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Post by Kapitan on Mar 17, 2019 14:49:11 GMT
As I wrote in my 15 Big Ones summary, my initial reaction to Love You was just absolute delight. Confused delight, maybe, but delight. The idiotic, anachronistic, incompetent lyrics worked into the mostly ugly--yet memorable--music really tickled me. And it still does.
I do think the best of these songs would have been hits or classics in a different era. Something like "The Night Was So Young," for example, recorded in the '60s on natural instruments and sung by less damaged throats could absolutely have had more broad appeal. Others are more puzzling regardless of context, but give me "Johnny Carson," "Ding Dang," and "Solar System" any day. I love them.
"Good Time" is another absolute favorite song of mine; shame poor Al keeps sticking out like a (long-since recorded) sore thumb though.
Sadly three of the final four songs are crap. Drop "Airplane," "Love is a Woman," and "Let's Put Our Hearts Together" and I'm a much happier man.
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Post by kds on Mar 24, 2019 4:02:56 GMT
If you want to be a cool Beach Boys fan, talk endlessly about how great this album is. Or, trust your ears.
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Post by sebevedomy on Mar 24, 2019 7:56:52 GMT
I love it; flawed but great. The last gasp. "Love Is A Woman" does suck though.
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Post by Kapitan on Jun 7, 2021 16:34:50 GMT
The Beach Boys Love You [Brother/Reprise, 1977] Painfully crackpot and painfully sung, but also inspired, not least because it calls forth forbidden emotions. For a surrogate teenager to bare his growing pains so guilelessly was exciting, or at least charming; for an avowed adult to expose an almost childish naivete is embarrassing, but also cathartic; and for a rock and roll hero to compose a verbally and musically irresistible paean to Johnny Carson is an act of shamanism pure and simple. As with Wild Honey, the music sounds wrong in contradictory ways at first--both arty and cute, spare and smarmy--but on almost every cut it comes together soon enough; I am especially partial to the organ textures, and I find the absurd little astrology ditty, "Solar System," impossible to shake. As for the words, well, they're often pretty silly, but even (especially) when they're designed to appeal to whatever Brian imagines to be the rock audience they reveal a lot more about the artist than most lyrics do. And this artist is a very interesting case. A
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Post by Kapitan on Feb 24, 2022 18:48:31 GMT
I'm listening to Love You right now, and I have to say: I think this is one of the most joyous albums the Beach Boys ever did.
Obviously the quality of the singing is pretty sketchy. But every song up until "The Night Was So Young" is just guaranteed to make me smile--maybe "Mona" especially. Over the years, it has for me gone from being middle-of-the-pack on this album to one of my favorites of the '70s, at least. Just a laundry list of things Brian likes sung to that circular I-vi-ii-V chord pattern that could go on for infinity ... and with no changes throughout the song, it almost feels like it does, despite being just over two minutes long.
There is some heartache on the album, yes. (And some of the best songs fit into that category.) But I think of it as a very uplifting album on the whole. It's one I played a LOT when I first heard it back around 2000 and in those years, but not so much anymore. It feels great to listen again.
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Post by lonelysummer on Feb 25, 2022 2:54:42 GMT
I see this album regularly getting raves from fans and non fans, and my reaction is still "I don't get it".
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jan 10, 2024 21:59:59 GMT
An Elliot Roberts' video/review of The Beach Boys Love You:
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Post by lonelysummer on Jan 18, 2024 20:06:48 GMT
If I wanted to be "a cool Beach Boys fan", I would slobber all over this album. 15BO, MIU and Love You rank at the bottom of my list with SIP. Yeah, I'm a square, I prefer BB85, LA and KTSA to this quartet. S&S doesn't even rank on my list. I don't really think of it as a BBs album. More like a tribute album that they just happen to sing back up on.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 19, 2024 13:16:18 GMT
If I wanted to be "a cool Beach Boys fan", I would slobber all over this album. 15BO, MIU and Love You rank at the bottom of my list with SIP. Yeah, I'm a square, I prefer BB85, LA and KTSA to this quartet. S&S doesn't even rank on my list. I don't really think of it as a BBs album. More like a tribute album that they just happen to sing back up on. I think a lot of fans would agree with you about Love You. I mean, sales alone are telling on that front. It's clearly not everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine. I do like it, and rate it relatively highly, but even I would never say it is something a person would be crazy not to love. It's really weird, and clearly imperfect in technical terms. As for those other albums, I don't know that being "square" has anything to do with it. (Hell, a lot of people would say liking ANY Beach Boys music is pretty square. They have never been, and still aren't, exactly the epitome of cool to most people who think about things like what's cool. Which I'd argue is in itself an uncool thing to do...) But I think rating 15BO and MIU near the bottom of a list is probably very, very typical of BBs fans. And increasingly, rating LA relatively higher is common, too. But in the end I don't think any rankings matter, really. There are so many different kinds of music in the band's catalog, people will inevitably have their favorites and least favorites, for any number of reasons.
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