Brian Wilson
Smile

SMiLE is the title of a Beach Boys album that was supposed to be released in '67 but was abandoned when almost completed due to several problems, including the growing alienation of the leader and composer Brian Wilson, his issues with LSD, and his incredible obsessions. The album was meant to be the ultimate masterpiece of the Beach Boys but also to represent a great turn for pop/rock music, a turn that unfortunately, and this was probably the last straw, was anticipated by Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles. As Socrates wonderfully recounted in his review, Wilson realized that they had beaten him to it, and so that album, which had required months of hard work and the use of innovative recording techniques, was forgotten, and from then on, the band began a rapid artistic decline, leaving Pet Sounds to mark the group's compositional peak. The album that was supposed to be, as the subtitle stated, a "teenage symphony to God" was lost forever.

Or at least until 2004, when Wilson alone, with a new group, resurrected SMiLE in all its magnificence and presented it to the world. The album is truly structured like a true classical symphony, divided into three movements: musical themes recur, and the tracks blend into each other. The beautiful chromaticism and Gershwin influences take SMiLE far from those early surf songs for which, especially in Italy, the Beach Boys are always identified. In terms of lyrics, crafted by Van Dike Parks, we are presented with a concept that proposes an epic of America from east to west. The album's title evokes the playfulness of the lyrics, full of inter and intra-linguistic wordplay, and of the music, full of everyday sounds, as in the song "Vega-Tables." Compared to the various recordings of the old abandoned project circulating online, this official edition is extremely faithful to the original intent and sounds. The only drawback of the album is perhaps Wilson's own voice, no longer as young and fresh as in the surf days.

In the album, we can also listen to the original version of "Good Vibrations," a song that was conceived during the Pet Sounds recordings, meant to be part of the abandoned album, and which was eventually slightly simplified in arrangement and altered in lyrics and used for another album in its more well-known version. The work should truly be attentively listened to as a symphony; all movements are beautiful, although personally, I would say that the middle movement is the most successful. In any case, if this album had indeed been released 40 years ago, it probably would have revolutionized music at least as much, and perhaps more, than what Sergeant Pepper and his band did.