20/20 by The Beach Boys

20/20, the Beach Boys' fifteenth studio album, came out on Capitol on February 10, 1969, and took its name from simple arithmetic: it was their 20th release once the live sets and compilations were counted. It's a patchwork and sounds like one, partly because Brian Wilson was missing for stretches of the sessions after checking himself into a psychiatric hospital. Carl and Dennis went digging for outtakes their brother had cut years before, and the band took the production credit themselves.

The pieces hang together better than they have any right to. "Do It Again" is the group's first look back at the surf sound they'd left behind after All Summer Long, and it went to the top in Britain and Australia; "I Can Hear Music" is pure harmony-drenched longing, and a rerecorded "Cotton Fields" went out as a single too. Brian isn't on the front cover at all. Open the gatefold and there he is, alone behind an eye chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.