Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today let's go into another Evening Groove / Three Tune Tuesday post.
As always, thanks to 
For the past few days I have had God Only Knows echoing in my head, ever since a 50th anniversary version of it showed up on my YouTube suggested videos.
Those of you who don't know, this is one of the Beach Boys most acclaimed song—maybe their most. None other than Paul McCartney has praised it unendingly, telling how it is so beautiful that he cried when he first heard it, and calling it the greatest song ever written as well as his single favorite song. He's not the only one, however. In the music industry, you could throw a stone up in the air and it would come down and land on someone who is praising the song.
It was written for Pet Sounds, the Beach Boy's eleventh album, often called Brian Wilson's first solo album because he wrote almost every song, arranged every song, sang lead on almost every song, and taught and coached the other members of the band on exactly how to sing their parts.
Pet Sounds was a huge departure from the Beach Boy's earlier girls/cars/beach songs, changing gears from those pop songs to more mature, creative, and drug-influenced songs that went on to define the latter half of the 60s. It is in fact often said that this is the first Progressive Pop album and influenced all that came after it. Like God Only Knows, Pet Sounds has since gone on you be praised by almost everyone as one of the greatest albums ever recorded, often showing up at number one or two on most best of lists. According to McCartney, it directly inspired Sgt Pepper, the only album that routinely beats Pet Sounds on these best-of lists.
Anyway, let's not get too far in the weeds and end the history lesson there. Suffice to say both album and song are considered pretty good.
So like I said, I've had God Only Knows echoing around in my head for the past few days. So for this week's edition of Three Tunes Tuesday, I thought we'd take a look at the song and three great covers of it.
I'll start with the song itself, but I'll give the 50th anniversary edition that I watched a few days ago. This is not done by the Beach Boys proper, two of which are dead and two of which are not on speaking terms—basically Brian Wilson and Mike Love hate each other (many in the industry and most Beach Boys fans also hate Mike Love, so it's not just Brian on that one). Brian Wilson is singing this one with his band. They are joined by Beach Boy Al Jardine. The lead singer is not Carl Wilson, as it originally was. He sadly is no longer with us. But Jardine's son, Matt Jardine, sings lead and knocks it out of the park.
Listen here:
Let's now move onto three covers that I think are pretty good. None of these even attempt to match the mind-blowing harmonics of the original, but they all do a pretty good job with the song.
(If you for some reason have never heard the original, here is the original 1966 recording)
I'm going to pick covers here that don't just seek to replicate the original exactly, but do something different with it.
Scary Pockets & Nataly Dawn
This is an interesting cover. I'm not otherwise familiar with these guys, but they make some interesting choices here.
Avenged Sevenfold
It starts slow, but then they give it a heavy metal twist, and it works pretty well. I'm not crazy about the beginning because his voice just doesn't work for this song, but when they amp up the rock, it works a lot better.
David Ryan Harris
This one slows down the tempo and chooses to really focus on the emotion. Not a bad choice. Frank Sinatra did the same when he covered Yesterday. I would normally not like playing up the sappiness, but it works on the power of the singer, who really pours his emotion in, giving us a great performance.
Bonus: David Bowie
We'll end with Bowie producing the most Bowie version of the song imaginable. This is so unique and interesting. I love it. I'd put this as my favorite cover, but that is almost cheating because, well, it's Bowie, so that's why I make it my bonus pick.
There are many many more, if you are interested in looking. Absolutely none of them match the original, but they all give us some interesting interpretations.
So what's your favorite?
| David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon. |
