The Stormy Sixties: The Beach Boys to the Rescue

Last week, I brought up the “Golden Age of America”, the 1950s. They were a decade of prosperity and growth with hardly any action taking place. The 1960s were quite the opposite. Year after year, momentous event after momentous event occurred. In 1960, John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon out for the presidency becoming the youngest president ever elected at that time, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was formed, and the United States of America sent 3,500 troops to the Vietnam War. In 1961, Americans made it into space, Berlin wall construction began, and the Bay of Pig invasion failed. That is just the first two years of the decade. Every year was as jampacked as this one with the Cuban Missile crisis, civil-rights movements, Kennedy’s assassination, the first use of Zip Codes, Rolling Stone magazine was created, the Woodstock music festival, and ending with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. With such a busy decade, peopled look to music as a way to get away from the tasks at hand. What better way to do so than with the music of a band whose name is reminiscent of summer vacation?

That’s right, you know them, the Beach Boys. Their song “God Only Knows”, released in May of 1966, is proclaimed the best song of the 1960s by both Paste magazine and Pitchfork magazine. “God Only Knows” has been referred to by critics as “the world’s greatest song,” Brian Wilson’s masterpiece,” and “the most beautiful piece of music ever recorded.” While I might not be as gung-ho about the song as these critics, it is impossible to deny the beautiful pairing of the lyrics with the music.

The song lyrics open up with the phrase “I may not always love you” ensuring a sense of uncertainty throughout the musical piece. This uncertainty is only backed up by the music behind it. Brian Wilson, the writer of this song and bass guitarist for the Beach Boys, wrote the music in a most unstable form. The tonic chord, the chord that musical phrases must resolve to in order to avoid dissonance, is used in the most “unstable” inversion possible. This instability is only exacerbated by verse progression. Wilson crafted it to sound insecure and restless by delaying the resolution to the tonic chord as long as possible. Such a melody mirrored the uncertainty seen in the lyrics, which itself mirrored the uncertainty of the time period.

With all the rampant action going on in the 60s with assassinations, civil-rights movements, and the Vietnam war, there was a lot of uncertainty. The lyrics play to that tune and appear to target the adolescent crowd quite well. The lyrics speak to an apprehensive and anxious attitude towards the future, unsure of how events will unfold. However, the lyrics also do something unheard of in mainstream music. The lyrics refer to “God.” This reference to religion had been largely avoided in top hits in music until the Beach Boys did so. This choice was not made lightly. In Brian Wilson’s notes, there is significant evidence of continued alteration of the music, removing and putting back in “God.”

Both a lyrical and melodical masterpiece, “God Only Knows” truly represents the 60s as a decade. Also, being named the greatest song of the 60s, the masterpiece tells a tale of being lost and trying to find one’s way in an uncertain future. This spoke broadly to the decade of such a tumultuous time. Following the “Golden Age of America”, the 1960s were a tough decade that the Beach Boys managed to soothe with a single song, Brian Wilson’s melodic masterpiece.