A song a year: The Beach Boys (pt3)

I believe we’re up to 1965. Now it gets quite a bit more difficult to select a single song without upsetting legions of complex, luscious harmony infused pop classic productions. But let’s try.

1965: You’re So Good To Me

Photo of Brian Wilson“What, are you crazy?” you say… “what about all the hits? What about that stuff on side 2 of Today and Little Girl and, and…bar,bar,bar god-damn BARBARA ANNA”

But I love this song. It’s a low-key yet joyous and life-affirming ode to a relationship with that infectious chorus screaming, erm, well… La la la!

“You’re So Good to Me” epitomises the personal, unadorned, almost throw away lyrics that Brian tended to employ when not trying too hard (who knows which bits Mike came up with? I like to think it was some shit rhymes).

Listen to the basic track of “You’re So Good to Me” (recorded at Western Studios in early May, 1965). It’s one of the simplest productions to come out of the mid-sixties Brian canon. Chorused guitars and organ to the fore and a simple, steady beat make it stand out against all that artier, introspection that was bubbling to the surface elsewhere (perhaps competing with the Four Seasons competing with Motown?). Vocally it’s classic Beach Boys; not overdone or over-produced, just layers of voices that are “just right”.

But perhaps the main buy levitra tablets reason for loving this song is because it caused the Beatles to sneak in “Tit,tit,tit” in their song Girl later that year (I’m thinking it also had a lot to do with the “La,La,La’s” in Nowhere Man and You Won’t See Me too!)

The Beach Boys had a song out where they’d done ‘la la la la’ and we loved the innocence of that and wanted to copy it, but not use the same phrase. So we were looking around for another phrase, so it was ‘dit dit dit dit’, which we decided to change in our waggishness to ‘tit tit tit tit’, which is virtually indistinguishable from ‘dit dit dit dit’. And it gave us a laugh.

Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles

I love the fact that “Your So Good to Me” helped form 3 of my favourite Beatles songs. I mean Rubber soul may just be a joyous exercise in trying to make “You’re So Good To Me” hip!

As a bonus: Here is a fantastic picture from 1965 (gathered from t’web) showing Brian, complete with funny hat and jacket, looking at Phil Spector like he KNOWS that someday this dude will shoot and kill someone. Also Mike, the original hipster tit (considering borrowing Phil’s wig?); and a Righteous Brother.

brian-phil-tit-brother

 

 

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