Line #22 NightmareFuel/TheBeachBoys


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4	'''''Surfer Girl'''''
5	* "In My Room" is about Music/BrianWilson hiding from abuse and the pressures of fame. Knowing what we know now about what Murry Wilson and Mike Love did to him, the pressure Creator/CapitolRecords and the band members put on him, and his subsequent mental issues, it's a tragic piece of music. It remains beautiful, however.
6
7	'''''Music/SummerDaysAndSummerNights'''''
8	* "Amusement Parks U.S.A" has a pretty creepy vibe throughout the song. Aside from the slightly out of tune organ playing throughout, there's also an insane laugh that sounds like it's coming either from a clown or a witch, the promoter speaking with CreepyMonotone into a distorted microphone and the band saying you'll "crash and burn in the bumper cars"...
9
10	'''''Music/PetSounds'''''
11	* The intro to "Wouldn't It Be Nice" can be this for some. The carnival-like melody being played sounds just a little...off.
12	* The ending with the cacophony of dogs and trains make for an effective LastNoteNightmare.
13
14	'''''Music/{{Smile\|TheBeachBoys}}'''''
15	* "The Old Master Painter" track begins with a brief string rendition of the aforementioned and then progresses to a haunting version of "You Are My Sunshine", which has its lyrics put to past tense (eg. "You ''were'' my sunshine...") and make it appear as a melancholic song about a person suffering from a heartbreak. It does not help that Dennis Wilson's vocals have been altered to have an echoey timbre. The song ends on [[LastNoteNightmare a long descending note played on violins]], as if it's meant to project the idea that the singer had either lost his mind or apparently committed suicide.
16	* The instrumental outtake, "Look", opens with a stark and moody piano chord progression.
17	* [[LastNoteNightmare "OVER AND OVER..."]]
18	* The original ending to "Surf's Up". Wordless vocals continue to go on until the song gradually fades out.
19	* A very notorious example would be the Fire section of The Elements Suite. While the piece was supposed to convey the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Music/BrianWilson channeled the experience of his second LSD trip (wherein he experienced ego death and saw himself burning within the fires of hell) as the musical bedding for his composition. Roughly three minutes of this is purely screeching violins, organ jabs, and ominous timpani strikings amidst the array of chaotic sound effects. Probing deeper in to the music and you get a portrait of Wilson's deteriorating mental state at that time - he had studio musicians wear firemen hats while performing, even encouraging the engineer to throw piles of wood in a trash bin and burn them during the session. If that is disturbing enough, what is more disturbing is the aftermath of the recording itself. Unbeknownst to Wilson, at the time he was working on the Fire section, parts of neighboring Santa Monica were engulfed in flames. Once word got to him, he was so convinced that his music unleashed "bad vibrations", that he immediately halted work on this song. Eerie.
20	** While on this subject, the second disc of the ''Good Vibrations'' box set features what should be a small snippet of "Heroes and Villains"... then out of nowhere, it's "Fire"! And what's worse, it remains unknown whether this was a printing mistake, or some sort of creepy mind game...
21	** The "Fire" curse seemingly reared its ugly head yet again when Brian Wilson revisited it for his 2004 revival of ''Smile''. He was apparently still scared of the song, so much so that he left the arrangements to collaborator Darian Sahanaja and had no involvement other than recording some vocal harmonies. Brian never attended rehearsals. Which is good since, while his band rehearsed the song, there was a power cut. Sahanaja theorised that had Brian been there during this, he most likely would have scrapped the album again. The fact that something like this actually happened makes you think Brian's fear of this song may not be an overreaction after all...
22	* The repetitive "Heroes and Villains" harpsichord motif. A massive ear worm teetering uncomfortably on the edge between beauty and horror, it's been known to induce wildly different reactions to whomever is exposed to it. What's more, if you're listening to [=Smile=] for the first time, after hearing the first side you might [[ParanoiaFuel expect it to appear out of nowhere at any time]].
23	** Around the time of its release in 2011, ''The Smile Sessions'' had an official sub-site as part of The Beach Boys' official website. The first thing you were greeted with when opening it? [[JumpScare The "Heroes and Villains" riff]] (in its even darker outtake form, even), juxtaposed with the otherwise happy and cheerful album art, modified with some UncannyValley animation.
24
25	'''''Music/SmileySmile'''''
26	* ''Smiley Smile'', the album we got instead of ''Smile'', was no picnic either. In fact, most consider it to be even more creepy and nightmarish. A minimalist, quirky, and intimate production, it's been likened to being stuck in a small room with some imaginative, if harmless, manics for thirty minutes. It even manages to make some of the ''[=Smile=]'' songs that were relatively innocuous dark and creepy...
27	* The revamped "Heroes and Villains" that was finally issued as a single on July 1967 is the track that opens this record. The song starts on a rather lighthearted manner, with first two verses being a bouncy ode to the Old West; its tone reminiscent of the good clean fun typical of early Beach Boys songs, and its surging rhythm evoking the dynamics of "Good Vibrations". It seems like a song full of groundbreaking promise: an attempt to surpass "Good Vibrations" as pop music's greatest achievement as planned; enticing us to eagerly anticipate what surprises Music/BrianWilson has in store for us. Only to fade out. And then... without warning, the CHORUS JUMPS AT US. But unlike earlier, we are subjected to a chorus so sad, so melancholic, it comes off as jarring. "Heroes and villains... just see what you done....," the Boys lament. They chant not once, but twice, and we are left with a sense of despair and helplessness. What did these heroes and villains do? And then it hits you, Are we the heroes and villains of the title? "Na na na naaa na...," they sing with unnervingly childish inflection as though they are taunting us for our actions. And as we begin to contemplate over our enforced guilt, the song JUMPS AGAIN to the bouncy verse. There's a slow rendition of the verse that follows it, and the music box-like instrumentation gives it a gentle feel at first. However, it then descends into disturbing territory, as the barbershop-style vocalizations become more ominous. Just before it could become creepy, it abruptly halts. Fading in is a "soothing" a capella reprise of the first verse. The sound quality is significantly different this time around, being of low fidelity. The hisses from the background are so dissonant on a sonic level, the idea that it could be a cult recording from a dark basement is not far off. And before the last couplet "I'm fit with the stuff to ride in the rough / and sunny down snuff, I'm all right by the heroes and villains" could be completed, it CUTS RIGHT OFF TO THE CHORUS for a second time and fading out to uncertainty. It's as though Brian gave up on the whole thing.
28	* "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter (W. Woodpecker Symphony)" is a strange, repetitive little soundscape that's quite gloomy and sinister on its own accord... and that's ''without'' knowing of its origins as the above-mentioned "Fire". Whatever those strange noises heard throughout the song are, they are surely not human...
29	* "With Me Tonight" has an unsettlingly creepy organ undercurrent running through the entire song. It doesn't help that the organ begins right after an unidentified dark voice says "GOOD" (some have theorized it to be an archival recording of [[AbusiveParents Murry Wilson]], which does ''not'' help things). And then there's the song itself, which, what with its repetitiveness of variations of "you're with me tonight," borders on creepy obsession.
30	* "Wind Chimes". It's unsettling enough that the song has a calm yet dark vibe, then once the last verse is about to end, there is a dissonant, unidentifiable noise that blares out of nowhere. Could count as a [[LastNoteNightmare middle note nightmare]]. And the next section alternates between a heavenly falsetto and a dark bass that keeps on getting darker in pitch for every line...
31	** The coda of "Wind Chimes" is arguably the prettiest moment on the entire record, but it's mixed so quietly that you have to crank the volume to hear it.....only for the [[JumpScare screeching organ]] that opens the following track "Gettin' Hungry" to shatter your eardrums. No doubt a cruel musical joke from Brian.
32	* "Wonderful", in its sparse arrangement of piano and sustained organ, benefits from a sinister vocal turn by Carl Wilson (transforming what was a song about [[TheirFirstTime losing consensual innocence]] feel like a song about being an unsuspecting target of a prowling rapist, making it all the more creepy). The seemingly-jovial interlude is dissonant at first, [[FridgeHorror but makes a lot of sense when put to context, heightening the listener's fears]]. The mood is somber and gloomy, resembling a funeral dirge - as though we are mourning for the untimely demise of the poor girl's virginity. Not something to smile about.
33	* "Whistle In" is a repetitive koan-like song that never resolves itself... it just goes on, and on, and on, and on about the importance of remembering the day and remembering the night, all night along... and then, [[FadeToBlack nothing]]. What makes this worse is knowing about Brian's tendencies towards obsession with repetitive song ideas. It's a glimpse into his mind, people.
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35	'''''Music/TwentyTwenty'''''
36	* The outro to "Be With Me" is quite unsettling. The song as a whole is already haunting but as the song fades out, the repetive outro ceases, and is replaced by the sounds of violins. Then out of nowhere, a shrieking sound can be heard at the very end of a song.
37	* "I Went to Sleep" is quite evidently the product of someone with mental issues, and as Brian's only new contribution to the album (his other contributions were old outtakes), it shows what state of mind he was in at the time.
38	* The fact that "Never Learn Not to Love" is a revised cover of a song written by [[UsefulNotes/CharlesManson a would-be murderer]] is already uncomfortable to start with.
39	* Besides "Never Learn Not to Love", two other songs on the album were written by people who now are convicted murderers.
40	** "Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song)" was originally written in 1940 by [[Music/LeadBelly Huddie Ledbetter]], who in 1918 killed a relative named Will Stafford, although he was pardoned by Texas Governer Pat Norris Neff in 1925.
41	** "I Can Hear Music" was co-written by Phil Spector for the American girl band "The Ronettes" in 1966. In 2003, Phil Spector would kill actress Lana Clarkson in his California mansion, and in 2009 Spector would be found guilty of second-degree murder, and sentenced to nineteen years to life in prison, where he remained until his death in 2021.
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43	'''''Music/SurfsUp1971'''''
44	* The cover art of ''Surf's Up''. If you just glanced over it without seeing the title plaque, chances are your immediate assumption would be that this is some freakin' heavy metal right here. And without having heard the songs themselves, titles like "Don't Go Near the Water" just sound very creepy and ominous.
45	** Speaking of "Don't Go Near the Water", Brian contributes a haunting, discordant piano part that plays throughout the song which is enough to summon images heavily polluted oceans into the listener's head.
46	* "'Til I Die" immediately begins with a droning organ chord progression that plays throughout the whole song. The song's themes of despair, anguish, and (of course) death further brings chills down the listener's spine.
47
48	'''''Other'''''
49	* "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnyGklpCc84 My Solution]]", a ''Landlocked'' outtake. Nonsensical, drug-addled spoken word soliloquy about some kind of mad doctor(?) featuring dark, eerie synths equals some creepy shivers, for sure.[[note]]However, if you are now in need of some NightmareRetardant, Brian later reworked it as a joyful anthem of recovery for his 1998 album, ''Imagination''![[/note]]
50	* The ''Good Vibrations'' box set includes the ''Music/AdultChild1977'' outtake "It's Over Now". Problem is, due to some sort of error, the speed and thus pitch has been lowered, rendering Music/CarlWilson's voice unfamiliar and difficult to place. So now, out of nowhere you have this voice you don't entirely recognize singing this hopeless, bleak song about what sounds like the worst break-up ever... shades of blue and purple aren't gonna be the only things haunting you!
51	* [[http://i.imgur.com/BMdFDCe.jpg This picture]]. Brian's looking RIGHT INTO YOUR SOUL.
52	* [[https://spectator.imgix.net/content/uploads/2016/11/Beachboys.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format,redeye&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=620&h=413 This picture.]] Behold, Music/MikeLove's NightmareFace. Or, if you want to see it in motion, his version of ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np-XhFH3wOM Monster Mash]].''
53	* Not related to the band's music but what is surely a terrifying thought is that Music/DennisWilson had the freaking '''''[[UsefulNotes/CharlesManson Manson family]]''''' living in his home for a while!
54	* The beginning of "Deidre" sounds very eerie, especially if you heard the song ''VideoGame/EarthBound1994'' sampled for "Cave of the Past".

Context NightmareFuel / TheBeachBoys