Paste is celebrating the 60th anniversary of Pet Sounds

On May 16, Pet Sounds turns sixty. The Beach Boys are my favorite band of all time, so, to celebrate, Paste is running more than a dozen consecutive features about the album, written by indie musicians, music critics, authors, and Beach Boys fans alike, and curated by me. Each day, for what I’ve dubbed the “Paste Pet Sounds Project,” the site will cover a new song from the tracklist. And we’re doing it in order, culminating in “Caroline, No” and, on the anniversary date, a feature with musicians involved in the making of the album. We’ve even got something planned for the instrumentals. 

But it’s not just Pet Sounds obsessives waxing poetic about the music. We have Brian Wilson stories, song and album rankings, and a self-proclaimed Beach Boys agnostic’s assessment of the record’s legacy all coming down the pike, too. I hope that, in two weeks, I’ll have put together the greatest love letter to the greatest American group, with the help of writers and musicians I deeply admire. 

For now, I’ll leave you with a quote from Niko Stratis who, in her write-up of Pet Sounds for Paste’s greatest albums of all time list, said: “It’s chaotic and frantic, for certain, but it is also so much more—built from fragments of music that appear from dark corners and hidden angles to confront you with their sterling beauty, whimsy and craft working in unison to create bold pathways forward. It’s a bold technicolor vision of the ghost of music’s future, ahead of its time and steeped in the past all at once.” 

Be sure to subscribe to Paste‘s daily newsletter, where we’ll be keeping track of all the write-ups between now and May 16. Tune in tomorrow to read about “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

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