a fan of weird bum baom bom, doing boings, Dee-doo, and that kinda stuff in music. When it’s weird. This album did that a lot, which was pretty cool. Something really weird was that it felt like the songs were changing at the wrong moments. There will be three songs in a row that continually lead into another, but then one song will completely shift moods in the middle. Huh? It’s so strange. But I do really enjoy how this album fits together overall. This is one of those albums that’s more than the sum of its parts. The songs on their own are good, but the way the album comes together is special. Given the context of the album, making the penultimate song Good Vibrations is really cool too. GREAT album.

Brian Wilson is on another level. I can recognize the talent. But it didn't pull me in. It was like analyzing a piece of visual art that while I recognize many of the techniques, can appreciate the time and effort, I just didn't find the final work appealing. I don't find it ugly, just not for me.

Was interested to give this one a listen after having recently checked out Love and Mercy. For me this was a little too scattershot and odd to feel enjoyable. It feels experimental, but not in a way that makes one curious to see if the hypotheses is proven out, but in a way that one recoils from the experiment itself. Debated between 1 and 2 stars but it isn't unlistenable dreck so I suppose 2 stars it is.

Huh. This sounds like exactly what it is - the Beach Boys' almost operatic answer to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but recorded 40 years later. It's a tremendous piece of composition and production - the voices and instruments weave together in fascinating and unpredictable ways - but I don't think it's very good as an album. Most of the songs don't have anything that's recognizable as verses or choruses (or any other recognizable structure), and Wilson often sticks more words into a line than will comfortably fit. And let's be honest, Wilson doesn't have the voice he had in the '60s, but that's hardly his fault. It's a long, meandering stream of consciousness with those magnificent Beach Boy harmonies filling everything up, but it doesn't really end up going anywhere.

Ummmm...what?? This was such a long album. It was too obnoxious, random, and weird for me. This was a hard album to finish. Gave me a headache. Good vibrations bumped this to a 2. Best song on album by far!!

It's actually hard to be mad at this album. It does what it promises. Just lifts the spirit. The lyrics and music are positive and happy. It's kinda corny, and half of it feels like a weird al parody, but that doesn't bother me. Mostly. "I try not to stare at my wind chimes" is borderline the most silly and meaningless lyric I've heard. And it's not alone on this album.

What a freaking album! Reminded me of biking cross country with a trip-tic, not knowing exactly how to get to where I'm going but sure has heck enjoying the ride!

I am very confused about what I just went through and I cannot explain myself.

I have no idea where to begin with this album. It's all over the place. There's constantly new ideas in songs while also re-using the same ideas over and over. The songs feel like the sonic version of ADD most of the time. You get 30 seconds of a theme/motif, then it's dropped for something entirely different. These little snippets are all quite good. I don't know if I like or dislike the experimentation.

This was fine but didn’t really move the needle incredibly for me.

This was weird as shit. Harmonies on harmonies on harmonies (guess that is to be expected), slide whistles and those zingie things, farm animal noises, and a song about vegetables. Perhaps there is some deeper meaning or theme here but I don’t feel the need to investigate. Musically it was fine. Just didn’t really do much for me. 2.5 and rounding down bc of the aforementioned weirdness.

Hope this album gave Mr. Wilson some closure. Thought it was good, not great. lol there’s a song about veggies. 3.25/5

Excellent - heroes and villains is a great track

it's okay. Has some good songs but i wasn't really a fan

loved it

Very meh. If it really took 40 years to release, I’d expect more finished songs.

I’m not really sure what to say about this album if I’m completely honest. I feel like I was high listening to someone enacting a musical while they were high. And at one point I thought I’d accidentally started playing my toddlers playlist when the farm yard animals chimed in. Basically I don’t think I got it at all 😂 I think there’s perhaps a lot of context to this album that I don’t have a clue about, and if other reviews and critics are anything to go by then I think if you understood the background you’d appreciate this album more. It can’t be denied that the harmonies in this album are brilliant. And at times I do really like his voice. Not sure about his need to use every instrument ever created (I’m sure I even heard a rainmaker at one point and I didn’t know they existed outside of school music class). An experience, for sure! Highlights: Although not my vibe, I quite liked the “performance” of the whole album. It felt like an entire story and I wish more albums did that. Lowlights: I don’t think I had a clue what was going on! Top tracks: Good Vibrations, parts of Heroes and Villains, and for tripping vibes Wind Chimes Rating: 1.5 because I don’t know what happened for 50mins of my life 😂

What on earth did I just listen to? It started off interestingly but then dropped me into a state of insanity. Was it surf rock, nursery rhymes, the soundtrack to a horror film, or psychedelic rock? What a trip. 1.5/5 - kept me on my toes, will listen again if I ever take mind altering drugs

I like it

If I wanted to listen to The Beach Boys I would listen to their original albums.

I like the Beach Boys but think this style of music should remain in the past rather than being revived in the 00s. A bit too chaotic. Would be well placed at a fairground or on a kid’s tv show. Rating: 1.5

The sonic architecture of this album is astounding. Glorious harmonies, Van Dyke Parks string arrangements, all kinds of little aural embellishments (though way too many slide whistles), it's amazing to listen to. But, hearing it again after 20 years, there's not a whole lot of substance. It's often pretty empty actually. When two of the best songs are re-recordings of Beach Boys classics ("Surf's Up" and "Good Vibrations"), that says a lot. Much of the rest sound like ideas that don't teally go anywhere or fragments of songs. That said, it's still a gorgeous album that shows what a pop genius Brian Wilson was.

Always knew Wilson was a pop genius for his melodies, but I didnt realise how good he was as a lyricist. This touches on spirituality, innocence and the loss of it, the grand mythos of America we've built and its gruesome realities of settler colonialism. Although he's just as skilled writing songs about wind chimes and farm animals. Considering this one took decades to release and is so dense with ideas, i think it would take way more than one listen to grasp everything, but I really enjoyed what I heard. Also the progression of Heroes and Villains is amazing and im glad it ends on the instrumental to hear it again

I'm not a huge fan of the Beach Boys, and while this is not explicitly The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson was their primary songwriter. It is slightly darker than your standard Beach Boys album and many of the songs feel unfinished. It's listenable, but I probably would not listen to it again.

Suena realmente bonito, pero llegó 20 años tarde. Entretenido. Entiendo que tendrá sus fans, pero yo lo dejo en aprobado.

Nicht so gut wie die Beach Boys ihrer Zeit, aber schon über weite Strecken noch sehr unterhaltsam.

Interessant, höre ich nochmal.

This is just boring Beach Boys. Listen to the old stuff if you want entertainment

I expected more out of this as this sounds like a nostalgia project with Brian Wilson attempting to capture that magic of Pet Sounds by completing the follow-up record. By the time this came out, the Beach Boys had rightfully been giving their flowers and were heralded as one of the most important bands ever for popular music. This is a musical scrapbook of ideas with a selection of some of the band's biggest hits reimagined to mixed results. There are moments on "Mrs O'leary's Cow" and "In Blue Hawaii" where the music sounds rather contemporary and it left me wanting to hear a modern Wilson solo record instead of him gathering scraps together trying to complete an old record.

Atrocious

This was a surprising one for me. I love Pet Sounds, but really didn't expect much of a late-life Brian Wilson, but man this album is really interesting and unique. It very much has a classic Beach Boys sound, but is still very bold and even bombastic. There's a ton of instrumental variety on here, and in my opinion it all works very well together.

Goofy ass album

Well well well, good!

Beach boys coded

So whimsical and heavenly. It’s a really great follow up to Pet Sounds, more fleshed out and even more interesting at times. Severally underrated, because for me, it’s a near perfect album.

doo doodoo doowap doowaaaaaah baaah bah baaah cha cha chaaa doowwaaahhh

It's not really coherend. No a big Beach Boys fan anyways, this changes little.

- First, "A former keyboardist for Brian Wilson's band has been sentenced to five years in prison after a jury convicted him of sexually assaulting a 21-year-old woman after a show at an Oklahoma casino. Scott Montgomery Bennett, 51, was convicted in April of rape by instrumentation and sexual battery for the December 2014 incident at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino near Tulsa. On Tuesday, District Judge J. Dwayne Steidley sentenced Bennett to five years in prison and ordered him to register as a sex offender. Bennett, of Los Angeles, performed on many of the former Beach Boy's albums, including 2004's "Brian Wilson Presents Smile." - This feels like an experimental version of Pet Sounds, but to me doesn't really work. It doesn't have the hits, vulnerability, or restraint that I like on Pet Sounds. The songs also sound unfinished - like they didn't know how to capture the main idea or end them. - There's some interesting instrumentation (not including the annoying slide whistle that's in so many songs...) and you can get lost in the songs, but the arrangements often feel too packed, all over the place, and self-conscious to me. - The lyrics didn't stand out to me, either, and I didn't find that Brian Wilson's kind of whiny voice worked with them. - The album also felt like it went on forever - the second half, especially...

Never understood this.

Старина закончил свои шизофренический проект и теперь спит спокойно

Solid feel good album, RIP Mr. Legendary Sir.

Kinda similar to a beach boys vibe as this is the lead singer from that. eh.

A response to Sgt Pepper's, 37 years later?

Kind of sounds like an unfinished Beach Boys album or maybe some early demo tunes that could use some polishing. 2.5⭐️ Rounding down because it feels incomplete.

A few glimmers of what made Pet Sounds so good....but really disjointed and not a super enjoyable listen.

The phrase ‘leave well alone’ can also apple to ‘not good enough’ - they should have left this be after delivering one of the greatest albums ever and this terrible attempt at recreating it should have gone in the bin. Extra point for good vibrations.

It’s easy to see why this is called the "lost" Beach Boys album, and that comes with a lot of highs and lows. On one hand, it’s honestly moving to hear Brian Wilson finally finish his 1967 passion project after all he’s been through. When it hits, like on "Surf's Up", "Heroes And Villains", or "Good Vibrations", you get that classic symphonic genius with all the beautiful, layered harmonies you’d hope for. But if you look past the legend, the actual listening experience is pretty all over the place. It skips the usual song structures for these stitched together musical sketches that flip flop between stunning chamber pop and weird, cartoonish stuff with slide whistles and animal noises. Without the original 60s Beach Boys vocal blend, Brian's older voice and the super-polished 2004 production make some of it feel more like a Broadway show than a psychedelic masterpiece.

'Good Vibrations' was my top track on this album but I do prefer the original version. The rest of the album has turned out to be pretty forgettable for me although it wad pleasent enough Standouts Good Vibrations 3/5

That started off like a normal Beach Boys sound, had a sharp left turn towards Mr Bungle, and somehow ended back with Beach Boys. It was weird as hell and super unsettling. N felt something but I don’t know what. 5/5 for the existential bonfire this lit

Maybe I need to listen again but not sure

This guy was a genius. Good album though much of it had a Beach Boy tinge, which I guess isn’t a bad thing

3/4 hour of the same same beach-boys sound. Just because of "Good Vibrations" I give it the three stars. 2,5

Like an Albert Hall ‘Beach Boys Prom’, this has the feeling of a symphony about it. It sounds almost like a recorded live performance, with songs and fragments flowing into each other rather than feeling like a conventional collection of separate tracks. It wasn’t until after I’d listened that I noticed it was actually split into three movements, so it seems Brian felt that symphonic vibe too. It’s a really great collection and, if there were ever any doubt, shows where much of the musical imagination in the Beach Boys came from. Although it’s never been my favourite Beach Boys track, closing with Good Vibrations was a great choice. After everything that comes before it, it feels like the natural grand finale. Jusdt a shame it had to fade out though.

9/17/26. Decent album, thought it was a bit corny although I know is man was the brain behind Beach Boys and Pet Sounds.

Really not a fan of this. Almost cartoonish.

Whimsical but not for me

te3ebt couldnt finish it

I don't know anything about the history of this album and I only know a few Beach Boys songs. But this was so awesome and fun

i don’t dislike the album at all, but it seems like not that much has happened since the 60s/70s to be honest

It's smooth, it's alright

Ok - this was interesting. I’m well aware of the legend of Smile and how it broke Brian. I wrongly thought that Good Vibrations was the only fragment that made it to completion. I never realised that Heroes and Villans was from this also (one of my favourite tracks from the Greatest Hits album my Dad had in the 70s). Hearing that track for the first time in years, but reimagined, made me realise that it’s lovely to hear it in the context of the album it should have lived in. But somehow the magic has gone. It’s all there and very impressive, but it’s lost the sparkle of the original that melted into my young brain. This album gives you a tantalising taste of what might have been. Smile would have been astonishing and probably in contention for best album of all time. But sadly this isn’t….it just nearly is. Going for a 4.

I was not at all prepared to dislike this so much but oh boy I did not like this.

Celery wrapped in a beret.

Felt like a Beach Boys album produced by David Lynch.

I do sometimes, but it's getting harder to do as the years go on.

It was pretty great!

I wish I could tell you why I'm not that into this album. I like Pet Sounds. Im not averse to beautiful arrangements. It just doesn't move me that much, and I feel like it should.

This is awesome. It's so interesting and flows really well. So many different ideas and leitmotifs weaving in and out of the songs, blending together. It's a very fun, interesting, weird, cool album. He knows just how long to play out an idea without overdoing it or leaving you unsatisfied. Very breezy and chill, at times energetic and fun. Fun is the main vibe I get from this. The album seems to have a few, core, "proper" songs, such as Heroes and Villains, Cabin Essence, Surfs Up etc, like planets in a solar system with all the little interesting musical vamps and ideas orbiting them like little moons, which could easily distract and detract from the "core" songs, but somehow he's managed to make it work where they improve upon the experience and build upon it. Like how a theme from Good Vibrations pops up in Song for Children, which also incorporates Child is the Father of the Man. It's so naturally cohesive and unforced. This really is such a good album. A piece of art really. Immediately replayed. Even better on a second listen as I could focus more on what was there instead of what may come next.

Perhaps this would be revolutionary back when it was supposed to be released in the '60s, but in the 2000s it doesn't particularly stand out in terms of melody and just general artistic flair or experimentation.

I had no idea this album existed. I had a lot of fun listening to it. Loved these at time joyful, at time ominous tunes. Beautiful harmonies, as you may expect from Brian Wilson.

Terrible album art The music is somehow worse ahahaha what is this

Brian Wilson has created a lot of great récords. This not one of them.

Haven't used the word genius in a while, so I'll use it now. Genius. 5

nice good vibes

It's almost too much, but luckily I wanted to go through the Beach Boys / Wilson's catalog anyway

respect this for the vision but don't think brian's voice aged the best. the sessions / lost tapes record is the best. unfortunately the best album to never see a true light of day.

Some of it is very good, but I don't want to reward it because it didn't need to exist. I love Brian, but he should've just left the project alone.

L'histoire derrière est géniale. Ca rend l'album touchant, mais je ne réécouterai JAMAIS avec tout le respect que je dois aux garçons de la plage

Incredible production and mixing. His contributions and overall creativity makes this record great to listen to, carefully and take in the multiple listens to keep it fresh.

Throughout I could not shake the feeling that this is what you would hear if a knife-wielding psychopath was chasing you through his Beach Boys themed murder-house

I preface this review by making it clear that I am a huge Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan, I don’t think they and he get anywhere near the credit they should for shaping popular music. That being the case, when this was released in 2004 I bought it immediately and was incredibly excited to unearth this hidden gem. Unfortunately it just didn’t live up to my expectations, I thought it was OK in parts but a lot of it is just aimless flailing in musical form. I listened to it maybe half a dozen times and then haven’t listened until now. I was younger then so I wondered if in the intervening decades I’d gain a greater appreciation of it. The answer? No, absolutely not, and I suspect if this had been a posthumous release the critics would have been nowhere near as glowing. Not a bad thing, you’d have to a real asshole to absolutely destroy it as a critic for a major publication when Brian Wilson’s fragile mental health was known to all. Another reviewer said this was better than Pet Sounds, musically taste is subjective bla bla bla, but unless they meant the sound of their actual pets, then I think they’re in a minority of one.

Have I listened to this album before No How familiar am I with this album I know quite a few songs from the Beach Boys, but not this version How do I feel about this artist? I like the Beach Boys a lot, I like Brian Wilson as a musician buy have never heard his solo work Pre-Listen Thoughts: I am not sure I understand why he made this album. Are these song versions better than those on Smiley Smile? I guess I will find out. I predict 4–5 stars. Favorite track(s): Heros and Villains, Good Vibration Post-Listen Thoughts: Solid throughout, I enjoyed the entire thing.

It's okay

Es algo que generalmente no escucho

2.5

I just didn’t care for this