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October 01, 2004
Brian Wilson: Beach Boy Survivor
Not long ago, while speaking with students from Chicago's Columbia College Arts, Entertainment & Media Management Department the topic of measuring success was discussed--emphatically. The students I was speaking with were all seeking careers as music performers and songwriters. I posed one question to them: will your music be listened to twenty-years from now?
Success today is great, but true success is measured in longevity. When artists create lasting music that retains and even grows audience appeal, then they can truly be recognized as successful. Few artists achieve this goal.
The Big Trunk over at the Power Line offers this excellent post, Lost and Found which gives us pause to remember one of the great lasting artists of pop music: Brian Wilson. Can anyone doubt the success of the Beach Boys? Brian Wilson created the sound, the personna and the legend.
Brian Wilson was the lone musical genius who created the sound and the best songs of the Beach Boys. In mid-60's singles like "Don't Worry Baby" and "When I Grow Up" and at greater length on albums like "Summer Days (and Summer Nights)" and "The Beach Boys Today," Wilson explored the possibilities of group harmony in pop music.
Both albums are full of breathtakingly beautiful, impossibly romantic pop songs. The productions and arrangments are wonderully crafted; you can almost feel the perfectionism that (combined with an abusive father and hallucinogenic drugs) fueled his subsequent nervous breakdown.
Before the breakdown, however, came the full flowering of Wilson's genius in "Pet Sounds," the consummate Beach Boys album that powerfully expressed (with help from Tony Asher on the lyrics) Wilson's deepest yearnings with a moving spiritual twist. Immediately preceding the breakdown was Wilson's work on the uncompleted album "Smile" and a promised movement even beyond the accomplishment of "Pet Sounds."
Beach Boys albums following "Pet Sounds" included songs from his work on "Smile" -- "Heroes and Villains," "Vegetables," and "Surf's Up." Forty years later, now that Wilson has managed to return to work on the album and complete it with his former collaborator Van Dyke Parks, what has he delivered? Read the complete post...
Just out of curiosity---which of today's artists will you be listening to twenty-years from now?
Posted by BIGBAER at October 1, 2004 10:11 AM
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