History Music / SMiLE

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tbbsmile_1667.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''The [=SMiLE=] Sessions'', artwork by Frank Holmes.]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/08__top10comebackalbums_brianwilson_9385.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''Brian Wilson Presents [=SMiLE=]''.]]

->''"[[TheWildWest Heroes and Villains]]\\
[[TraumaCongaLine Just see what you've done...]]"''

''[=SMiLE=]'' is Music/TheBeachBoys' legendary "[[VaporWare lost album]]". Planned for a 1967 release, it was going to be a ConceptAlbum to follow up on ''Music/PetSounds'', conceptualized as [[FlipFlopOfGod either]] a "teenage symphony to God," a musical journey through Americana, or [[TakeAThirdOption both]]. But due to Music/BrianWilson's gradual CreatorBreakdown, which culminated after listening to ''[[Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand Sgt. Pepper]]'', he abandoned the project.

In its place, the deliberately sparsely produced ''Music/SmileySmile'' was released, containing re-imagined songs and ideas from ''[=SMiLE=]''; several following albums would also contain such material. Through the following decades, session material was extensively bootlegged, building the album's legend as the "greatest unreleased album of all time". It wasn't until the 21st century that the public got not one, but two versions of the legendary lost album.

''Brian Wilson Presents [=SMiLE=]'' is the sixth studio album by Music/BrianWilson, released in 2004. It is an all-new re-imagining of the original project by Wilson, his touring band, and original lyricist Van Dyke Parks (who finally supplied the words to songs that had been known for years as instrumentals). In 2011, this was followed by ''The [=SMiLE=] Sessions'', which was derived from the original 1966-67 recordings. Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smile_Sessions describes]] it as "an approximation of what the completed ''[=SMiLE=]'' album might have sounded like based on the template established in 2004 for ''Brian Wilson Presents [=SMiLE=]''", and it's as close to what the 1967 release would have been as we're ever likely to get.

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!! Tracklist (''The [=SMiLE=] Sessions''):
!!!LP One
[[AC:Side One]]
# "Our Prayer" (1:05)
# "Gee" (0:51)
# "Heroes and Villains" (4:52)
# "Do You Like Worms? (Roll Plymouth Rock)" (3:35)
# "I'm in Great Shape" (0:28)
# "Barnyard" (0:48)
# "My Only Sunshine (The Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine)" (1:55)
# "Cabin Essence" (3:30)

[[AC:Side Two]]
# "Wonderful" (2:04)
# "Look (Song for Children)" (2:31)
# "Child Is Father of the Man" (2:10)
# "Surf's Up" (4:12)

!!!LP Two
[[AC:Side Three]]
# "I Wanna Be Around/Workshop" (1:23)
# "Vega-Tables" (3:49)
# "Holidays" (2:32)
# "Wind Chimes" (3:06)
# "The Elements: Fire (Mrs. O'Leary's Cow)" (2:35)
# "Love to Say Dada" (2:32)
# "Good Vibrations" (4:15)

[[AC:Side Four (LP-exclusive bonus tracks)]]
# "You're Welcome (Stereo Mix)" (1:08)
# "Vega-Tables (Stereo Mix)" (3:49)
# "Wind Chimes (Stereo Mix)" (3:06)
# "Cabin Essence (Session Highlights And Stereo Backing Track)" (5:17)
# "Surf's Up (Session Excerpt And Stereo Mix)" (4:46)

[-Note: CD releases are across a single disc and comprise only the first three sides-]
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!! Tracklist (''Brian Wilson Presents [=SMiLE=]''):
!!!LP One:
[[AC:Movement One: "Americana"]]
# "Our Prayer/Gee" (2:09)
# "Heroes and Villains" (4:53)
# "Roll Plymouth Rock" (3:48)
# "Barnyard" (0:58)
# "Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine" (1:55)
# "Cabin Essence" (3:27)

[[AC:Movement Two: "Cycle of Life"]]
# "Wonderful" (2:07)
# "Song for Children" (2:16)
# "Child Is Father of the Man" (2:18)
# "Surf's Up" (4:07)

!!!LP Two:
[[AC:Movement Three: "The Elements"]]
# "I'm in Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around/Workshop" (1:56)
# "Vega-Tables" (2:19)
# "On a Holiday" (2:36)
# "Wind Chimes" (2:54)
# "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" (2:27)
# "In Blue Hawaii" (3:00)
# "Good Vibrations" (4:36)

[[AC:Side Four (Instrumental Bonus Tracks)]]

# "Heroes and Villains (Instrumental)" (4:46)
# "Cabin Essence (Instrumental)" (3:27)
# "On a Holiday (Instrumental)" (2:36)
# "Wind Chimes (Instrumental)" (2:54)

[-Note: CD releases are across a single disc and comprise only the first three sides-]

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!!Principal Members (''The [=SMiLE=] Sessions''):

* Al Jardine - lead and backing vocals, sound effects
* Bruce Johnston - backing vocals
* Mike Love - lead and backing vocals
* Music/BrianWilson - lead and backing vocals, piano, organ, harpsichord
* Carl Wilson - lead and backing vocals, guitar, bass, percussion
* Music/DennisWilson - lead and backing vocals, drums, organ

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!! Look (Tropes for Children):

* AgeProgressionSong: The entire second movement details in an abstract fashion the hardships of growth, noting its cyclic nature and ending in "Surf's Up" as a symbolic manifestation of renewal and catharsis through understanding of the beauty and importance of childhood as constant hope and happiness.
* ArcWords:
** "Child, Child, Child, Father of the Man..."
** "Nananana Na... Nana Naaaaa..."
** "Roooock, Roooock, Rooooll..."
* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: The Hawaiian lyrics in "Roll Plymouth Rock", depending on whom you ask, are either complete gibberish (which at least fits the rhythm) or a message from Brian that got garbled thanks to his not being a native speaker.
* BaroquePop: Definitely Brian's heaviest foray into the baroque, awash with [[Music/JohannSebastianBach Bach]] influences. Fittingly, one of the prominent instruments is the harpsichord, one of the most emblematic instruments of the baroque period.
** However, the final result ends up sounding little like Bach and more akin to a barrage of Americana, neo-classical, pop and musique concrète seen by a kaleidoscope doo-wop filter.
** Brian Wilson himself mentions that Music/GeorgeGershwin's ''Rhapsody in Blue'' was a major influence in his music and it shows in some of the tracks, most notably "Heroes and Villains".
* BookEnds: Well, almost; ''BWPS'' begins with "Our Prayer", a short snippet of which also serves as a lead-in to "Good Vibrations" (officially the ending of the preceding track, "In Blue Hawaii", a.k.a. "Love to Say Dada").
* BreakingTheFourthWall: Brian in "Vega-Tables" directly invites the listener to send the Beach Boys in their letter telling them the name of the listener's vegetable.
* GenreRoulette: Categorizing the album is a trying task, and make no mistake - it defies explanation. Some songs even switch styles midway, such as the ''a cappella'' opener "Our Prayer" transitioning into a brief rendition of the doo-wop standard "Gee".
** To give further examples of this roulette of influences: "Cabinessece" sounds like an Americana pocket pop symphony, "Vega-Tables" like a comedic DIY Doo-wop "sketch" that takes the idea of musique concrète literally, "The Elements:Fire" resembles a repetitive acid Disney nightmare, the second movement a minimalist baroque song-cycle, etc...
** Entirely deliberate on Wilson's part, as he wanted each segment of the album to have a distinct sound. He went to the extent of using different recording studios for different segments to give them distinct sonic characteristics. The process of compiling the album has been compared to film editing both by Carl Wilson and archivist Alan Boyle, and can be compared to "dangling clauses" in a film where an unresolved action in one segment is picked up and pursued later in the film, and in which each segment has unresolved issues until the denouement. Another consequence is that the tracks on the album, mostly lacking traditional song structures, also lack clearly defined beginnings and endings, as explained below under SiameseTwinSongs.
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: ''Brian Wilson Presents [=SMiLE=]'' is divided across three independent movements, dubbed "Americana," "Cycle of Life," and "The Elements," and is so dedicated to the idea that LP releases of both it and the ''[=SMiLE Sessions=]'' reconstruction dedicate one side to each movement, even though both versions of the album are short enough to fit on one LP just fine. Consequently, both versions dedicate side four on LP copies to bonus tracks.
* LyricalColdOpen: PlayedWith. The album opens with the band's singing, but they're [[{{Scatting}} not singing any lyrics]].
* MinisculeRocking: Several songs on both versions of the album are under two minutes long.
** EpicRocking: On the other hand, they're not really songs in the proper sense. The album could just as easily be considered a single composition with three discrete movements, which respectively last for 16:06, 10:43, and 19:25.
* NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly: The album defies pigeon-holing. Not only does the whole thing sound nothing like any music that came before or after, each individual song sounds wildly different from the one that came before it.
** Just to give an idea of this variety, the first three subsections (talking about the songs doesn't really demonstrate its cyclical and interconnected nature) of its first movement (and that comprise only the first seven minutes of the album) are:
*** "Our Prayer", a hymn / prayer sung in the style of classical music choirs;
*** "Gee", a cover of a doo-wop song by The Crows;
*** "Heroes And Villains", a nearly indescribable mix of faux-opera, symphonic arrangements, Gershwin, Spector, Americana folk , comedy songs, doo-wop, scatting and many others contextualized in an old-timey cowboys and indians setting.
* NewSoundAlbum: After the moody BaroquePop of ''Music/PetSounds'' comes this NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly GenreRoulette.
* OneWordTitle: "[=SMiLE=]", "Gee", "Wonderful" and "Holidays".
* ProgressiveRock: While not generally considered to be an example itself, it's clearly an important precursor to the genre, even bearing in mind that Wilson's intended sequence for the album wasn't released until 2004, and it shares several important traits of the genre (lengthy, concept-based compositions that blend disparate musical genres, feature recurring motifs, and completely throw traditional verse-chorus-bridge song structure out the window as a few examples). Regardless, several tracks ("Surf's Up", "Good Vibrations", "Heroes and Villains") were officially available long before the official release of the album, and their influence on progressive rock is fairly undeniable - not to mention that fan-created bootlegs of ''Smile'' material had been available decades before the official releases. Had the album been released in 1967, it's possible that critics would now tend to think of it as the genre's launching point instead of ''Music/InTheCourtOfTheCrimsonKing''. (Prog historians Hegarty and Halliwell do consider the Beach Boys an early example of a prog rock band, presumably largely on the strength of this material and ''Music/PetSounds''.)
* RecurringRiff: A harpsichord rendition of the chorus of "Heroes and Villains" appears at several points in the first "movement." The harpsichord riff from "Wonderful" also reappears, usually on piano, throughout the second movement.
** Some Hawaiian-esque chanting from "Roll Plymouth Rock" reappears, for no apparent reason, in the bridge of "Vega-Tables".
*** Heck, most of the album can be seen as a varying scale of simple to obscure variations on the bicycle rider theme.
** "Song for Children" gets a very brief reprise at the end of "Good Vibrations".
* RecycledLyrics: The bridge in "Vega-Tables" would eventually become its own song: "Mama Says" on the album ''Music/WildHoney''.
* {{Scatting}}: "Our Prayer", which also gets a brief reprise right before "Good Vibrations".
* ShoutOut: Several. "Surf's Up" alone has references to the French nursery rhyme "Frère Jacques" ("Brother John"), the Creator/EdgarAllanPoe story "Literature/ThePitAndThePendulum", and the Creator/RobertBurns poem "Auld Lang Syne".
* SiameseTwinSongs: Despite the large number of tracks listed above, most of them are more like movements of longer compositions. The album itself is divided into three "chapters" and while there are a couple of gaps within them (in particular, "Good Vibrations" is separated from the rest of the album, though it's not quite a complete fade-out), most sections of music run continuously for around ten to sixteen (or twenty, depending on whether you count "Good Vibrations" as a separate section) minutes. The only complete fade-outs are between "Cabinessence" and "Wonderful" and then between "Surf's Up" and "I Wanna Be Around" or "I'm in Great Shape". Compounding this effect are the fact that most parts of the album lack clearly defined song structures, meaning that songs' beginnings and endings are ambiguous, and Wilson employed an unusual production technique of recording short segments several times, often at different studios, and then splicing his favourite takes together in a technique his bandmate and brother Carl Wilson compared to film editing. This resulted in each segment having a distinct sonic profile rather than the consistent sound typical to recordings of the era, and it was actually extremely groundbreaking in its time; similar techniques would later be employed by, amongst others, Music/PinkFloyd on ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' and Music/{{Yes}} on ''Music/CloseToTheEdge''.
* SpecialGuest: One of the guys chomping celery in "Vega-Tables" is apparently an uncredited Music/PaulMcCartney.
* UrExample: A contender for several aspects of popular music, including ProgressiveRock and {{sampling}}.
* TheWildWest: "Heroes And Villains" goes from romanticized visions of the Old West to acknowledgement that real life back then [[{{Deconstruction}} was pretty shit]].
* WordSaladLyrics: Some of Van Dyke Parks' word choices border on this ("Over and over the thresher and hover the wheat field", "Columnated ruins domino"). This was one of the reasons Mike Love could never quite get on board with the ''[=SMiLE=]'' project -- he thought it was falling into TrueArtIsIncomprehensible.

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* GeniusBonus: The title is a NameDrop to the philosophy of drugs pioneer and LSD advocate Dr Timothy Leary, who summed his ideas up as ''S.M.I2.L.E. – Space Migration, Increased Intelligence, Life Extension''. Leary was a background influence on the psychedelia of TheSixties and was a friend of Brian wilson and other Beach Boys.

It was listed at #381 in Magazine/RollingStone's [[Music/RollingStone500GreatestAlbumsOfAllTime Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time]].

''[=SMiLE=]'' is Music/TheBeachBoys' legendary "[[VaporWare lost album]]". Planned for a 1967 release, it was going to be a ConceptAlbum to follow up on ''Music/PetSounds'', conceptualized as [[FlipFlopOfGod either]] a "teenage symphony to God," a musical journey through Americana, or [[TakeAThirdOption both]]. But due to Music/BrianWilson's gradual CreatorBreakdown, which culminated after listening to ''[[Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand Sgt. Pepper]]'', he abandoned the project. In its place, the deliberately sparsely produced ''Music/SmileySmile'' was released, containing re-imagined songs and ideas from ''[=SMiLE=]''; several following albums would also contain such material. Through the following decades, session material was extensively bootlegged, building the album's legend as the "greatest unreleased album of all time". It wasn't until the 21st century that the public got not one, but two versions of the legendary lost album.

* SiameseTwinSongs: Despite the large number of tracks listed above, most of them are more like movements of longer compositions. The album itself is divided into three "chapters" and while there are a couple of gaps within them (in particular, "Good Vibrations" is separated from the rest of the album, though it's not quite a complete fade-out), most sections of music run continuously for around ten to sixteen (or twenty, depending on whether you count "Good Vibrations" as a separate section) minutes. The only complete fade-outs are between "Cabinessence" and "Wonderful" and then between "Surf's Up" and "I Wanna Be Around" or "I'm in Great Shape". Compounding this effect are the fact that most parts of the album lack clearly defined song structures, meaning that songs' beginnings and endings are ambiguous, and Wilson employed an unusual production technique of recording short segments several times, often at different studios, and then splicing his favourite takes together in a technique his bandmate and brother Carl Wilson compared to film editing. This resulted in each segment having a distinct sonic profile rather than the consistent sound typical to recordings of the era, and it was actually extremely groundbreaking in its time; similar techniques would later be employed by, amongst others, Music/PinkFloyd on ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' and Music/{{Yes}} on ''Close to the Edge''.

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!! Bonus Tracks (Vinyl edition of ''Brian Wilson Presents [=SMiLE=]''):

* NewSoundAlbum: After the moody BaroquePop of Music/PetSounds comes this NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly GenreRoulette.

* NewSoundAlbum:

* NewSoundAlbum: ''Music/CarlAndThePassionsSoTough''. Does not sound like The Beach Boys at all.

* GenreRoulette[=/=]NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly: Categorizing the album is a trying task, and make no mistake - it defies explanation. Some songs even switch styles midway, such as the ''a cappella'' opener "Our Prayer" transitioning into a brief rendition of the doo-wop standard "Gee".

* UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny: One of its most prominent themes - the nuclear narrative thread is a linear, if disruptive, portrayal of Westward Expansion from Plymouth to UsefulNotes/{{Hawaii}} as experienced by a passing bicycle rider.

* ProgressiveRock: While not generally considered to be an example itself, it's clearly an important precursor to the genre, even bearing in mind that Wilson's intended sequence for the album wasn't released until 2004, and it shares several important traits of the genre (lengthy, concept-based compositions that blend disparate musical genres and feature recurring motifs, as a few examples). Regardless, several tracks ("Surf's Up", "Good Vibrations", "Heroes and Villains") were officially available long before the official release of the album, and their influence on progressive rock is fairly undeniable - not to mention that fan-created bootlegs of ''Smile'' material had been available decades before the official releases. Had the album been released in 1967, it's possible that critics would now tend to think of it as the genre's launching point instead of ''Music/InTheCourtOfTheCrimsonKing''. (Prog historians Hegarty and Halliwell do consider the Beach Boys an early example of a prog rock band, presumably largely on the strength of this material and ''Music/PetSounds''.)

* SiameseTwinSongs: Despite the large number of tracks listed above, most of them are more like movements of longer compositions. The album itself is divided into three "chapters" and while there are a couple of gaps within them (in particular, "Good Vibrations" is separated from the rest of the album, though it's not quite a complete fade-out), most sections of music run continuously for around ten to sixteen (or twenty, depending on whether you count "Good Vibrations" as a separate section) minutes. The only complete fade-outs are between "Cabinessence" and "Wonderful" and then between "Surf's Up" and "I Wanna Be Around" or "I'm in Great Shape". Compounding this effect are the fact that most parts of the album lack clearly defined song structures, meaning that songs' beginnings and endings are ambiguous, and Wilson employed an unusual production technique of recording short segments several times, often at different studios, and then splicing them together in a technique his bandmate and brother Carl Wilson compared to film editing. This resulted in each segment having a distinct sonic profile rather than the consistent sound typical to recordings of the era, and it was actually extremely groundbreaking in its time; similar techniques would later be employed by, amongst others, Music/PinkFloyd on ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' and Music/{{Yes}} on ''Close to the Edge''.

** Entirely deliberate on Wilson's part, as he wanted each segment of the album to have a distinct sound. He went to the extent of using different recording studios for different segments to give them distinct sonic characteristics. The process of compiling the album has been compared to film editing both by Carl Wilson and archivist Alan Boyle, and can be compared to "dangling clauses" in a film where an unresolved action in one segment is picked up and pursued later in the film, and in which each segment has unresolved clauses until the denouement. Another consequence is that the tracks on the album, mostly lacking traditional song structures, also lack clearly defined beginnings and endings, as explained below under SiameseTwinSongs.

* SiameseTwinSongs: Despite the large number of tracks listed above, most of them are more like movements of longer compositions. The album itself is divided into three "chapters" and while there are a couple of gaps within them (in particular, "Good Vibrations" is separated from the rest of the album, though it's not quite a complete fade-out), most sections of music run continuously for around ten to sixteen (or twenty, depending on whether you count "Good Vibrations" as a separate section) minutes. The only complete fade-outs are between "Cabinessence" and "Wonderful" and then between "Surf's Up" and "I Wanna Be Around" or "I'm in Great Shape".

** Brian Wilson himself mentions that Music/GeorgeGershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue" was a major influence in his music and it shows in some of the tracks, most notably "Heroes And Villains".

* ProgressiveRock: While not generally considered to be an example itself, it's clearly an important precursor to the genre, even bearing in mind that Wilson's intended sequence for the album wasn't released until 2004, and it shares several important traits of the genre (lengthy, concept-based compositions that blend disparate musical genres and feature recurring motifs, as a few examples). Regardless, several tracks ("Surf's Up", "Good Vibrations", "Heroes and Villains") were officially available long before the official release of the album, and their influence on progressive rock is fairly undeniable - not to mention that fan-created bootlegs of ''Smile'' material had been available decades before the official releases. Had the album been released in 1967, it's possible that critics would now tend to think of it as the genre's launching point instead of ''Music/InTheCourtOfTheCrimsonKing''.

* SiameseTwinSongs: Despite the large number of tracks listed above most of them are more like movements of longer compositions. The album itself is divided into three "chapters" and while there are a couple of gaps within them (in particular, "Good Vibrations" is separated from the rest of the album), most sections of music run continuously for around ten minutes.

* RecurringRiff: A harpsichord rendition of the chorus of "Heroes And Villains" appears at several points in the first "movement." The harpsichord riff from "Wonderful" also reappears, usually on piano, throughout the second movement.

** "Song For Children" gets a very brief reprise at the end of "Good Vibrations".