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Pet Sounds is the eleventh studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys, released May 16, 1966, on Capitol Records. It has since been recognized as one of the most influential records in the history of popular music and one of the best albums of the 1960s. It features songs such as "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "God Only Knows". Pet Sounds was created several months after Brian Wilson had quit touring with the band in order to focus his attention on writing and recording. In it, he wove elaborate layers of vocal harmonies, coupled with sound effects and unconventional instruments such as bicycle bells, buzzing organs, harpsichords, flutes, Electro-Theremin, dog whistles, trains, Hawaiian-sounding string instruments, Coca-Cola cans and barking dogs, along with the more usual keyboards and guitars.

A heralding album in the emerging psychedelic rock style, Pet Sounds has been championed and emulated for its dramatic and revolutionary baroque pop instrumentation. It signaled an aesthetic trend within rock by transforming it from dance music into music that was made for listening to, elevating itself to the level of art rock. Largely viewed as one of the first rock concept albums, Pet Sounds has been suggested to follow a lyrical song cycle format, although Wilson has maintained that the album's real unified theme lies within its cohesive production style. Writer Bill Martin said that within Pet Sounds, " brought expansions in harmony, instrumentation (and therefore timbre), duration, rhythm, and the use of recording technology. Of these elements, the first and last were the most important in clearing a pathway toward the development of progressive rock."

Although Pet Sounds was met with strong sales abroad, reaching number two in the UK, it charted lower in the US than the majority of the band's preceding albums, peaking at number ten on the Billboard Top LPs chart. In 1993, it was named the greatest album of all time by NME magazine and The Times, and in 1995 by Mojo magazine. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it second on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Pet Sounds was preserved in the National Recording Registry in 2004 by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant."

Background

The track "Sloop John B", a folk rock song, predated the rest of the LP by some months, but it proved to be a pivotal point in the album's development. It was a traditional Caribbean folk song that had been suggested to Wilson by group member Al Jardine (one could hear Jardine playing the opening guitar riff on the recording session for the previous album, "Party!". That particular recording is in their 2013 "Made in California" compilation). Al updated the chord progression by having the IV, D♭ major, move to its relative minor, B♭ minor before returning to the tonic, A♭. He expected to collaborate further with Wilson on the arrangement, but was pleasantly surprised by what Brian accomplished on his own. Wilson recorded a backing track on July 12, 1965, but after laying down a rough lead vocal, he set the song aside for some time, concentrating on the recording of what became their next LP, the "live in the studio" album, Beach Boys' Party!, in response to their record company's request for a Beach Boys album for the Christmas 1965 market. Wilson devoted the last three months of 1965 to polishing the vocals of "Sloop John B" and recording six new original compositions. What would become Pet Sounds could not be finished in time for Christmas 1965.

It felt like it all belonged together. Rubber Soul was a collection of songs…that somehow went together like no album ever made before, and I was very impressed. I said, "That's it. I really am challenged to do a great album."

Halfway through the Pet Sounds sessions, Wilson reportedly became enthralled with the Beatles' album Rubber Soul, which was released that December. The British version of Rubber Soul was edited prior to its release in the US to emphasise a folk rock feel that critics attributed to Bob Dylan and the Byrds. Wilson found Rubber Soul to lack filler tracks, which was mostly unheard of at a time when 45 rpm singles were considered more noteworthy than full-length LPs. Many albums up until the late-1960s lacked a cohesive artistic goal and were largely used to sell singles at a higher price point. Wilson's previous habits evident in the LPs Today! and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) were to fill the first side of the album with superficial themes and the second with tracks of a more ambitious nature. Wilson found that Rubber Soul subverted this by having a wholly consistent thread of music. Inspired, he rushed to his wife and proclaimed, "Marilyn, I'm gonna make the greatest album! The greatest rock album ever made!".

In late 1965, Wilson met Tony Asher while working at a recording studio in Los Angeles, a young lyricist and copywriter who had been working on advertising jingles. While together, the two exchanged ideas for songs. Soon after, Wilson heard of Asher's writing abilities from mutual friends, proceeded to contact him about a possible lyric collaboration, and within ten days, they were writing together. Wilson played him some of the music he had been recording and gave him a cassette of the backing track for a piece with the working title "In My Childhood". It had lyrics, but Wilson refused to show them to Asher. The result of Asher's tryout was eventually retitled "You Still Believe in Me" and the success of the piece convinced Wilson that Asher was the wordsmith he had been looking for.

Music and lyrics

According to music journalist Jim DeRogatis, Pet Sounds is a psychedelic rock album, while the Journal Sentinel called its music psychedelic pop. The Associated Press, on the other hand, said that the album is a baroque pop work, while author Domenic Priore referred to it simply as symphonic rock. According to biographer John Stebbins, the album's innovative soundscape incorporates elements of pop, jazz, classical, exotica, and avant-garde music. The instrumentation is stylistically appropriated from a wide variety of cultures, with some relating it to exotica and associated producers Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Esquivel. It is the first rock record to incorporate the Electro-Theremin, an easier-to-play version of the theremin. Its inventor Paul Tanner performs the instrument on the song "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times". "God Only Knows" is the first pop song to have "God" in its title, a decision Wilson feared would be blasphemous.

Professors John Covach and Graeme M. Boone have written that "In terms of the structure of the songs themselves, there is comparatively little advance from what Brian had already accomplished or shown himself capable of accomplishing. Most of the songs use unusual harmonic progressions and unexpected disruptions of hypermeter, both features that were met in 'Warmth of the Sun' and 'Don't Back Down.'" Journalist Nick Kent felt similarly for lyrics of Pet Sounds, considering "Wouldn't It Be Nice" to be "teen angst dialogue" that Wilson had already achieved with "We'll Run Away" the year before. However: "This time Brian Wilson was out to eclipse these previous sonic soap operas, to transform the subject's sappy sentiments with a God-like grace so that the song would become a veritable pocket symphony." Fussili observed that Wilson's nuance to "wander far from the logic of his composition only to return triumphantly to confirm the emotional intent of his work" is repeated numerous times in Pet Sounds, but never to "evoke a sense of unbridled joy" as Wilson recently had with the November 1965 single "The Little Girl I Once Knew". Such occurs within "God Only Knows", which contains an ambivalent key and non-diatonic chords.

According to Wilson, his writing process at the time involved going to the piano and finding "feels," which he described as "brief note sequences, fragments of ideas," and that "once they're out of my head and into the open air, I can see them and touch them firmly. They're not 'feels' anymore." Asher maintains that his contribution to the music itself was minimal, serving mainly as a source of second opinion for Wilson as he worked out possible melodies and chord progressions, although the two did trade ideas as the songs evolved. On Wilson's creative process, Asher remembers that "one of the things that I really enjoyed, was that first time I'd hear him hunting for a chord change and I'd think 'Man, he's just gone right off the edge because he's not ever gonna get close. He's way out there in some area that's just—he'll never get back. And if he's successful, gets out of there, people are going to say, I've lost my tone center, don't know where the hell I am and stuff. And then, eventually, he'd figure out what it was he wanted to do. A lot of it was just hunting and pecking, the way some of us type."

The album included two sophisticated instrumental tracks composed by Wilson. One of them: the wistful "Let's Go Away for Awhile", with a working parenthetical title of "And Then We'll Have World Peace"; the other: the title track, "Pet Sounds". The subtitle of "Let's Go Away for Awhile" was a catchphrase from one of Wilson's favorite comedy recordings, John Brent and Del Close's How To Speak Hip (1959). Both titles had been recorded as backing tracks for existing songs, but by the time the album neared completion Wilson had decided that the tracks worked better without vocals.

While most songs were composed with Tony Asher, "I Know There's an Answer" was co-written by another new associate, the Beach Boys' road manager Terry Sachen. Mike Love is co-credited on the album's opening track, "Wouldn't It Be Nice", and on "I Know There's an Answer" but with the exception of his co-credit on "I'm Waiting for the Day", his songwriting contributions are thought to have been minimal. The exact degree of Love's contribution to "Wouldn't It Be Nice" was never fully determined, but under oath in a court of law, Asher stated it consisted of the tag "Good night my baby/Sleep tight, my baby" and possible minor vocal arrangement. Love's influence on "I Know There's an Answer" is reputed to have stemmed from his opposition to the song's original title, "Hang On to Your Ego", and his belief that it be partially rewritten and retitled. The original lyrics created a stir within the group. "I was aware that Brian was beginning to experiment with LSD and other psychedelics," explained Love. "The prevailing drug jargon at the time had it that doses of LSD would shatter your ego, as if that were a positive thing... I wasn't interested in taking acid or getting rid of my ego." Jardine recalled that the decision to change the lyrics was ultimately Wilson's. "Brian was very concerned. He wanted to know what we thought about it. To be honest, I don't think we even knew what an ego was... Finally Brian decided, 'Forget it. I'm changing the lyrics. There's too much controversy.'"

According to academics Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell, Pet Sounds has a "personal intimacy" that sets it apart from the Beach Boys' contemporaries in psychedelic culture and the San Francisco Sound, but still retains a "trippy feel" that resulted from Wilson's experimental use of LSD. They attribute this to Wilson's "eclectic mixture of instruments, echo, reverb, and innovative mixing techniques learnt from Phil Spector to create a complex soundscape in which voice and music interweave tightly". Brian was publicly effused with the drug during the mid-1960s and was using it to further his creative process, an admitted example being the 1965 single "California Girls". Throughout the latter half of the decade, Wilson was repeatedly been shown to have become interested in Eastern philosophy and the psychedelic experience, often pointing to ego loss as the key to a better way of living. During the spring of 1965, Wilson had what he considered to be "a very religious experience" after consuming a full dose of LSD. He stated, "I learned a lot of things, like patience, understanding. I can't teach you, or tell you what I learned from taking it." In light of his intellectual pursuits and self-described "crucial" interest in metaphysics, Wilson's response when asked about LSD and "Hang On To Your Ego" was that "Yeah, I had taken a few drugs, and I had gotten into that kind of thing. it just came up naturally". Despite the change from "Hang On To Your Ego" to "I Know There's An Answer", the psychedelic lyrics "they trip through their day and waste all their thoughts at night" were kept in the song. Similarly for "Sloop John B", Wilson's lyric change from "this is the worst trip since I've been born" to "this is the worst trip I've ever been on" has been suggested by some to be another subtle nod to acid culture. Elsewhere within Pet Sounds lyrical content, Brian turned inward and probed his deep-seated self-doubts and emotional longings; Pet Sounds did not address the problems in the world around them, unlike other groups.

Concept and title

It felt like we were writing an autobiography, but oddly enough, I wouldn't limit it to Brian's autobiography.…We were working in a somewhat intimate relationship, and I didn't know him at all, so he was finding out who I was, and I was finding out who he was.

The concept album form received a resurgence of popularity in the late 1960s among pop artists, when many rock releases including Pet Sounds presented a set of thematically-linked songs. Other rock music artists, such as Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, the Beatles and The Who subsequently released concept albums. Pet Sounds was a musical portrayal of Brian Wilson's private/public state of mind at the time. Even though Pet Sounds has a somewhat unified theme in its emotional content, Wilson and Asher said repeatedly that it was not necessarily intended to be a narrative. Asher explained that they had "truly spontaneously generated a lot of those songs" from lengthy, intimate discussions centered around their "experiences and feelings about women and the various stages of relationships and so forth". Wilson stated: "If you take the Pet Sounds album as a collection of art pieces, each designed to stand alone, yet which belong together, you'll see what I was aiming at." Sonically, it was structured as an interpretation of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, something Wilson further clarified by saying: "It wasn't really a song concept album, or lyrically a concept album; it was really a production concept album." Brian's then-wife, Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford, believed that her relationship with Brian was a central reference within the album's lyrics; namely on "You Still Believe in Me" and "Caroline, No". Keeping the songwriter's intentions in mind, Kent observed:

Beginning with "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and its glorification of the two young lovers' star-crossed longings, the album documents the male participant's attempts at coming to terms with himself and the world about him. Each song pinpoints a crisis of faith in love and life: confusion ("That's Not Me"), disorientation (the staggeringly beautiful "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times"), recognition of love's capricious impermanence ("Here Today") and finally, the grand betrayal of innocence featured in "Caroline, No". Then again, bearing in mind this conceptual bent, there are certain incongruous factors about the album's construction. The main one is the inclusion of the hit single "Sloop John B", as well as of two instrumental pieces.

On February 15, the group traveled to the San Diego Zoo to shoot the photographs for the cover, which had already received its title. George Jerman was credited for taking the cover photo. According to the liner notes, "The photos of The Beach Boys feeding an assortment of goats was a play on the album's chosen title, Pet Sounds." Both the origin and meaning of the album title Pet Sounds are uncertain. Wilson claimed at one point that the title was "a tribute" to Spector by matching his initials. Carl Wilson later spoke about the album title: "The idea he had was that everybody has these sounds that they love, and this was a collection of his 'pet sounds.' It was hard to think of a name for the album, because you sure couldn't call it Shut Down Vol. 3," referencing the artistic disparity between Pet Sounds and their earlier works, adding "It was just so much more than a record; it had such a spiritual quality. It wasn't going in and doing another top ten. It had so much more meaning than that." Mike Love also laid claim to the title. "We were standing in the hallway in one of the recording studios, either Western or Columbia, and we didn't have a title," he recounted. "We had taken pictures at the zoo and…there were animal sounds on the record, and we were thinking, well, it's our favorite music of that time, so I said, 'Why don't we call it Pet Sounds?'" At another time, Brian credited the album title to Carl.

Recording and production

With writing well under way, Wilson recorded six backing tracks for the new material. The backing tracks for Pet Sounds were recorded over a period lasting several months, using major Los Angeles studios and an ensemble that included the highly regarded session musicians later known as the Wrecking Crew. Although the self-taught Wilson often had entire arrangements worked out in his head, they were usually written in a shorthand form for the other players by one of his session musicians. Surviving tapes of his recording sessions show that he was open to his musicians, often taking advice and suggestions from them and even incorporating apparent mistakes if they provided a useful or interesting alternative. Wilson said of his creative process with the Wrecking Crew:

I was sort of a square, you know? 1 got there and I go, "Oh, let's see, um uh—Yeah!" We would try each one separately. We usually started with keyboards—you know, the basic, keyboards. Then we'd go to drums. Then we'd go to horns, then violins if they were live. We usually didn't do live violins. We'd overdub the violins. Sometimes I'd just write out a chord sheet and that would be for piano, organ, or harpsichord or anything. I wrote out all the horn charts separate from the keyboards. I wrote one basic keyboard chart, violins, horns, and basses, and percussion. I'd say—we'd start with Julius Wechter. "'Can I please hear the sleigh bells?" (choo, choo, choo, choo) "Nah, throw 'em away. Let's hear—how 'bout some tambourine, maybe? Let's hear a tambourine. Yeah, that's it! We'll take a tambourine."

Wilson had developed his production methods over several years, reaching a peak with Pet Sounds during late 1965 and early 1966. Wilson's approach was in some respects a refined interpretation of the famous Wall of Sound technique created by Phil Spector. Equipped with newest state-of-the-art Ampex 8-track recorders, Wilson produced tracks of great complexity using his regular team of first call players. Wilson's typical production method on Pet Sounds was to record the instrumental backing tracks for each song as a live ensemble performance direct onto 4-track recorders. His engineer Larry Levine reported that Wilson also typically mixed these backing tracks live, as they were being taped, subsequently transferring the sounds onto 8-track machines. Like Spector, Wilson was a pioneer of the studio-as-an-instrument concept, exploiting novel combinations of sounds that sprang from the use of multiple electric instruments and voices in an ensemble and combining them with tape delay and reverberation. He often doubled bass, guitar and keyboard parts, blending them with reverberation and adding other unusual instruments.

We worked and worked on the harmonies and, if there was the slightest little hint of a sharp or a flat, it wouldn't go on. We would do it over again until it was right. was going for every subtle nuance that you could conceivably think of. Every voice had to be right, every voice and its resonance and tonality had to be right. The timing had to be right. The timbre of the voices just had to be correct, according to how he felt. And then he might, the next day, completely throw that out and we might have to do it over again.

When the other Beach Boys returned from a three-week tour of Japan and Hawaii, they were presented with a substantial portion of a new album, with music that was in many ways a radical departure from their earlier attempts. Both Asher and Wilson state that there was resistance to the project from within the group, but on this occasion, Wilson's conviction convinced the other members. According to various reports, the group fought over the radical direction Brian had presented with Pet Sounds. One of the biggest issues was the album's complexity, and how the touring Beach Boys would be able to perform its music live. Rumors of group infighting were denied by Dennis Wilson in later years, but corroborated by Brian, who expressed:

I think they thought it was for Brian Wilson only. They knew that Brian Wilson was gonna be a separate entity, something that was a force of his own, and it was generally considered that the Beach Boys were the main thing. So with Pet Sounds, there was a resistance in that I was doing most of the artistic work on it vocally, and for that reason there was a little bit of intergroup struggle. It was resolved in the fact that they figured that it was a showcase for Brian Wilson, but it's still the Beach Boys. In other words, they gave in. They let me have my little stint.

Most of March and early April 1966 was devoted to recording the remaining backing tracks and to the crucial recording of vocals, a process which proved to be the most exacting work the group had hitherto undertaken. Brian recounted a cupping-the-microphone technique he taught his brother Dennis for recording vocals, elaborating: "Well, he had a lot of trouble singing on mike. He just didn't really know how to stay on mike. He was a very nervous boy. Very nervous person. So I taught him a trick, how to record and he said, 'Hey Brian. That works great. Thank you!' And I said, 'It's okay, Dennis: He was really happy. I showed him—not how to sing, but I showed him a way to get the best out of himself—just 'cup’ singing."

In spite of the availability of sophisticated multitrack recording, Wilson mixed the final version of his recordings in mono, as did Phil Spector. He did this because he felt that mono mastering provided more sonic control over the final result, regardless of the vagaries of speaker placement and sound system quality. In that era radio and TV were broadcast in mono and most domestic and automotive radios and record players were monophonic. Another and more personal reason for Wilson's preference for mono was due to his almost total deafness in his right ear. These backing tracks were then dubbed down onto one track of an 8-track recorder. Six of the remaining seven tracks were usually dedicated to each of the Beach Boys' vocals. The last track was usually reserved for additional elements such as extra vocals or instrumentation.

Unreleased material

On October 15, 1965, Wilson went to the studio to record an instrumental piece entitled "Three Blind Mice", bearing no musical connection to the nursery rhyme of the same name. It's not known what the piece's purpose was to be, but it was inexplicably included as part of the Beach Boys' 2011 release of The Smile Sessions. By February 1966, Wilson was in the studio with his session band laying down the first takes for a new composition, "Good Vibrations". During that month, Wilson gave Capitol a provisional track listing for the new LP, which included both "Sloop John B" and "Good Vibrations." This contradicts the long held misconception that "Sloop John B" was a forced inclusion as the hit single at Capitol's insistence: in late February, the song was weeks away from release. Wilson worked through February and into March fine-tuning the backing tracks. To the group's surprise he also dropped "Good Vibrations" from the running order, telling them that he wanted to spend more time on it. Al Jardine remembered: "At the time, we all had assumed that "Good Vibrations" was going to be on the album, but Brian decided to hold it out. It was a judgment call on his part; we felt otherwise but left the ultimate decision up to him." A third instrumental, called "Trombone Dixie", had been fully recorded, but it remained in the vaults until its inclusion on the album's 1990 remastered CD release. According to Brian, "I was just foolin' around one day, fuckin' around with the musicians, and I took that arrangement out of my briefcase and we did it in 20 minutes. It was nothing, there was really nothing in it."

Wilson devoted some Pet Sounds sessions to avant-garde indulgences such as an extended a cappela run-through of the children's song "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" exploiting the song's use of rounds via tape delay and overdubbing. At least half an hour of tape reels exist which involve Brian and friends attempting to create a psychedelic comedy album, foreshadowing much of his work on Smile, which was set to have followed Pet Sounds. The only product of these sessions present in Pet Sounds was an excerpt of Brian's dogs barking accompanied by a sampled recording of passing trains taken from the 1963 sound effects LP Mister D's Machine. About a year later Brian had moved on to burning wood in the studio.

Commercial performance

In 1966, they were received by the British people very, very highly, they were received very warmly. And the people over there seemed to have had an affinity with our music. But, actually, I was very heartsick. I was very, very, very upset that it didn't sell like I thought it would.…Pet Sounds was something that was absolutely different. Something I personally felt. That one album that was really more me than Mike Love and the surf records and all that, and "Kokomo". That's all their kind of stuff, you know?

"Caroline, No" was released as a single; it was credited to Brian Wilson alone, leading to speculation that he was considering leaving the band. The single reached number 32 in the US. It was followed by "Sloop John B", which was extremely successful, credited to the Beach Boys, and reached number three in the US and number two in Great Britain.

By mid-April 1966, Pet Sounds was assembled. It released in May. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" reached number eight in the US where it was treated as the A-side. Its flip side, "God Only Knows," was featured as the A-side in Europe, peaking at number two in Britain, as a B-side in the US, it reached number 39. The LP broke into the top 10 in the US, belying its reputation as a commercial failure there. In Australia, the album was released under the title The Fabulous Beach Boys on the Music for Pleasure label. However, unlike Beach Boys' Party!, Pet Sounds did not enjoy the same commercial success. Its initial release in the US peaked at number 10, reportedly disappointing Wilson. Much of the blame has been placed with Capitol Records, which did not promote the album as heavily as previous releases. Its initial release was not awarded gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) despite eligibility beginning in mid–1967. Pet Sounds eventually was presented with gold and platinum awards in 2000.

Its greatest success was in the UK, where it reached number two. Its success was aided by support from the British music industry, who embraced the record; Paul McCartney spoke often about the album's influence on the Beatles. Bruce Johnston stated that he flew to London in May 1966 and played the album for John Lennon and McCartney. Although it has been claimed that the Rolling Stones manager Andrew Oldham helped Derek Taylor publicize unsolicited advertisements lauding the album in British music papers, a search of the UK pop press for 1966 fails to uncover any such advertisement.

Promotional films

Two music videos were filmed set to "Sloop John B" and "God Only Knows" for the UK's Top of the Pops, both directed by newly employed band publicist Derek Taylor. The first was filmed at Brian's Laurel Way home with Dennis acting as cameraman, the second near Lake Arrowhead. While the second film — containing footage of the group minus Bruce flailing around in grotesque horror masks and playing Old Maid — was intended to be accompanied by excerpts from "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "Here Today", and "God Only Knows", slight edits were made by the BBC to reduce the film's length.

Critical reception

Professional ratings

Retrospective reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Blender
Chicago Tribune
Entertainment Weekly	A+
Q
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Slant Magazine
Sputnikmusic	5/5

Pet Sounds is frequently cited by both critics and musicians as the greatest rock album of all time. Advocates include Mojo magazine and Paul McCartney, who acknowledges that it was the primary impetus for the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although not originally a big seller, Pet Sounds has been influential since it was released. According to music journalists Stephen Davis and Nick Kent, it was the first rock concept album. In the former's 1972 Rolling Stone review, Davis called it "by far" Brian Wilson's best album and said that its "trenchant cycle of love songs has the emotional impact of a shatteringly evocative novel".

Robert Christgau was less enthusiastic and felt that Pet Sounds was a "good record, but a totem." In Gene Scalutti's 1968 editorial "In Defense of the Beach Boys", he commented that Wilson was "one of the all-time great composers of melody in rock" along with Lennon-McCartney, John Phillips, and Smokey Robinson, yet, "Pet Sounds was by no means a revolutionary work in that it inspired or influenced the rock scene in a big way. It was revolutionary only within the confines of the Beach Boys' music." However, later in the piece he affirmed: "Pet Sounds was a final statement of an era and a prophecy that sweeping changes lay ahead."

In a retrospective review, Yahoo! Music's Bill Holdship said that Pet Sounds was "perhaps rock's first example of self-conscious art ... a beautiful reflection of romanticism in the modern world". According to Jim Fusilli, author of the 33⅓ book on the album, it " to the level of art through its musical sophistication and the precision of its statement", while academic Michael Johnson said that the album was one of the first documented moments of ascension in rock music. Pet Sounds is viewed by writer David Leaf as a herald of art rock genre. The album has inspired many progressive rock bands, being later later named as one of Classic Rock magazine's "50 Albums That Built Prog Rock". Writer Bill Martin felt that it aided in the development of progressive rock at a time when the Beach Boys "brought expansions in harmony, instrumentation (and therefore timbre), duration, rhythm, and the use of recording technology". Music journalist Jim DeRogatis said that it was one of the first psychedelic rock masterpieces, along with The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (1966) and the Beatles' 1966 album Revolver. Pet Sounds helped cement The Beach Boys as the founders of California-based rock, incorporated forward-thinking values, and continued to perpetuate the American teenage fantasy of that era.

Influence

. . .by God if this little record didn't change only the course of popular music, but the course of a few lives in the bargain. . .nobody was prepared for anything so soulful, so lovely, something one had to think about so much.

In 1995, a panel of top musicians, songwriters and producers assembled by MOJO magazine voted Pet Sounds as the #1 greatest album among them. Artists and musicians have revered the album as a remarkable milestone in the history of popular music. These have included the Beach Boys' contemporaries Pink Floyd, Cream, The Who, and The Beatles. McCartney has frequently stated his affinity with the album, citing "God Only Knows" as his favorite song of all-time, and accrediting his uniquely melodic bass-playing style to the album. In the 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, it was reported that singer/songwriter Daniel Johnston was enraptured with Pet Sounds and it immediately led him to buy the rest of the Beach Boys discography. He later recorded his own version of "God Only Knows", a song which also inspired songwriter Margo Guryan to reevaluate her career, saying "I thought it was just gorgeous. I bought the record and played it a million times, then sat down and wrote 'Think of Rain.' That's really how I started writing that way. I just decided it was better than what was happening in jazz." Seattle-based folk band, the Fleet Foxes have often been seen paying tribute to the album. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth — who has covered both "Here Today" and "I Know There's an Answer" from the album — has commented: "I would look at the cover of Pet Sounds and think... these guys with with these sheep. I mean, what's going on here?"

According to Thom Yorke, portions of the album OK Computer were based on the atmosphere of Pet Sounds. The album strongly also influenced the Beatles' 1966 album Revolver. Arranger Robert Kirby claims that English singer-songwriter Nick Drake intended the instrumentals on his 1970 album Bryter Layter to evoke Pet Sounds. Kevin Shields of the Irish shoegazing group My Bloody Valentine referenced Pet Sounds as an example toward why their 1991 album Loveless was recorded in mono. R.E.M.'s song "At My Most Beautiful" from their 1998 album Up was written as a "gift" from Michael Stipe to his bandmates fond of Pet Sounds. When Animal Collective co-founder Noah Lennox was asked about critics comparing his 2007 solo album Person Pitch to Pet Sounds, Lennox responded: "For me, Pet Sounds wouldn't be the first thing I would compare my album with…first, because it would be kind of arrogant."

Tributes

Pet Sounds inspired tribute albums such as Do It Again: A Tribute To Pet Sounds, The String Quartet Tribute to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Mojo Presents: Pet Sounds Revisited. Many songs from Pet Sounds have also appeared on general-themed Beach Boy and Brian Wilson tribute albums like Making God Smile and Smiling Pets, which feature cover versions by various artists including Sixpence None the Richer and Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her. Other artists include They Might Be Giants, David Bowie, Black Francis, Peter Thomas, Rivers Cuomo, Patrick Wolf, Tim Burgess, Saint Etienne and the Flaming Lips.

Pet Sounds tribute parodies include Punk Sounds by the Huntingtons. Track-for-track mash-ups include Sgt. Petsound's Lonely Hearts Club Band a blend of Pet Sounds with Sgt. Pepper. It was released under the pseudonym "The Beachles".

In the mid-1990s, Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo and Jim McIntyre of Von Hemmling founded Pet Sounds Studio, which served as the venue for many Elephant 6 projects such as Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and the Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle and Black Foliage.

Live performances

After its release, several selections from Pet Sounds became staples for the group's live performances, including "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "Sloop John B" and "God Only Knows". Other songs were performed, albeit sporadically and infrequently through the years, and the album was never performed in its entirety with every original group member.

As a solo artist, Brian Wilson performed the entire album live on three occasions on his 2002 and 2006 "Pet Sounds" tours, which included fellow band member Al Jardine at several shows. He also performed it twice on his 2013 tour, which again included Jardine as well as original Beach Boys guitarist David Marks. Recordings from Wilson's 2002 concert tour were released as Brian Wilson Presents Pet Sounds Live.

Release history

Pet Sounds has had many different reissues since its release in 1966, including remastered mono and stereo versions. Its first reissue was in 1972, when it was packaged as a bonus LP with the Beach Boys' latest album Carl and the Passions – "So Tough". The first release of the album on CD came in 1990, when it was released with the addition of three bonus tracks: "Unreleased Backgrounds", "Hang On to Your Ego" and "Trombone Dixie" all of which were described as unreleased.

In 1997, The Pet Sounds Sessions box set was released. It included the original mono release of Pet Sounds, the very first stereo release, and three discs of unreleased material. The stereo mix was reissued in 1999 on vinyl and on CD. In 2001, Pet Sounds was rereleased with the mono and improved stereo versions, plus "Hang on to Your Ego" as a bonus track, all on one disc. On August 29, 2006, Capitol released the 40th Anniversary edition. The new compilation contains a new 2006 remaster of the original mono mix, DVD mixes (stereo and Surround Sound), and a "making of" documentary. The discs were released in a regular jewel box and a deluxe edition was released in a green fuzzy box. A two disk colored gatefold vinyl set was released with green (stereo) and yellow (mono) disks. On September 2, 2008, Capitol reissued a single LP version replicating the original artwork and the inner sleeve with the original mono mix on 180 gram vinyl.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher except where noted

Notes

• Al Jardine's contributions to the arrangement of Sloop John B remain uncredited.

Personnel

The majority of the groups, session musicians and engineers information has derived largely from musician union contracts, web sources and books stating information about the record. This means that some of the information isn't certain or accurate. Furthermore, while contracts contain the session date, song title and hours booked, none was required to be precisely accurate. The date on the contracts were often changed to comply with union requirements.

According to Russ Waspensky, Laura Tunbridge and Brad Elliott, except as noted.

The Beach Boys

• Al Jardine – lead, harmony and backing vocals, tambourine
• Bruce Johnston – harmony and backing vocals
• Mike Love – lead, harmony and backing vocals
• Brian Wilson – lead, harmony and backing vocals, producer, arranger, conductor, organ, piano, dog whistle, train whistle, sound effects incl. barking dogs
• Carl Wilson – lead, harmony and backing vocals, guitar, twelve-string guitar
• Dennis Wilson – harmony and backing vocals, drums

Additional musicians and production staff

(*) denotes uncertainty where or if the musician plays the instrument on the album.

Charts

Albums

US Singles

UK Singles

Chart information courtesy of Allmusic and other music databases.

Accolades

(*) denotes an unordered list

Notes

1. "The Little Girl I Once Knew", "In My Childhood", "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)", "Run, James, Run", "Trombone Dixie", and "Three Blind Mice". "Run, James, Run" was the working title for the instrumental "Pet Sounds", the suggestion being that it would be offered for use in a James Bond movie).
2. Wilson has said that the main difference between him and the Beatles is that the Beatles "will simplify to its skeletal form an arrangement," whereas Wilson would be "impelled to make it more complex," and that if he had arranged "Norwegian Wood", he would have "orchestrated it, put in background voices, done a thousand things".
3. Sessions begun on July 12, 1965 with "Sloop John B". After finishing the rushed Party! album, Wilson returned to the studio sporadically throughout November and December to finish "Sloop John B", and to begin work on "You Still Believe In Me". Fervent sessions devoted to the now-entitled Pet Sounds album were kicked off in January 1966, when Wilson began work on the instrumental tracks to "Let's Go Away for Awhile", "Wouldn't It Be Nice", and "Caroline, No".
4. For his session of "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times", Paul Tanner remembered: "Brian came over to me and sang such and such a thing, and I said 'Well, write it down and I'll play it,' and he said 'Write it down? We don't write anything down—if you want it written down you have to write it down yourself."
5. Wilson's deafness is rumored to be the result of childhood injury to his eardrum caused by a blow from his violent father Murry Wilson, although Wilson claimed that he was born deaf in one ear.
6. This was done at Columbia, because it was the only facility in LA with an 8-track.
7. The five-piece group was by then being regularly augmented by singer Bruce Johnston, who later became a permanent member
8. Pete Townshend of The Who stated "'God Only Knows' is simple and elegant and was stunning when it first appeared; it still sounds perfect". In May 1966, Bruce Johnston flew to London with copies of Pet Sounds and recalls Keith Moon loving the album.Template:Afn Keith later stated "Pet Sounds was too far removed from the style he loved".
9. An a cappela demo section of "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)" sung by Brian Wilson.

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External links

• "List of Pet Sounds Accolades". Acclaimed Music. 2007. Retrieved July 5, 2011.
• "Pet Sounds". Rolling Stone. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
• "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. 2010. Retrieved May 24, 2010.

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