“Good Vibrations” by The Beach Boys

"Good Vibrations" came out as a Beach Boys single in October 1966, sold as a "pocket symphony", and went straight to the top in America and Britain; it only reached an album a year later, on Smiley Smile, over Brian Wilson's objections. Wilson built it in pieces, cutting fragments with his bandmates and more than 30 session players across four Hollywood studios from February to September 1966, then fitting them together. It ate over 90 hours of tape, the costliest pop single anyone had made up to then.

The payoff lurches from hush to heave, with Mike Love and Carl Wilson on lead, a juddering cello driving the refrain and the eerie whine of an Electro-Theremin floating over it all. Love's words catch the flower-power moment, while Wilson had his head in extrasensory perception and Phil Spector's production of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'".

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