This week, Bri­an Wil­son became the last of the Wil­son broth­ers to shuf­fle off this mor­tal coil. Den­nis, the first of the Wilsons to go, died young in 1983 — but not before offer­ing this mem­o­rable assess­ment of the fam­i­ly musi­cal project: “Bri­an Wil­son is the Beach Boys. He is the band. We’re his mes­sen­gers. He is all of it. Peri­od. We’re noth­ing.” That was a bit harsh: Den­nis may not have been a vir­tu­oso drum­mer, but Beach Boys enthu­si­asts all cred­it his faint­ly despair­ing songs with enrich­ing the band’s sig­na­ture emo­tion­al land­scape. Bri­an may have writ­ten “God Only Knows,” but he did so with his broth­er Car­l’s voice in mind. And could even Bri­an’s oth­er mas­ter­piece “Good Vibra­tions” have made the same impact with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of his much-resent­ed cousin Mike Love?

Still, with­out Bri­an’s orches­tra­tion, the oth­er Beach Boys’ voic­es would nev­er have come togeth­er in the pow­er­ful way they did, to say noth­ing of the con­tri­bu­tions of the count­less stu­dio musi­cians who played on their record­ings. Before “Good Vibra­tions,” nev­er had a pop song owed so much to so many musi­cians — and, at the same time, even more to the fer­tile and uncon­ven­tion­al son­ic imag­i­na­tion of just one man.

Labo­ri­ous­ly craft­ed over sev­en months in four dif­fer­ent stu­dios, it came out in Octo­ber of 1966 as the most expen­sive sin­gle ever pro­duced. Its then-epic length of 3:35 filled Capi­tol Records with doubts about its radio via­bil­i­ty, but that turned out to be an aston­ish­ing­ly brief run­ning time to con­tain the sheer com­po­si­tion­al inten­si­ty that soon got the song labeled a “pock­et sym­pho­ny.”

“Good Vibra­tions” and its myr­i­ad intri­ca­cies are scru­ti­nized to this day, most recent­ly in video essays like the ones you see here. On his Youtube chan­nel Poly­phon­ic, Noah Lefevre calls it “dense enough that you could teach an entire music course on it.” David Hart­ley grants it the sta­tus of “prob­a­bly the most com­plex song ever record­ed,” and even “the first song ever cre­at­ed using copy and paste.” Long before the era of dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tions, Bri­an Wil­son used whol­ly ana­log stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy to string togeth­er “feels,” his name for the dis­parate frag­ments of music in his mind. His method con­tributed to the sym­phon­ic con­struc­tion of “Good Vibra­tions,” and his will­ing­ness to fol­low the mood wher­ev­er it led result­ed in the song’s dis­tinc­tive use of an Elec­tro-Theremin. Despite all this, some lis­ten­ers still ques­tion his cen­tral­i­ty to the Beach Boys’ music; for them, there will always be “Koko­mo.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Lost Stu­dio Footage of Bri­an Wil­son Con­duct­ing “Good Vibra­tions,” The Beach Boys’ Bril­liant “Pock­et Sym­pho­ny”

How the Beach Boys Cre­at­ed Their Pop Mas­ter­pieces: “Good Vibra­tions,” Pet Sounds, and More

The Beach Boys’ Bri­an Wil­son & Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er George Mar­tin Break Down “God Only Knows,” the “Great­est Song Ever Writ­ten”

Hear the Beach Boys’ Angel­ic Vocal Har­monies in Four Iso­lat­ed Tracks from Pet Sounds: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Sloop John B” & “Good Vibra­tions”

Enter Bri­an Wilson’s Cre­ative Process While Mak­ing The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds 50 Years Ago: A Fly-on-the Wall View

Paul McCart­ney vs. Bri­an Wil­son: A Rival­ry That Inspired Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pep­per, and Oth­er Clas­sic Albums

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

On social media, the Talk­ing Heads teased a major announce­ment on June 5th, lead­ing fans to won­der if a reunion—41 years after their last tour—might final­ly be in the off­ing. As one fan put it, “If this is a tour announce­ment, I am going to freak out!” Alas, we did­n’t quite get that. (Maybe next time!) Instead, we got the first offi­cial music video for “Psy­cho Killer.” Direct­ed by Mike Mills and star­ring Saoirse Ronan, the video helps com­mem­o­rate the band’s first show at CBGB 50 years ago. You can watch the video above, and footage from CBGB in 1975 here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club That Shaped Their Sound (1975)

A Brief His­to­ry of Talk­ing Heads: How the Band Went from Scrap­py CBGB’s Punks to New Wave Super­stars

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

Talk­ing Heads Fea­tured on The South Bank Show in 1979: How the Ground­break­ing New Wave Band Made Nor­mal­i­ty Strange Again

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

If you’re under 60, you prob­a­bly heard the line “I read the news today, oh boy” before encoun­ter­ing the song it opens. Even after you dis­cov­ered the work of the Bea­t­les, it may have tak­en you some time to under­stand what, exact­ly, it was that John Lennon read in the news. The “lucky man who made the grade” and “blew his mind out in a car” turn out to have been inspired by the young Guin­ness heir Tara Browne, who’d fatal­ly wiped out in his Lotus Elan. The fig­ure of 4,000 holes in the roads of Black­burn came from anoth­er page of the same edi­tion of the Dai­ly Mail. These are just two of the mem­o­rable images in “A Day in the Life,” which son­i­cal­ly recon­structs the fab­ric of the nine­teen-six­ties as the Bea­t­les knew it.

In his new video below, Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, calls “A Day in the Life” “arguably the Bea­t­les’ best song.” Crit­ic Ian Mac­Don­ald is rather less ambigu­ous in his book Rev­o­lu­tion in the Head: The Bea­t­les’ Records and the Six­ties, pro­claim­ing it “their finest sin­gle achieve­ment.”

And if any sin­gle fac­tor shaped its devel­op­ment, that fac­tor was LSD. “A song about per­cep­tion — a sub­ject cen­tral both to late-peri­od Bea­t­les and the coun­ter­cul­ture at large — ‘A Day in the Life’ con­cerned ‘real­i­ty’ only to the extent that this had been revealed by LSD to be large­ly in the eye of the behold­er,” he writes. Lennon may have proven to be the group’s most ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­ast of that short­cut to enlight­en­ment. It’s worth not­ing, as Puschak does, that it was Browne who first “turned on” Paul McCart­ney.

Though pri­mar­i­ly John’s work, “A Day in the Life” would­n’t be what it is with­out Paul’s dou­ble-time bridge, whose jaun­ti­ly nar­ra­tive ordi­nar­i­ness makes the vers­es all the more tran­scen­dent. The need for some kind of tran­si­tion between these dis­parate John and Paul parts led to George Mar­tin’s com­mis­sion­ing a 40-piece orches­tra instruct­ed to play from the low­est notes up to the high­est, a col­lec­tive glis­san­do quadru­ple-record­ed and mixed to sound like the end of the world. In the­o­ry, per­haps, all this — to say noth­ing of Lennon’s ref­er­ences to the Albert Hall, the House of Lords, and his own role in Richard Lester’s How I Won the War — should­n’t work togeth­er. But the result, as Mac­Don­ald puts it, remains one of “the most pen­e­trat­ing and inno­v­a­tive artis­tic reflec­tions of its era,” as expe­ri­enced by the young men stand­ing at its very cen­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 17-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bea­t­les Songs: 338 Tracks Let You Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of the Icon­ic Band

The Exper­i­men­tal Move­ment That Cre­at­ed The Bea­t­les’ Weird­est Song, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”

The Amaz­ing Record­ing His­to­ry of The Bea­t­les’ “Here Comes the Sun”

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

The Mak­ing of the Last Bea­t­les Song, “Now and Then”: A Short Film

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

On his 84th birth­day this past Sat­ur­day, Bob Dylan played a show. That was in keep­ing with not only his still-seri­ous tour­ing sched­ule, but also his appar­ent­ly irre­press­ible instinct to work: on music, on writ­ing, on paint­ing, on sculp­ture. Even his occa­sion­al tweet­ing draws an appre­cia­tive audi­ence every time. The Bob Dylan of 2025 is not, of course, the Bob Dylan of 1965, but then, the Bob Dylan of 1965 was­n’t the Bob Dylan of 1964. This con­stant artis­tic change is just what his fans appre­ci­ate, not that they don’t still put on his ear­ly stuff with reg­u­lar­i­ty.

In the ear­li­est of that ear­ly stuff, as music YouTu­ber David Hart­ley explains in the new video above, Dylan “wrote songs by rein­vent­ing tra­di­tion.” Using noth­ing but his voice, gui­tar, and har­mon­i­ca, the young Dylan “imi­tat­ed some of the most well-known folk melodies,” plac­ing him­self in that long Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of bor­row­ing and rein­ter­pre­ta­tion. But as dra­ma­tized in the recent film A Com­plete Unknown, he soon “went elec­tric,” and with the change in instru­men­ta­tion came a change in song­writ­ing method: “He would just come up with end­less pages of lyrics, some­thing he once called ‘the long piece of vom­it.’ ”

The advice to “puke it out now and clean it up lat­er” has long been giv­en, in var­i­ous forms, to aspir­ing artists every­where. One aspect worth high­light­ing about the way Dylan did it was that, despite writ­ing pop­u­lar songs, he drew a great deal of inspi­ra­tion from more tra­di­tion­al lit­er­a­ture, to the point that his notes hard­ly appear to con­tain any­thing resem­bling vers­es or cho­rus­es at all. Only in the stu­dio, with a band behind him, could Dylan give these ideas their final musi­cal shape — or rather, their final shape on that par­tic­u­lar album, often to be mod­i­fied end­less­ly, and some­times rad­i­cal­ly, over decades of live per­for­mances to come.

Hart­ley tells of more dra­mat­ic changes to Dylan’s music and his process of cre­at­ing. The motor­cy­cle crash, the Base­ment Tapes, the open E tun­ing, Blood on the Tracks: all of these now lie half a cen­tu­ry or more in the past. To go over all the ways Dylan has approached music since then would require more hours than all but the most rabid enthu­si­asts (though there are many) would watch. The video does include a 60 Min­utes clip from 2004 in which Dylan says that “those ear­ly songs were almost mag­i­cal­ly writ­ten,” and that he would­n’t be able to cre­ate them any­more. But then, nor could the Dylan of High­way 61 Revis­it­ed have record­ed Time Out of Mind, and nor, for that mat­ter, could the Dylan of Time Out of Mind have record­ed any of Dylan’s albums from this decade — or those that could, quite pos­si­bly, be still to come.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

How Bob Dylan Cre­at­ed a Musi­cal & Lit­er­ary World All His Own: Four Video Essays

Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in Col­orized 1963 Footage

Hear Bob Dylan’s New­ly Released Nobel Lec­ture: A Med­i­ta­tion on Music, Lit­er­a­ture & Lyrics

Com­pare the “It Ain’t Me Babe” Scene from A Com­plete Unknown to the Real Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Per­for­mance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Get­ting Worse

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.