Song · The Beach Boys
“Surfs Up” by The Beach Boys
From the album Surf's Up (1971)
“Surfs Up” by The Beach Boys appears on 4 radio countdowns from 2 stations between 2004 and 2020. It was first released in 1971 on the album Surf's Up. Its best result is #471 on the WTMD Top 897 Songs of All Time. In the combined RockLists rankings it is #2,371 indie & aaa song of all time.
"Surf's Up" closes the Beach Boys' 1971 album of the same name, and it arrived years late. Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks wrote it for Smile, the album the band shelved in 1967, and Brian and Carl Wilson, who share the lead vocal, finished it by laying fresh vocals and synthesizer over the surviving 1960s backing track and Brian's first solo piano take.
There isn't a wave in it. The name is a pun on the group shaking off their old image, and the song follows a man at a concert hall toward a spiritual awakening that ends in the joy of divine light, pictured as a children's song. It unfolds in two movements, changing key again and again and refusing the easy resolution, before a coda borrowed from another Smile piece, "Child Is Father of the Man".
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 512 | WXPN | WXPN 885 All-Time Greatest Songs (2004) | 885 |
| 2007 | 471 | WTMD | WTMD Top 897 Songs of All Time | 897 |
| 2009 | 738 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009) | 885 |
| 2020 | 1523 | WXPN | WXPN 2020 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2020 |
Also listed as: Surf's Up.
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