A Beach Boys agnostic listens to Pet Sounds for the first time

The Pet Sounds Project is Paste’s two-week celebration of the Beach Boys’ eleventh album, which turns sixty years old on May 16, 2026.

When I think of the Beach Boys, I think of—I’m so sorry—the Despicable Me minions. I am well aware that this is blasphemy. But unfortunately, I was ten when that godforsaken “Barbara Ann” cover hit the theaters in the lead trailer for Despicable Me 2, and it’s been burned into my brain ever since. My first impression of Brian Wilson then was not of Brian Wilson at all. It was of four yellow tic-tacs in overalls, singing the word “banana” over and over in high-pitched Alvin and the Chipmunks-style harmonies. 

Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been able to get into the Beach Boys. It’s not my fault; whenever I throw on a track, I just hear those minions. I admitted this for the first time to my friend Grace a few weeks ago, when we were half-sloshed on Grateful Dead beers for this excellent work of gonzo journalism, and she was struck speechless. “You can’t say that, Casey,” she said, utterly appalled. “You can’t be a music critic and say you categorically think all Beach Boys songs sound like the minions.” I get it. It’s pretty damn sacrilegious of me to not worship at the altar of Pet Sounds, I know, but I suppose I’m just a heretic.

So when Paste editor Matt Mitchell texted me a few months ago to ask what I thought about making Pet Sounds our themed week for May, I blanched. I’m sure I wrote back something like “Yeah, that sounds great,” because what else am I supposed to do? Cop to my failings as a lover of music in front of god, my editor, and everybody? They said they were imagining Paste doing at least one personal essay a day for each song on the record, plus some larger pieces about the album as a whole; where would I like to slot in? Alas, I had no choice. I had to come clean. After some well-deserved and relatively good-natured ribbing, Matt realized we could, in fact, work with this: Why not write a piece about listening to Pet Sounds all the way through for the first time as a Beach Boys non-believer? 

That’s how I find myself here, months later, perched atop the Pet Sounds cliff, ready to dive off. I’m writing this intro while staring down into the chasm below—meaning that, at this point, I honestly don’t know how this is going to go. I hope I fall in love with the album. It would truly be awkward if I didn’t. Not only would I be the lone music critic to actively dislike Pet Sounds, I’d have a public record of my journey to Beach Boys disdain forever documented on the internet. But I am chronically unable to be anything other than honest when it comes to my own opinions, so I guess we’ll find out. I’ll write the piece actively as I listen, song-by-song. For better or worse, you’re getting the full, unfiltered experience of a Beach Boys virgin popping her Pet Sounds cherry. 

Don’t get me wrong: I know the lore, I know some songs, I read all the Brian Wilson eulogies last year. I’ve just never really sat down and listened to Pet Sounds in full. And I can’t help but wonder: Is the album really that good on its own, or is it just the context of the Beach Boys—of all their surf ‘n turf records prior to Pet Sounds, of the tragedy of Brian Wilson—that makes my peers see it as so uniquely phenomenal? How does it hold up when listened to in a vacuum, taken separate from the history around it? So I invite you to press play on Pet Sounds and embark on this very informal, stream-of-consciousness voyage along with me, even if it ends in you disavowing me and my abysmal taste for good. But who knows? Maybe it’ll be love at first listen. Maybe I’ll finally get those horrible minions out of my head. A girl can hope.

TAKE ONE

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice”

This one I know. You’d have to have your head stuck in the sand to have never heard “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” before—and as much as I’m playing up my own ignorance here for the bit of the piece, even I can’t stoop that low. There’s a nice little mando-guitar riff at the start, that’s fun. But honestly, so far at least, this song is more or less what I remember it being. I just fear that maybe I’m not a fan of the 1950s doo-wop that so inspired the Beach Boys’ sound. All things put together, it’s just a tad cheesy to me? I can’t knock the intricacies of the harmonies or the instrumentation, both are undoubtedly impressive, but I also can’t shake the feeling that I’m listening to a barbershop quartet. And if I wanted to listen to a barbershop quartet, I’d go stand in, well, a barbershop, I guess. Maybe it’s just not my thing? In which case, I am so sorry. I will say, though, that the lyrics “You know it seems the more we talk about it / It only makes it worse to live without it” caught me off guard and added some depth to a song that has, historically, largely struck me as overly saccharine—there’s definitely more latent melancholy in here than I had previously realized from hearing it play in cars, stores, and the like. But I still don’t think I’d qualify it as a lyrical masterwork.

“I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”

Okay, I don’t recognize this one—at least not from the opening twenty seconds. So far, it also doesn’t fit the image I have of the Beach Boys in my mind, while “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” certainly does, and that’s encouraging. It’s just significantly less minions-four-part-harmony-y than I expected. I appreciate the far more upfront melancholy at the top of the track, and I do feel slightly (read: very) seen in the lines “I keep looking for a place to fit in where I can speak my mind / I’ve been trying hard to find the people I won’t leave behind.” There’s something legitimately a little heartbreaking in the plaintiveness of “Sometimes I feel very sad,” too. And man, I fuck heavily with the eerie, wavering electro-theremin solo at around the 2:35 mark.

Again, I really do respect the sheer complexity of these songs, the amount of things happening at any given moment. But some part of me—the part that lives and dies by David Berman’s mantra of “All my favorite singers couldn’t sing” and habitually seeks out the rawest, pitchiest, barest songs imaginable—has a harder time resonating with the emotion of the song because of that, maybe. The four-to-six-part block harmonies undergirding everything make it hard for me to get close to it, somehow; it’s like a scene of someone crying on a park bench scored by, again, a barbershop quartet. It just takes me out of it a little.

“God Only Knows”

There’s already a lot going on here—accordion, harpsichord, french horn (an instrument I am, admittedly, a little partial to because I played it in middle school), you name it. There’s something about the harpsichord sound that makes me feel like I’m in a church. Can’t explain it. Wait, are those sleigh bells? I think those are sleigh bells. That is undoubtedly cool, but only time will tell if they fit into the song enough to stop distracting me from it. Anyways, kicking off what is ostensibly a love song with the line “I may not always love you” kind of rules. I’m admittedly a bit confused by the back-to-back claims of “If you should ever leave me / Well, life would go on, believe me” and “The world could show nothing to me / So what good would living do me?”—is the speaker saying that there is a life after this love (as implied by both the first line of the song and the first pair of lines here) or not (as implied by the latter pair and the title phrase)? Is the takeaway there that life, as a whole, would go on, but the speaker’s life would not? Is this a song about suicidal ideation? If so, hell yeah. Definitely a contrast between the bounciness of the song and the content of the lyrics, then. The contrapuntal vocals are also fun. But, oh, we’re back to “do do do do”s and “bow buh-bow buh-bow”s. For some reason I do find them somewhat less grating this time around than in “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” I think I have heard this song a time or two before, surely; I definitely recognize the melody of the title line, but I’ve never really listened to it. The rounds at the end are nice, I guess. But do all their songs end with a line repeated over and over as the vocals fade out?

“I Know There’s An Answer”—Wait, what the fuck?

Alright, so I was growing somewhat skeptical with each new track, because I’ve been editing our Pet Sounds week essays for days now, and we’ve been releasing those in tracklist order—and this hasn’t felt right, because I felt certain there were other songs I edited essays for before these ones. But, for both “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” and “God Only Knows,” I just chalked it up to my shit memory and kept trucking along. (Like, I thought “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” was much later on, but I shook my head and convinced myself I must have misremembered.) By the time “I Know There’s An Answer” came around, though, I thought it might be best to check the tracklist (I had been looking at lyrics to each song before) to make sure all was good and, lo and behold, all was not good. This is not in order! At all! What the hell! I don’t have it on shuffle or anything! Why is it doing this! Huh!?

Okay, not sure what’s going on here, so I’m just gonna go to a YouTube video of the whole album because that one must be in order. I will now restart my listen in order to get the Full Album Experience. I am keeping this blunder in because I said this was going to be my honest-to-god journey, fuckups and all, so here we are.

TAKE TWO

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” AGAIN

Yup, sounds the same as it did twenty minutes ago. Cool song, love the arrangements, too 1950s doo-wop-y for me. Actually, I think I’m appreciating the tempo changes more this time. Not sure why. And that huge drum!

“You Still Believe In Me”

The opening is sick, all eerie plucked piano strings and reverb-drenched hums—it’s like an upside-down, inside-out, severely-fucked-up child’s nursery rhyme. Sleigh bells again! (Well, actually, for the first time, considering “God Only Knows” comes way later. Ugh. Listening to these out of order has screwed with my head—the first line of the song feels like a callback to “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” except this one comes first, so that song is actually the callback.) Again, the arrangements are fascinating and phenomenal, and I’m a sucker for dissonance. Something about Brian Wilson’s voice feels rawer, pitchier here—and I prefer that, honestly. The emotion feels more visceral when the song’s less perfect, and I think that’s part of my personal issue with the Beach Boys; the songs are too perfectly orchestrated and arranged for me! Weird complaint to have, I’m well aware, but again, this is not an album review, this is Casey Epstein-Gross’ incredibly subjective journey.

This is a very sweet song that wears its guilt on its sleeve, and it hits especially hard coming after the saccharine-but-hollow joy of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” which was the idolized, dream-version of the relationship. This is the reality: “I try hard to be more what you want me to be / But I can’t help how I act when you’re not here with me.” And the closing lines of “You still believe in me / I wanna cry” are, as I said of the “Sometimes I feel very sad” line in “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” beautifully and heartbreakingly plaintive. Oh God, I’m so sorry, but the way he sings “cry” is making me think of Charlie Day’s sung marriage proposal in “The Nightman Cometh” episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia when he descends from the rafters in that sun. Come on, you hear it, right? Honestly, that actually only adds to the song for me. The proposal gets rejected, after all. Weirdly fitting. Oh, wait, the dynamic change here is awesome—the all-out harmonies are totally working for me. Although, once again, do all their songs end on a vocal fadeout?

“That’s Not Me”

Kicking right off with vocals atop organ. For some reason the melody/delivery of lines like “I could try to be big in the eyes of the world” feels more like pure rock to me than a lot of the other songs so far. The reverbed guitar is a nice counterpart here. Yeah, this feels more rock-y in general: the bass, the guitar, the chugging percussion. All that percussion cuts out when “I once had a dream / So I packed up and split for the city,” leaving just the vocal harmonies beneath it, which is fun. Nice key changes throughout. Wait, the super sparse first lines of the final verse rules; again, these are my personal sensibilities we’re talking about here, and my personal sensibilities are incredibly prejudiced towards music that sounds exactly like this. The double vocals atop just that low bassline and twelve-string guitar riff? Hell yeah. The juxtaposition between the arrangements of both the verse that came before and the rest of the verse that comes after make those two stark lines stand out all the more. This song definitely feels less Beach Boys™ (read: minion barbershop quartet) than some of the others, which I like. And okay, yeah, I’m gonna stop mentioning the vocal fadeouts now because I think that’s going to be the case for every song.

“Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)”

A pure ballad, seemingly. Church organ, subtle percussion (largely time-keeping cymbals at first?), and Wilson’s forever triple-tracked vocals. A Fender bass line comes in, stepping down the scale underneath “heart beat,” although what scale that is, I’m not sure; genuinely cannot tell what the deal is with the key here. To be honest, this is not the most interesting song to me, lyrically or musically. As always, there’s still a lot going on, but the balladry of it all doesn’t greatly appeal to me. The string section is great, though—and, oh, hello timpanis! I do like how the song very much sounds like its lyrics; the form and content seem very fitting for one another. Always a fan of metaphoric instrumentation. But, yeah, a bit boring to me.

“I’m Waiting For The Day”

Oh, okay, woah; starting off with a jolt, are we? Some crazy timpanis out front, along with weirdo tack piano and flute—definitely appreciate how unique the composition is here, it’s a lot of fun. Also seems more uptempo than the songs before it. When the verse comes in, it’s mostly just the tack piano behind it, I think. Ah: this is a song about being on the other side of a rebound, got it. I like the little fingerpicked something-or-other behind the “to help forget about him.” And I really like the dynamic change between the first and second verse, when those timpanis come in again. I also enjoy the backing vocals here more than in other songs, probably because they’re sharper, pitchier, weirder; less perfect harmonies and more disruptive instruments cutting into the melody. Another dynamic change with “he hurt you then but that’s all gone”; bye timpanis, hello flutes. Wait, nevermind, as soon as I finished writing that we’re back to timpanis (with the flute atop it now, too)! Lyrically, this one’s also a bit less interesting to me; I’m much more compelled by the wild shifts in instrumentation than I am by the “man, I really like you and am investing a lot of time in you, so, like, can you get over your ex already” narrative. For instance, the descent into strings after the second chorus? And then the timpanis coming in? Oh, and the half-shouted last verse? Again: hell yeah. I really like the half-shouted-ness, honestly; I wish we got some more of that throughout the record. I think I just gravitate toward the messier, louder, weirder, and more imperfect moments, and in an album this meticulously choreographed and constructed, those are harder to come by—but that means I do really appreciate them when they arrive.

“Let’s Go Away for Awhile”

Vibraphone and heartbeat-esque percussion at the top, seemingly; some acoustic strumming and more typical pianos building up too, then a fake-out entrance from a horn section that devolves back into the original instrumentation. Very lounge-y (mostly the vibraphones and horns?) and subtle. I’m enjoying the hinted-at shifts in dynamic and arrangement that don’t entirely materialize; the crescendoes that keep building and building without ever arriving at the destination you expect them to. There are so many different sections and segments here; it absolutely feels narrative even without any vocals. I like this a lot, actually! Very cinematic, tells a story, and shifts so frequently that you have to pay close attention to find out where it’s going. I think—as previously stated—my primary “gripe” with the Beach Boys is the 1950s barbershopiness (it’s just so hard for me not to find it a little cheesy!), so getting to hear all that fascinating instrumentation and composition without the vocals atop it is kind of a treat.

“Sloop John B”

What the fuck is a “Sloop John B”? Is it a sloop owned by a guy named John B? I don’t care; I’m choosing to think it’s that. Fun little twinkly opening with, what is that, a cricket clicker? Cool. Weird backing arrangement, which means I fuck with it. I wish it felt a bit more ocean-y than beachy, but this is the Beach Boys, so I guess that should be expected. I really enjoy the narrative focus of this song; such a deviation from the love songs and failed-love songs we’ve gotten so far. The harmonies are very much harmony-ing, I guess. There’s something vaguely reggae-ish about the melody of “I feel so broke up, I wanna go home”? I don’t really know. This feels very barbershop quartet-core. Fun, though. “Why don’t they let me go home? / This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on” got a little chuckle out of me.

“God Only Knows”

Finally, we return! It feels like a natural transition from “Sloop John B”—a good way to move back into more melancholy, biographical territory, with the sleigh bells and bouncier rhythm still somewhat in keeping with the fun of the song before it. Overall, though, my thoughts largely remain the same here.

“I Know There’s An Answer”

Oh, bizarre opening—I fuck with it tremendously. What’s even going on here? Some sort of dissonant, atonal, ragtime-y tack piano? And then a foghorn comes in? Nice. I like how unexpected the melody of “And what can you say that won’t make them defensive?” is. Vocals here also feel more ragged and fried than on other tracks; just feels more chaotic altogether, which is something I enjoy. Okay, looked it up and the foghorn noise is from a bass harmonica, and that rules. Also, is this a song about, like, finding yourself via tripping? Maybe I’m reading too much into the potential double reading of the line “they trip through the day” and the fact that Wilson’s lambasting people for being too “uptight.”

“Here Today”

Starts sparser, but then massive harmonies—and another foghorn sound, but this time I think from a trombone—come in. There’s so much going on here (crazy lead bass guitar part!) and I enjoy how in-line the descending marching-band-esque horns are with the beat of the vocal melody. The ascending scale of the melody is fun too. Oh, this is so marching band-y. Hm—could this song be a counterpart to “I’m Waiting For The Day”? Like, could the speaker here be the ex that the subject of “I’m Waiting For the Day” was still getting over, and could he be talking to the pining speaker of “I’m Waiting For the Day”? Either way, though, the second verse rug-pull of “hey, so, I’m actually her ex, and she kind of sucks” is very funny. I do feel like, generally speaking, I’ve been a bit less impressed by the lyrical content of this stretch of songs. So far, “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” and “You Still Believe In Me” have definitely been the most lyrically compelling to me (although, technically, I shouldn’t have heard the former yet, and only know it already because I went out of order). “Here Today” seems to be doing something a bit more interesting, though, and the refrain of “Love is here today / And it’s gone tomorrow / It’s here and gone so fast” is sharp and soft in equal measure. Man, these guys love their tack pianos. I do need to mention again, though, how cool that lead bass is.

“I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”

Hey, I know this one! Same thoughts for the most part, but a new appreciation for that weird, hollow-sounding percussion in the background. What is that, a wooden block or something? Oddly, I don’t think that this one benefits terribly from its actual position in the album; it’s not really affecting me more or differently than it did the first time around, and I kind of enjoyed it back-to-back with “God Only Knows,” which was never intended by the Beach Boys themselves.

“Pet Sounds”

Title track, and another instrumental! Kinda wish this one had vocals, if only so I could gain some understanding of what “pet sounds” actually means, here. Oh, that zippery guiro is fun. Definitely feels less melodic and more chaotic than a lot of the other arrangements, and unsurprisingly, I enjoy that. Crazy reverb effect on the guitar line that makes it sound almost like a steel drum. This is, like, weird, fucked-up, alternate-dimension muzak. Fun! Nice, satisfying horn part.

“Caroline, No”

Starts out very sparse—harpsichord, possibly, and just one vocal part. Echo-y percussion and bass come in shortly after, and sax in the chorus. Very much a ballad. It’s, like, fine? I don’t know. Less interesting to me than others. Except for the outro! Outro is sick! Ringing bells and dog barks and train horns; as if you’re about to be run into on the track. Not quite sure why that’s there (the dog barking is the titular pet sound, maybe?) but it’s cool either way. The lyrics are sweet and sad—seemingly about watching someone you love lose themselves in depression and the passage of time. However, I just looked the song up to find the lyrics and saw that, apparently, the song was not about depression and was instead about “sweet little girls” who grow up into “bitchy hardened adults,” and as one of those bitchy hardened adults, I take issue with this framing. Suddenly the song becomes a lot less heartbreaking and a lot more mildly aggravating—“I want to go and cry / It’s so sad to watch a sweet thing die” is a lot less meaningful if you read it as being about watching a girl lose her childlike naivete and become a fully-realized independent person instead of, like, watching a loved one fall into the depths of depression. And, yes, death of the author, I know; intent is not everything (in many cases, it’s hardly anything) and you can get from the song what you want, regardless of its original premise. But still.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I have now listened to the entirety of Pet Sounds. My verdict? Somewhat mixed. Again, much of this comes down to taste and personal opinion, and I am notoriously big on music that prioritizes raw feeling over the immensity of the sound, that boasts lyrics that somehow put into words experiences and emotions I’ve never been able to make effable, that makes me feel like Prometheus getting his liver ripped out by harpies in real time. And Pet Sounds doesn’t really do that for me. I found the lyrics more compelling in some songs than others, and even then, there’s a bit of a disconnect for me due to the barbershopiness of the sound; it’s hard for me to connect fully with the feeling latent within when there’s a bouncy six-part harmony that feels like it should come in a red-and-white pin-striped vest taking up most of my attention.

That being said, I definitely came out with a brand new appreciation for the instrumentation, arrangements, and compositions; I could listen to each song a dozen times and still find a new detail, a new melody, a new instrument to focus on. It’s a masterwork of craft, certainly, and I do want to listen to it again in order to hear all the bits and pieces I surely missed—and that’s a win! But do I now fully understand the universal lauding of Pet Sounds as the greatest, most affecting album to ever be created? Not really.

I think a lot of that—the depth and emotion of it all—comes with context: the shock of an album like this coming from a band that historically only made teeny-bopper beach songs, the knowledge of what is to come for Brian Wilson himself. All of that adds to the experience immensely and deepens the album considerably. That’s where I land, probably: Pet Sounds is a very good album as is, but only becomes truly great, an all-timer, when placed within the context of its own history. And there are some albums, in my opinion, that earn that distinction on their own merit; for me personally, Pet Sounds doesn’t quite do that. I do, however, now think of the Beach Boys as more than just the inspiration for the minions, so honestly, I’d say this experiment was a resounding success.

Casey Epstein-Gross is Associate Editor at Paste and is based in New York City. Follow her on X (@epsteingross) or email her at [email protected].

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