Beach Boys Best Of Views
Best of The Beach Boys is the first compilation album by The Beach Boys, released in the summer of 1966 just two months after Pet Sounds. It includes many of their most popular songs from 1963 to 1965. The album reached #8 on U.S. charts and soon went gold. Brian Wilson is said to have been irritated by the label's decision to release a compilation of the group's older material at a time when the group's music was rapidly becoming more complex and sophisticated.
Released at a perilous moment in The Beach Boys' career, the appearance of their past glories on Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2 perhaps helped confirm to the general public that the band was not up to the challenge of the new psychedelic music, spearheaded by The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Jimi Hendrix Experience's radical debut Are You Experienced.
Although it is hard to argue with a line-up that includes I Get Around , California Girls , Let Him Run Wild and Please Let Me Wonder , those songs were considered old hat in the face of psychedelia, and as a result Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2 initially flopped in the U.S., only reaching #50. In time, it would go on to sell over two million copies, but it was likely with the reaction to this album that The Beach Boys knew they were in trouble commercially in their homeland.
It's easy to forget now, but Pet Sounds came out right after Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and stole a lot of thunder. The Beatles came out with the first artistic breakthrough album, and yet The Beach Boys followed right on their footsteps. (And Paul McCartney even now describes himself as England's Number One Beach Boys fan.)
Beach Boys Best Of Images
