Wouldn’t It Be Nice

Yeah

... behind you, and Pet Sounds is good, you know, when you've got like the, uh, Wouldn't It Be Nice or Good Vibrations, but when you get into Caroline, No, I'm just like, skip.

And like I said, beautiful song.

I just, I have to have it like g- give, give it to me right here, you know, straight down chaser.

I mean, you look at the lead off track.

Wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice if we were older? It's not like, hey, you know, let's go surfing now.

This is, you know, like almost like it kind of reminds you when you were a kid and you wanted to be an adult.

Yeah, exactly.

Mike Love, I think, tossed in some lyrics because he gets a songwriting credit on this along with Brian Wilson and Tony Asher.

But it's mostly a Tony Asher lyric based on Brian's input.

i think they would brian would play the song and he might have an idea what it was about or he would tony would sit around and think of like you know what emotions does this conjure up and then tony would go and write a set of lyrics to that and then that bounced those ideas around um but yeah that's that's uh beach boys classic right there wouldn't it be nice

Yeah, that's like the one song, the one song

mix.

I would say, wouldn't it be nice by the Beach Boys? Oh, good

one.

Yeah.

So no Beach Boys equivalent for you, Evan?

No, it's not a Beach Boys song.

Wouldn't It Be Nice is one of the happiest songs ever written.

Mickey was correct on that one.

Yep, yep.

Have you heard the isolated vocal breakdowns of Wouldn't It Be Nice by the Beach Boys? No, it sounds fantastic

though.

It's incredible.

Yeah, there

was Brian Wilson isolated track for Wouldn't It Be Nice.

I mean, it sounded cool, but it wasn't even like his harmonies, really.

It was just him.

Thank you for writing in.

And Danny says about the Beach Boys episode, I really wanted to interject about Wouldn't It Be Nice? Because the thing that really makes that song powerful is that Caroline Ngo, the last song, is written about that same character, right? And the album is bookended with how he sees her as a young man and as a man who has lived his life when they've gone separate directions.

And it really sets up how that album is a coming-of-age album.

I will say this, Lane, in all my years of listening to Pet Sounds and reading about the Beach Boys and all that, I did not ever consider that the album had any sort of narrative through-line, as Danny seems to imply here.

said.

I mean, it's a really deep album, and it certainly feels like it's about young white male adolescents.

Yeah, and that is also shown beyond the lyrics, which is what Danny seems to be talking about here, with the... compositions and the arrangements of those two songs in particular like matched against each other the the difference is very stark you know wouldn't it be nice and it's bright chimes and and uh this sort of playful youthful sound versus the dourness and melancholy of caroline no i can see that i can see that representing a sort of dramatic through line But I never thought about it.

I never really registered it that way.

She apologizes and says she's sure she'll feel better soon, and then she gives Jack the supplies, and Jack bikes over to the local library.

He goes upstairs and he finds Allie working there while she's humming a song.

And we get a good view of Jack's head here, and he has a clear wound on the one side of his forehead.

But as he's approaching Allie, he smiles and he has a book in his hand.

Jack shakes his hand and says they're grateful for his discretion, and then Porter leaves.

It's later that night, and the kids are around the table upstairs, and they're playing a game of Risk.

And while they're playing, they're making fun of Porter, and they're all super cute, and they are really into this game, and they're, like, pounding the table and doing little marching songs.

It's, it's adorable.

You know it's gonna make it that much better when we can say good night and stay together.

"Yes, Wouldn't It Be Nice," The Beach Boys.

Love that song.

All right, number two.

And this is one of the best uses of a dramatic pause like that, in my opinion.

So now these top three are, I think, a cut above the rest in terms of being some of the best pop songs ever written um i did still wrestle with putting warmth of the sun and surfer girl ahead of two and three on the personal enjoyment front but i genuinely love these as well um in third i've got wouldn't it be nice which opens pat sounds and is as tightly written a pop song as you could ever want.

It clocks in at like 220, and covers multiple different sections in that part without them feeling slapped together at all.

It has a great inevitability to it that, of course, the song goes here next, even though from the conventional... wisdom of how to write a song.