The five best Brian Wilson songs? No problem. Off the top of my head, I’m sure I could come up with about ten. If need be, I’ll consult his discography to refresh my memory and maybe add a few more to a longlist. Maybe 15 songs total. Whittle it down to the five best. Sure – there would be a couple of tough calls, but how hard could it be?
Well, off the top of my head, I had 18 songs. After consulting the discography, I added eight more. But there were some titles that I only vaguely recalled, so I had to re-listen to a few. Re-listening to a few tracks led to simply playing the first 12 Beach Boys' albums straight through, after which I had added more songs and gotten 37.
And then I started thinking about Wilson’s solo work. Uh oh. Settling on the five best might take a little longer than I thought.
Brian Wilson’s five greatest songs
The thing about Wilson – whether he was writing and producing for the Beach Boys or on his own – is that your mood will dictate which of his songs you like the best. Despite those trademark harmonies and complex walls of sound, he could create vastly different emotions in the space of a three-minute pop song.
Ready for Friday night with the boys? Bop along to “Little Deuce Coupe.” Did the night end with you getting stood up? Cry yourself to sleep with “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.” Neither of those tunes made it onto my long list, and yet many musicians would have killed to have written and sung either.
So I eventually settled on my five, and truth be told, they are all knockout hits. I usually like to throw a deeper cut or two onto lists like this, but with Brian Wilson, the cream is just too good to pass up.
They were all songs he did with the Beach Boys. I love a lot of his solo work, but there’s no way I could argue in good faith that a fine solo tune like “Lucky Old Sun” was somehow a better achievement than a seminal Beach Boys’ track like “California Girls.”
Spoiler alert, neither of those exceptional pop tunes is on my list either.
I did settle on a half dozen honorable mentions – three from the Beach Boys’ years and three more from his solo work – to add a little perspective. All but one are at least somewhat deeper cuts.
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