186-747: Pet Sounds is the eleventh studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys , released on May 16, 1966, by Capitol Records . It was initially met with a lukewarm critical and commercial response in the United States, peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Top LPs chart. In the United Kingdom, however, the album was lauded by critics and reached number 2 on the Record Retailer chart, remaining in
372-556: A "magical" pianistic texture around a traditional Polish Christmas carol : Maurice Ravel 's Pavane de la Belle au Bois Dormant from his 1908 suite Ma Mère l'Oye exploits the delicate transparency of voicing afforded through the medium of the piano duet . Four hands can cope better than two when it comes to playing widely spaced chords. This is especially apparent in bars 5–8 of the following extract: Speaking of this piece (which also exists in an orchestral version), William Weaver Austin writes about Ravel's technique of "varying
558-648: A Beach Boys album for the Christmas 1965 market. In October, Wilson and his wife, 17-year-old singer Marilyn Rovell , moved from a rented apartment in West Hollywood to a home on Laurel Way in Beverly Hills , where he said he spent the subsequent months contemplating "the new direction of the group". Wilson devoted the last three months of 1965 to polishing the vocals of "Sloop John B" and recording six new original compositions. " The Little Girl I Once Knew ", released as
744-420: A bridge between Wilson's progressive musical conceptions and the group's traditional pre-1965 approach. On July 12, Wilson recorded a backing track for " Sloop John B ", but after laying down a rough lead vocal, he set the song aside for some time, concentrating on the recording of what became their next LP, the informal studio jam Beach Boys' Party! , in response to their record company Capitol 's request for
930-509: A certain degree doesn't care if it's popular. — Bill Wyman in Vulture (2016) The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was also greatly influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists. The sound of an electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered jazz music in
1116-403: A crucial role in orchestration . Near the start of Schubert 's Symphony No. 8 (the "Unfinished" Symphony), the oboe and clarinet play a theme together in unison , an "evocative and uncommon combination," "an embodiment of melancholy... over a nervous shimmer of semiquavers in the strings". The opening theme of the last movement of Mozart 's Piano Concerto No. 24 is played throughout by
1302-418: A departure from the Beach Boys' previous records with its orchestral approach, intimate subject matter, and abandonment of themes related to surfing, cars, or superficial expressions of love. Wilson also directed his new lyrical approach toward the autobiographical, with his songs written from the perspective of vulnerable, neurotic, and insecure narrators. Summer Days followed three months later and represented
1488-403: A dozen. Electric and acoustic basses were frequently doubled, as was typical for the era's pop music, and played with a plectrum. Drums were not arranged in a traditional manner of keeping time, but instead, to provide "rhythmic texture and color". Two tracks are instrumentals: " Let's Go Away for Awhile " and " Pet Sounds ". They were originally recorded as backing tracks for existing songs, but by
1674-514: A fondness for a good beat, a meaningful lyric with some wit, and the theme of youth, which holds an "eternal attraction" so objective "that all youth music partakes of sociology and the field report ." Writing in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), he said this sensibility is evident in the music of folk singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked , rapper LL Cool J , and synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys —"all kids working out their identities"—as much as it
1860-477: A foundation of simple syncopated rhythms in a 4 meter , with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies often originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian , as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s, and particularly from
2046-609: A frequent addition to the established rock format of guitars, bass, and drums in subsequent progressive rock. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction. The Pretty Things ' SF Sorrow (1968), the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), and the Who 's Tommy (1969) introduced
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#17328526051642232-411: A good idea." —Brian Wilson, 1977 Spirituality was another core inspiration for the album. Asked about Pet Sounds in various interviews, Wilson frequently emphasized the album's spiritual qualities, saying that he had held prayer sessions with his brother Carl and "kind of made [the recording sessions into] a religious ceremony." In a 1995 interview, he stated, "We prayed for an album that would be
2418-484: A higher price point. Wilson found that Rubber Soul subverted this by having a wholly consistent thread of music. Inspired, he rushed to his wife and proclaimed, "Marilyn, I'm gonna make the greatest album! The greatest rock album ever made!" Comparing Pet Sounds to Rubber Soul , author Michael Zager wrote that Pet Sounds has more in common with Spector's productions, and that the album recycles many of Spector's Wall of Sound production watermarks. Wilson said that he
2604-612: A key feature of psychedelia. Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the last years of the decade. 1967 saw the Beatles release their definitive psychedelic statement in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , including the controversial track " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ", the Rolling Stones responded later that year with Their Satanic Majesties Request , and Pink Floyd debuted with The Piper at
2790-568: A loud amplified sound, often centered on the electric guitar, based on the Chicago blues , particularly after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters in 1958, which prompted Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated . The band involved and inspired many of the figures of the subsequent British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream , combining blues standards and forms with rock instrumentation and emphasis. The other key focus for British blues
2976-552: A lover's unwavering loyalty; " I Know There's an Answer ", a critique of LSD users; and " I Just Wasn't Made for These Times ", about social alienation. Incorporating elements of pop , jazz , exotica , classical , and the avant-garde , Wilson's Wall of Sound –based orchestrations mixed conventional rock set-ups with elaborate layers of vocal harmonies , found sounds , and instruments rarely if ever associated with rock, such as bicycle bells , French horn , flutes , Electro-Theremin , string sections , and soda cans . It marked
3162-572: A mainstream audience with hits including " Blowin' in the Wind " (1963) and " Masters of War " (1963), which brought " protest songs " to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences. Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' " House of the Rising Sun " (1964), which
3348-485: A major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had moved away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia . By the 1970s, blues rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple , and the lines between blues rock and hard rock "were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre
3534-429: A major influence on subsequent electronic rock . With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours. Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and
3720-410: A more basic form of rock and roll that incorporated its original influences, particularly blues, country and folk music, leading to the creation of country rock and Southern rock. In 1966 Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde . This, and subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, such as Nashville Skyline , have been seen as creating the genre of country folk ,
3906-481: A multibillion-dollar industry and doubling its market while, as Christgau noted, suffering a significant "loss of cultural prestige". "Maybe the Bee Gees became more popular than the Beatles, but they were never more popular than Jesus ", he said. "Insofar as the music retained any mythic power, the myth was self-referential – there were lots of songs about the rock and roll life but very few about how rock could change
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#17328526051644092-570: A national phenomenon. It is often argued that the surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts was effectively ended by the arrival of the British Invasion from 1964, because most surf music hits were recorded and released between 1960 and 1965. By the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles , Gerry & the Pacemakers and
4278-415: A note or a melodic phrase that is duplicated at the same pitch, but played by different instruments. Melodic doubling in parallel (also called parallel harmony ) is the addition of a rhythmically similar or exact melodic line or lines at a fixed interval above or below the melody to create parallel movement. Octave doubling of a voice or pitch is a number of other voices duplicating the same part at
4464-456: A preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end. Rock quickly spread out from its origins in the US, associated with the rapid Americanization that
4650-444: A prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, heralding the era of pomp or arena rock , which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s. The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield 's Tubular Bells (1973),
4836-446: A rigidly delineated musical definition." In the opinion of music journalist Robert Christgau , "the best rock jolts folk-art virtues—directness, utility, natural audience—into the present with shots of modern technology and modernist dissociation ". Rock and roll was conceived as an outlet for adolescent yearnings ... To make rock and roll is also an ideal way to explore intersections of sex, love, violence, and fun, to broadcast
5022-448: A rival to Rubber Soul . It was like a prayer, but there was some ego there... and it worked." During his first LSD trip in April 1965, Wilson had what he considered to be "a very religious experience" and claimed to have seen God . He soon began suffering from auditory hallucinations and, for the remainder of the year, experienced considerable paranoia. Wilson believed that LSD influenced
5208-625: A rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s " classic rock " period, a few distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock , folk rock , country rock , Southern rock , raga rock , and jazz rock , which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock , influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene . New genres that emerged included progressive rock , which extended artistic elements, heavy metal , which emphasized an aggressive thick sound, and glam rock , which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In
5394-695: A route pursued by a number of largely acoustic folk musicians. Other acts that followed the back-to-basics trend were the Canadian group the Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival , both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s. The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder , Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George , and influenced
5580-478: A slogan one only began to hear in 1972 or so, mobilized all those eager to believe that idealism had become passe, and once they were mobilized, it had. In popular music, embracing the '70s meant both an elitist withdrawal from the messy concert and counterculture scene and a profiteering pursuit of the lowest common denominator in FM radio and album rock . Rock saw greater commodification during this decade, turning into
5766-403: A somewhat intimate relationship, and I didn't know him at all, so he was finding out who I was, and I was finding out who he was. —Tony Asher Asher maintained that he served mainly as a source of second opinion for Wilson as he worked out possible melodies and chord progressions, although the two did trade ideas as the songs evolved. On his role as co-lyricist, he said, "The general tenor of
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5952-501: A standalone single in November, was the last original Beach Boys song issued before any Pet Sounds tracks. In December, Capitol issued the Party! track " Barbara Ann " as a single without the group's knowledge or approval. Brian expressed to reporters that the song was not a "produced" record and should not be considered indicative of the group's upcoming music. From January 7 to 29, the rest of
6138-628: A string of Pet Sounds concert tours in the early 2000s and late 2010s. In 2004, the album was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Pet Sounds is certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), indicating over one million units sold in the U.S. An expanded reissue, The Pet Sounds Sessions ,
6324-598: A subject that Wilson had always wanted to write a song about. They referred to their rough musical sketches as "feels", per the vernacular of the time. To inspire creativity, they sometimes smoked marijuana together. The lyrics to their songs were finished before the recording of any backing tracks (except for "You Still Believe in Me") and recording started virtually as soon as the compositions were written. It felt like we were writing an autobiography, but oddly enough, I wouldn't limit it to Brian's autobiography ... We were working in
6510-460: A variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock . However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song, and concepts of "authenticity". Psychedelic music's LSD -inspired vibe began in
6696-522: A variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music , and rhythm and blues . Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, and asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more generally, noise ." The predominance of white, male, and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted, and rock has been seen as an appropriation of Black musical forms for
6882-410: A virtually unified theme in its emotional content, there was no intended narrative. Asher said that there were no conversations between him and Wilson that pertained to any specific album "concept"; however, "that's not to say that [Brian] didn't have the capacity to steer it in that direction, even unconsciously." Lambert argued that Wilson must have intended the album to have a narrative framework due to
7068-468: A widely spaced G-major chord very softly, at the limits of audibility. According to Ives, the string part represents "The Silence of the Druids—who Know, See and Hear Nothing". In a chord, a note that is duplicated in different octaves is said to be doubled . (The term magadization is also used for vocal doubling at the octave, especially in reference to early music .) Doubling may also refer to
7254-579: A year after Wilson had quit touring with his bandmates and debuted a more progressive sound with The Beach Boys Today! (1965). Wilson viewed Pet Sounds as effectively a solo album and credited part of its inspiration to marijuana and a newfound spiritual enlightenment. Galvanized by the work of his idol Phil Spector and rival group the Beatles , his goal was to create "the greatest rock album ever made", one without filler . An early concept album , it consists mainly of introspective and semi-autobiographical songs like " You Still Believe in Me ", about
7440-501: A young, white and largely male audience. As a result, it has also been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has usually been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it
7626-423: Is centered on the electric guitar , usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar , drums , and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4 time signature using a verse–chorus form , but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music , lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock
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7812-536: Is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Four years later, Bill Haley 's " Rock Around the Clock " (1954) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry , Bo Diddley , Fats Domino , Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis , and Gene Vincent . Soon rock and roll
7998-464: Is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966. By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level as amateur musicians faced college, work or the draft . New styles had evolved to replace garage rock. Although the first impact of the British Invasion on American popular music was through beat and R&B based acts,
8184-413: Is in close position (the most compact voicing), while the second and third are in open position (that is, with wider spacing). Notice also that the G is doubled at the octave in the third chord; that is, it appears in two different octaves. Many composers, as they developed and gained experience, became more enterprising and imaginative in their handling of chord voicing. For example, the theme from
8370-454: Is in B, which keyboardists avoid due to the number of sharps/flats, while "That's Not Me" is in F ♯ , the most distant key from C. Submediants , major or minor, are invoked in a manner that Lambert calls "an important source of overall unity". With the exception of "God Only Knows", every composition on the album that shifts keys or has an ambiguous tonal center "uses essentially the same tonic–submediant relation." Jim Fusilli , author of
8556-544: Is in the music of Chuck Berry , the Ramones , and the Replacements . The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music , with country and western . Debate surrounds
8742-448: Is most evident in the works of Beethoven's last decade, when he was completely deaf, and could hear only in his imagination." Another example of the later Beethoven's daring approach to voicing can be found in the second movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 . In the trio section of this movement (bars 48ff), Martin Cooper notes that “Beethoven has enhanced the strangeness of
8928-411: Is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development. According to Simon Frith , rock was "something more than pop, something more than rock and roll" and "[r]ock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with
9114-399: Is termed as a rock band or a rock group. Furthermore, it typically consists of between three (the power trio ) and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer, and often keyboard player or another instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on
9300-404: Is the "drop-n" terminology, such as drop-2 voicings , drop-4 voicings , etc. (sometimes spelled without hyphens). This system views voicings as built from the top down (probably from horn-section arranging where the melody is a given). The implicit, non-dropped, default voicing in this system has all voices in the same octave, with individual voices numbered from the top down. The highest voice
9486-472: Is the Band." Voicing (music) In music theory , voicing refers to two closely related concepts: It includes the instrumentation and vertical spacing and ordering of the musical notes in a chord : which notes are on the top or in the middle, which ones are doubled, which octave each is in, and which instruments or voices perform each note. The following three chords are all C-major triads in root position with different voicings. The first
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#17328526051649672-416: Is the first voice or voice 1. The second-highest voice is voice 2, etc. This nomenclature doesn't provide a term for more than one voice on the same pitch. A dropped voicing lowers one or more voices by an octave relative to the default state. Dropping the first voice is undefined—a drop-1 voicing would still have all voices in the same octave, simply making a new first voice. This nomenclature doesn't cover
9858-528: The Billboard Hot 100 . The British Invasion greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging many more groups to form. Thousands of garage bands were extant in the United States and Canada during the era and hundreds produced regional hits. Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. It
10044-473: The 33⅓ book on the album, offered that Wilson's tendency to "wander far from the logic of his composition only to return triumphantly to confirm the emotional intent of his work" is repeated numerous times in Pet Sounds , but never to "evoke a sense of unbridled joy" as Wilson recently had with "The Little Girl I Once Knew". Compared to previous Beach Boys albums, Pet Sounds contains fewer vocal harmonies, but
10230-519: The American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, using traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics . In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach
10416-613: The Easy Listening genre-i.e., elevator music -it becomes a historically grounded, if incredibly ambitious, release." Although it has been called " baroque pop ", the often-specious term was not used in critical discussions about Pet Sounds until rock critics in the 1990s began adopting the phrase in reference to artists that the album had influenced. No contemporary press material referred to Pet Sounds as "baroque", and instead, commentators used "progressive" as their descriptor of choice. Writing in 2021, academic John Howland argued that
10602-523: The Pet Sounds album as a collection of art pieces, each designed to stand alone, yet which belong together, you'll see what I was aiming at. ... It wasn't really a song concept album, or lyrically a concept album; it was really a production concept album." With Pet Sounds , Wilson desired to make "a complete statement", similar to what he believed the Beatles had done with their newest album Rubber Soul , released in December 1965. The version of
10788-408: The cultural legitimization of popular music , a greater public appreciation for albums , the popularity of synthesizers , and the development of psychedelic music and progressive / art rock . It also introduced novel approaches to orchestration, chord voicings , and structural harmonies , such as its avoidance of definite key signatures. Although it had been widely revered by industry insiders,
10974-422: The garage rock / post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. Rock has also embodied and served as
11160-417: The protest song , rock music has been associated with political activism , as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity . At the same time, it has been commercially highly successful, leading to accusations of selling out . A good definition of rock, in fact, is that it's popular music that to
11346-454: The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray , and Scotty Moore . The use of distortion , pioneered by Western swing guitarists such as Junior Barnard and Eldon Shamblin was popularized by Chuck Berry in the mid-1950s. The use of power chords , pioneered by Francisco Tárrega and Heitor Villa-Lobos in
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#173285260516411532-461: The 19th century and later on by Willie Johnson and Pat Hare in the early 1950s, was popularized by Link Wray in the late 1950s. Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become
11718-472: The Banshees , Ultravox , and Simple Minds , showed the influence of progressive rock, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences. In the late 1960s, jazz-rock emerged as a distinct subgenre out of the blues-rock, psychedelic, and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. AllMusic states that the term jazz-rock "may refer to
11904-482: The Beach Boys' contemporaries in psychedelic culture and the San Francisco Sound , but still retains a "trippy feel" that resulted from Wilson's LSD use. They attribute this to Wilson's "eclectic mixture of instruments, echo, reverb, and innovative mixing techniques learnt from Phil Spector to create a complex soundscape in which voice and music interweave tightly". In the belief of cultural historian Dale Carter,
12090-442: The Beatles' use of sitar had inspired his choice of instrumentation for the album. Carl and I used to hold a series of prayer sessions for the world. I got into marijuana and it opened some doors for me and I got a little more committed to ... the making of music for people on a spiritual level. ... Carl said, "What if we make an album after these prayer sessions, an album for people? A special album." I said, "That's
12276-609: The Beatles, demonstrating "to the rock generation in general that an album could be a major standalone statement without hit singles", such as on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like the Mamas & the Papas and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New York, where it spawned performers including
12462-596: The Byrds ' shift from folk to folk rock from 1965. The psychedelic lifestyle, which revolved around hallucinogenic drugs, had already developed in San Francisco and particularly prominent products of the scene were Big Brother and the Holding Company , the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane . The Jimi Hendrix Experience 's lead guitarist, Jimi Hendrix did extended distorted, feedback-filled jams which became
12648-431: The Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre. Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with his " Like a Rolling Stone " becoming a US hit single. According to Ritchie Unterberger , Dylan (even before his adoption of electric instruments) influenced rock musicians like
12834-578: The Dominos , followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues rock into the mainstream. Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie , formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac , who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre. In the late 1960s Jeff Beck , also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band,
13020-499: The Gates of Dawn . Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and the Doors ' self-titled debut album . These trends peaked in the 1969 Woodstock festival , which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts. Sgt. Pepper was later regarded as the greatest album of all time and a starting point for the album era , during which rock music transitioned from
13206-464: The Jeff Beck Group . The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page , who went on to form The New Yardbirds which rapidly became Led Zeppelin . Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs. In America, blues rock had been pioneered in the early 1960s by guitarist Lonnie Mack , but the genre began to take off in
13392-498: The Joint " (1949), also covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952; and " Rocket 88 " by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band the Kings of Rhythm ), recorded by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed " race music ") for a multi-racial audience, and
13578-499: The Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and Garfunkel , with the latter's acoustic " The Sounds of Silence " (1965) being remixed with rock instruments to be the first of many hits. These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention . In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments. This British folk-rock
13764-476: The Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds , were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music. Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in
13950-573: The Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers , Herman's Hermits and the Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including 1950s rock and roll, soul, rhythm and blues, and surf music, initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like the Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast , and particularly those from London like
14136-650: The Seeds ) to near-studio musician quality (including the Knickerbockers , the Remains , and the Fifth Estate ). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with flourishing scenes particularly in California and Texas. The Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon had perhaps the most defined regional sound. The style had been evolving from regional scenes as early as 1958. "Tall Cool One" (1959) by
14322-521: The Things You Are ". He remembered that Wilson had minimal awareness of Tin Pan Alley songs and "hadn't given much thought to the structure or instrumentation of orchestral jazz compositions." Having had experience with recording orchestras, Asher encouraged Wilson to employ instruments such as violins, cellos, and bass flutes. In a March 1966 article, Wilson acknowledged that the popular music trends of
14508-676: The US was becoming dominated by lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances were developing a style more strongly influenced by blues-rock pioneers, and were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts; this influence would go on to shape the future of rock music through the British Invasion . The first four years of the 1960s has traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and roll. More recently some authors have emphasised important innovations and trends in this period without which future developments would not have been possible. While early rock and roll, particularly through
14694-604: The USSR and South Africa from 1955 to 1957, influencing the globalisation of rock. Johnny O'Keefe 's 1958 record " Wild One " was one of the earliest Australian rock and roll hits. By the late 1950s, as well as in the American-influenced Western world, rock was popular in communist states such as Yugoslavia, and the USSR, as well as in regions such as South America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American blues music and blues rock artists, who had been surpassed by
14880-470: The United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues , rhythm and blues , and country music . Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk , and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock
15066-722: The Wailers and " Louie Louie " by the Kingsmen (1963) are mainstream examples of the genre in its formative stages. By 1963, garage band singles were creeping into the national charts in greater numbers, including Paul Revere and the Raiders (Boise), the Trashmen (Minneapolis) and the Rivieras (South Bend, Indiana). Other influential garage bands, such as the Sonics (Tacoma, Washington), never reached
15252-527: The advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest commercial success for male and white performers, in this era, the genre was dominated by black and female artists. Rock and roll had not disappeared entirely from music at the end of the 1950s and some of its energy can be seen in the various dance crazes of the early 1960s, started by Chubby Checker 's record " The Twist " (1960). Some music historians have also pointed to important and innovative technical developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including
15438-404: The album as "chapel rock ... commercial choir music. I wanted to make an album that would stand up in ten years." According to biographer Jon Stebbins , "Brian defies any notion of genre safety ... There isn't much rocking here, and even less rolling. Pet Sounds is at times futuristic, progressive, and experimental. ... there's no boogie, no woogie , and the only blues are in
15624-495: The album because he felt that the Beach Boys had "essentially predated the psychedelic era ". Stebbins writes that the album is "slightly psychedelic—or at least impressionistic." Wilson himself felt that while psychedelic features are present in a number of the songs, the overall tone was "mostly not psychedelic". According to academics Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell, Pet Sounds has a "personal intimacy" that sets it apart from
15810-413: The album that he heard was the alternate American edition, whose track listing had been configured by Capitol to have a cohesive folk rock sound. Wilson was impressed that the album appeared to lack filler , a feature that was mostly unheard of at a time when more attention was afforded to 45 rpm singles than to full-length LPs . Most albums up until the mid-1960s were largely used to sell singles at
15996-420: The album was obscure to mass audiences before being reissued in the 1990s, after which it topped several critics' and musicians' polls for the best album of all time, including those published by NME , Mojo , Uncut , and The Times . The album has also been consistently ranked number 2 in all editions of Rolling Stone 's " The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time " list. As a solo artist, Wilson embarked on
16182-422: The album's baroque-pop aesthetic was limited to " God Only Knows ". Pet Sounds is often considered to be psychedelic rock , but many commentators hesitate to name the Beach Boys in discussions of psychedelic music . For example, in his book The Acid Trip: A Complete Guide to Psychedelic Music , Vernon Joyson agreed that Pet Sounds contained psychedelic gestures, but chose not to devote significant coverage to
16368-494: The album's few recurring compositional features that did not reflect a recent trend in Wilson's songwriting were bass lines that descend from 1 to 5. Only four tracks feature a single strongly established key. The rest feature a primary and secondary key or a weak tonal center. Tertian key modulations feature throughout the album and many of the choices of key signatures in themselves were unusual. For example, "You Still Believe in Me"
16554-438: The album's psychedelic qualities are proven through rich "sonic textures", "greater fluidity, elaboration, and formal complexity", "the introduction of new (combinations of) instruments, multiple keys, and/or floating tonal centers", and the occasional use of "slower, more hypnotic tempos". Among other reasons given for the album's perceived psychedelic quality, Jim DeRogatis , author of a book about psychedelic music, writes that
16740-474: The augmented sixth, while in resolving an Italian sixth it is preferable to double the tonic ( third of the chord). Some pitch material may be described as autonomous doubling in which the part being doubled is not followed for more than a few measures often resulting in disjunct motion in the part that is doubling, for example, the trombone part in Mozart 's Don Giovanni . Instrumental doubling plays
16926-588: The band went away on a concert tour of Japan and Hawaii. While at a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1965, Wilson met Tony Asher , a 26-year-old lyricist and copywriter working in jingles for an advertising agency. The two exchanged ideas for songs, and soon after, Wilson heard of Asher's writing abilities from mutual friend Loren Schwartz . In December, Wilson contacted Asher about a possible lyric collaboration, wanting to do something "completely different" with someone he had never written with before. Asher accepted
17112-575: The biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed into the US charts by numerous British bands. During the next two years British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon , the Animals, Manfred Mann , Petula Clark , Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders , Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs , and Donovan all having one or more number one singles. Other major acts that were part of
17298-431: The change [in music style], but I grew to really appreciate it as soon as we started to work on it. It wasn't like anything we'd heard before." He explained that "it took us quite a while to adjust to [the new material] because it wasn't music you could necessarily dance to—it was more like music you could make love to." Rock music Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll " in
17484-405: The chart. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964, drawing an estimated 73 million viewers (at the time a record for an American television program) is considered a milestone in American pop culture. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held 12 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the entire top five. The Beatles went on to become
17670-550: The choices of instruments themselves and the stylistic appropriation of foreign cultures, were similar to those by exotica producers such as Martin Denny , Les Baxter, and Esquivel . Many of the instruments were alien to rock music, including glockenspiel , ukulele , accordion , Electro-Theremin , bongos , harpsichord , violin , viola , cello , trombone , Coca-Cola bottles, and other odd sounds such as bicycle bells. The number of unique instruments for each track average to about
17856-424: The delights and limitations of the regional , and to deal with the depredations and benefits of mass culture itself. — Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide (1981) Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, sex, rebellion against " The Establishment ", social concerns, and life styles. These themes were inherited from
18042-555: The dropping of voices by two or more octaves or having the same pitch in multiple octaves. A drop-2 voicing lowers the second voice by an octave. For example, a C-major triad has three "drop-2 voicings". Reading down from the top voice, they are C E G, E G C, and G C E, which can be heard as the voicings supporting the first three melody notes (following the introductory phrase) of the Super Mario Bros. video game theme . There are four drop-2-and-4 voicings for G . Reading down from
18228-451: The early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts. The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan , Hatfield and the North , Gong , and National Health . The French group Magma around drummer Christian Vander almost single-handedly created
18414-455: The early 1970s, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): The decade is, of course, an arbitrary schema itself—time doesn't just execute a neat turn toward the future every ten years. But like a lot of artificial concepts—money, say—the category does take on a reality of its own once people figure out how to put it to work. "The '60s are over,"
18600-457: The early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies. By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts. " I Want to Hold Your Hand " was the Beatles' first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 , spending seven weeks at the top and a total of 15 weeks on
18786-490: The effect by laying out much of the music four or five octaves apart, with no comfortable ‘filling’ between. This is a layout common in the works of his last years.” During the Romantic Era , composers continued further in their exploration of sonorities that can be obtained through imaginative chord voicing. Alan Walker draws attention to the quiet middle section of Chopin 's Scherzo No. 1 . In this passage, Chopin weaves
18972-510: The electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek , and the elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound pursued by Phil Spector . The instrumental rock and roll of performers such as Duane Eddy , Link Wray and the Ventures was further developed by Dick Dale , who added distinctive "wet" reverb , rapid alternate picking, and Middle Eastern and Mexican influences. He produced
19158-440: The era had also influenced his work and the group's evolution. Conversely, Marilyn recalled that Brian was only consumed by thoughts of creating the greatest rock album ever and "did not think about what music was there on the market, or what was happening in the industry." In a 1996 interview, he said that he and Asher were "kind of like on our own little wavelength" and were not concerned with overtaking Phil Spector or Motown , "It
19344-515: The example set by the Beatles ' 1965 LP Rubber Soul in particular, other British rock acts released rock albums intended as artistic statements in 1966, including the Rolling Stones ' Aftermath , the Beatles' own Revolver , and the Who 's A Quick One , as well as American acts in the Beach Boys ( Pet Sounds ) and Bob Dylan ( Blonde on Blonde ). Garage rock was a raw form of rock music, particularly prevalent in North America in
19530-443: The exception of Love, who had been previewed tracks over the phone by Wilson, the other members were not consulted on any aspect of the record. When they returned to the studio on February 9, they were presented with a substantial portion of the album, with music that was in many ways a jarring departure from their earlier style. According to various reports, the group fought over the new direction. However, Dennis denied that anyone in
19716-420: The first movement, detached from its surroundings by silence, seems to be a perverse spacing of the E minor triad, with the minor third doubled in four octaves while the root and fifth appear only twice, at high and low extremes... When the tonic C major finally arrives, in the last movement, its root is doubled in five octaves, its fifth is left to the natural overtones, and its decisive third appears just once, in
19902-491: The first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk , Tangerine Dream , Can , Focus (band) and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy " krautrock ", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music ), would be
20088-451: The folk scene. The first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock were the 13th Floor Elevators from Texas. The Beatles introduced many of the major elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this period, such as guitar feedback , the Indian sitar and backmasking sound effects . Psychedelic rock particularly took off in California's emerging music scene as groups followed
20274-503: The format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums , often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme. King Crimson 's 1969 début album, In the Court of the Crimson King , which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron , with jazz and symphonic music , is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in
20460-445: The group had disliked Pet Sounds , calling the rumors "interesting". He said that there was "not one person in the group that could come close to Brian's talent" and "couldn't imagine who" would have resisted Brian's leadership. Carl supported that such accusations were "bullshit" before adding, "We loved that record. Everybody loved that record, it was a joy to make." Jardine differed in his recollection, "I wasn't exactly thrilled with
20646-637: The group – Brian's brothers Carl and Dennis , their cousin Mike Love , and their friend Al Jardine – continued to tour without Wilson, who was replaced on the road first by session player Glen Campbell and later by Bruce Johnston of Bruce & Terry and the Rip Chords . Wilson immediately showcased great advances in his musical development with the 1965 albums The Beach Boys Today! and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) . Released in March, Today! signaled
20832-426: The highest range. This spacing is as extraordinary as the spacing of the first chord, but with the opposite effect of super-clarity and consonance, thus resolving and justifying the first chord and all the horror of the miry clay. Some chord voicings devised by composers are so striking that they are instantly recognizable when heard. For example, The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives opens with strings playing
21018-471: The hollowness at their core." Rogovoy points to "Wouldn't It Be Nice", which "starts right out with a 180-degree turn – 'Wouldn't it be nice if we were older .'" Critics Richard Goldstein and Nik Cohn found that the album's melancholic lyrics sometimes jarred with the overall tone of the music. Cohn suggested that Pet Sounds comprised "sad songs about loneliness and heartache; sad songs even about happiness." Rolling Stone editor David Wild wrote that
21204-453: The impetus was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their inspiration more directly from American blues , including the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds . British blues musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of figures such as Lead Belly , who was a major influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert Johnson . Increasingly they adopted
21390-401: The independence of the lines: parallel thirds (at the beginning) and parallel sixths (at the end) are not maintained throughout the entire measure, and no interval is in parallel for more than four consecutive notes. Consideration of doubling is important when following voice leading rules and guidelines, for example when resolving to an augmented sixth chord never double either notes of
21576-685: The interval of a third at the end of each verse" as a typically "Wilsonian" feature that recurs throughout the album, along with a "madrigal sigh motif " that can be heard in "That's Not Me", where the motif concludes each line of the verses. Wilson tended to write vertically, in block chords , rather than in the horizontal manner of classical composition. An overwhelming majority of the chords are slashed , diminished , major seventh , sixths , ninths , augmented , or suspended . Simple (major or minor triad) chords are invoked minimally. The bass lines were written melodically and tend to play parts that avoid focusing on tonic notes. According to Lambert, one of
21762-460: The invasion included the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five . The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols , that had dominated the American charts in
21948-511: The label were R&B oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag , Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago , to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and the early 1970s. British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum . From
22134-446: The late 1950s and 1960s. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters. Following
22320-489: The likelihood of his familiarity with similar "theme albums" by Frank Sinatra and the Four Freshmen . Responding to the songwriters' denials of a conscious lyric theme, journalist Nick Kent observed that the album's lyrics show "the male participant's attempts at coming to terms with himself and the world about him" and that every song "pinpoints a crisis of faith in love and life" with the exception of "Sloop John B" and
22506-410: The loudest, wildest, most electrified fusion bands from the jazz camp, but most often it describes performers coming from the rock side of the equation." Jazz-rock "...generally grew out of the most artistically ambitious rock subgenres of the late '60s and early '70s", including the singer-songwriter movement. Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into
22692-472: The lyrics was always his ... and the actual choice of words was usually mine. I was really just his interpreter." Asher later stated that he made some significant musical contributions to " I Just Wasn't Made for These Times ", " Caroline, No ", and " That's Not Me ". In Marilyn's recollection, Brian worked on Pet Sounds virtually nonstop, and that when he was home, "he was either at the piano, arranging, or eating." Asher differed, "I wish I could say Brian
22878-473: The lyrics were "intelligent and moving, but ... not pretentious", much like the songs of Tin Pan Alley. It is sometimes suggested that Pet Sounds tells a story about the unraveling of a romantic relationship. Author Scott Schinder argued that Wilson and Asher crafted a song cycle about "the emotional challenges accompanying the transition from youth to adulthood", supplemented with "a series of intimate, hymn-like love songs". Even though Pet Sounds has
23064-476: The many recordings which have been suggested as "the first rock and roll record ". Contenders include " Strange Things Happening Every Day " by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1944); " That's All Right " by Arthur Crudup (1946), which was later covered by Elvis Presley in 1954; " The House of Blue Lights " by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack (1946); Wynonie Harris ' " Good Rocking Tonight " (1948); Goree Carter 's "Rock Awhile" (1949); Jimmy Preston 's " Rock
23250-550: The meditative character of the music: Philip Barford describes the Arietta of Op. 111 as "simplicity itself… its widely-spaced harmonization creates a mood of almost mystical intensity. In this exquisite harmonization the notes do not make their own track – the way we play them depends upon the way we catch the inner vibration of the thought between the notes, and this will condition every nuance of shading." William Kinderman finds it "extraordinary that this sensitive control of sonority
23436-669: The mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley . Hispanic and Latino American movements in rock and roll, which would eventually lead to the success of Latin rock and Chicano rock within the US, began to rise in the Southwest ; with rock and roll standard musician Ritchie Valens and even those within other heritage genres, such as Al Hurricane along with his brothers Tiny Morrie and Baby Gaby as they began combining rock and roll with country- western within traditional New Mexico music . In addition,
23622-603: The mid-1960s the Left Banke , the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords , wind , and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum 's " A Whiter Shade of Pale " (1967), with its Bach -inspired introduction. The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album Days of Future Passed (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesizers. Classical orchestration, keyboards, and synthesizers were
23808-479: The mid-1960s and so called because of the perception that it was rehearsed in the suburban family garage. Garage rock songs often revolved around the traumas of high school life, with songs about "lying girls" and unfair social circumstances being particularly common. The lyrics and delivery tended to be more aggressive than was common at the time, often with growled or shouted vocals that dissolved into incoherent screaming. They ranged from crude one-chord music (like
23994-435: The mid-1960s as acts developed a sound similar to British blues musicians. Key acts included Paul Butterfield (whose band acted like Mayall's Bluesbreakers in Britain as a starting point for many successful musicians), Canned Heat , the early Jefferson Airplane , Janis Joplin , Johnny Winter , the J. Geils Band and Jimi Hendrix with his power trios , the Jimi Hendrix Experience (which included two British members, and
24180-401: The mid-1960s onwards, rock music often used the verse–chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to
24366-533: The most complex instrumental and vocal parts of any Beach Boys album, and the first in which studio musicians (such as the Wrecking Crew ) replaced the band on most of the instrumental tracks. The album could not be reproduced live and was the first time that any group had departed from their usual small-ensemble pop/rock band format for a whole LP. Its unprecedented total production cost exceeded $ 70,000 (equivalent to $ 660,000 in 2023). Lead single " Caroline, No "
24552-461: The new music genre zeuhl with their first albums in the early 1970s. Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing
24738-591: The new music. In Britain the subgenre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of the Eric Clapton -fronted band Cream , had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York–based the Free Spirits with Out of Sight and Sound (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use
24924-574: The notion that he and Wilson were following the models that had been set by Beatles or rock music in general. Asher remembered, "Brian had defined it as wanting to write something closer to classical American love songs, like Cole Porter or Rodgers and Hammerstein ." During the writing sessions, Asher and Wilson regularly introduced different albums and types of music to each other. In particular, Asher said that Wilson "was blown away" after being played jazz records including Duke Ellington 's " Sophisticated Lady " and Lionel Hampton 's rendition of " All
25110-418: The offer, and within ten days, they were writing together, starting with " You Still Believe in Me ". Wilson and Asher wrote together over a two-to-three week period at Wilson's home, likely between January and February 1966. A typical writing session started either with Wilson playing a melody or chord patterns that he was working on, by discussing a recent record that Wilson liked the feel of, or by discussing
25296-556: The opinion of author James Perone, remove the album from "just about anything else that was going on in 1966 pop music". He cites the album's closer " Caroline, No " and its use of wide tessitura changes, wide melodic intervals, and instrumentation which contribute to this belief; also Wilson's compositions and orchestral arrangements which experiment with form and tone colors. Wilson's arrangements combined traditional rock set-ups with unconventional selections of instruments and complex layers of vocal harmonies. His orchestrations, in terms of
25482-465: The psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis , particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It
25668-501: The recurrent themes on that album." According to AllMusic reviewer Jim Esch, the opening track "Wouldn't It Be Nice" inaugurates the album's pervasive theme of "fragile lovers" who struggle with "self-imposed romantic expectations and personal limitations, while simultaneously trying to maintain faith in one other." Comparing the group's past celebrations of adolescence and teenage romance, journalist Seth Rogovoy felt that Pet Sounds "upends and overturns every Beach Boys cliché, exposing
25854-628: The regional hit " Let's Go Trippin ' " in 1961 and launched the surf music craze, following up with songs like " Misirlou " (1962). Like Dale and his Del-Tones , most early surf bands were formed in Southern California, including the Bel-Airs , the Challengers , and Eddie & the Showmen . The Chantays scored a top ten national hit with " Pipeline " in 1963 and probably the best-known surf tune
26040-558: The repeated listening value is similar to a heightened psychedelic awareness, elaborating that its melodies "continue to reveal themselves after dozens of listens, just as previously unnoticed corners of the world reveal themselves during the psychedelic experience". Musician Sean Lennon opined that "psychedelic music is a term that pretty much refers to these sort of epic, ambitious long-form records", and that listening to Pet Sounds in its entirety can feel like "entering another world" temporarily, much like an LSD trip. Pet Sounds refined
26226-445: The rise of rock and roll in the US, found new popularity in the UK, visiting with successful tours. Lonnie Donegan 's 1955 hit " Rock Island Line " was a major influence and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, many of which, including John Lennon 's Quarrymen (later the Beatles ), moved on to play rock and roll. While former rock and roll market in
26412-475: The romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere". In the new millennium, the term rock has occasionally been used as a blanket term including forms like pop music, reggae music , soul music , and even hip hop , which it has been influenced with but often contrasted through much of its history. Christgau has used the term broadly to refer to popular and semipopular music that caters to his sensibility as "a rock-and-roller", including
26598-517: The same era, and by percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ , and the synthesizer. The basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation (prominent lead guitar, second chordal instrument, bass, and drums). A group of musicians performing rock music
26784-513: The same level" as Rubber Soul , but was not interested in copying the Beatles' sound. In a 1966 interview, he said that the scale of the arrangements was the "main difference" between their musical styles, noting that if he had arranged the Rubber Soul track " Norwegian Wood ", he would have "orchestrated it, put in background voices, [and] done a thousand things". In 2009, he said that although " Rubber Soul didn't clarify my ideas for Pet Sounds ",
26970-523: The same pitch or at different octaves. The doubling number of an octave is the number of individual voices assigned to each pitch within the chord. For instance, in the opening of John Philip Sousa 's " Washington Post March ", the melody is "doubled" in four octaves. Consistent parallelism between melodic lines can impede the independence of the lines. For example, in m. 38 of the gigue from his English Suite No. 1 in A major, BWV 806 , J.S. Bach avoids excessive parallel harmony in order to maintain
27156-402: The second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven 's early Piano Sonata No. 10 (1798), presents chords mostly in close position: On the other hand, in the theme of the Arietta movement that concludes his last piano sonata , Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111 (1822), Beethoven presents the chord voicing in a much more daring way, with wide gaps between notes, creating compelling sonorities that enhance
27342-555: The second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave , post-punk and eventually alternative rock . From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge , Britpop , and indie rock . Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk , electronic rock , rap rock , and rap metal . Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including
27528-543: The singles format to albums and achieved cultural legitimacy in the mainstream. Led by the Beatles in the mid-1960s, rock musicians advanced the LP as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, initiating a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock , moved beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms. From
27714-413: The skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman , while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music. Renaissance , formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring
27900-527: The songs use unusual harmonic progressions and unexpected disruptions of hypermeter , both features that were met in ' Warmth of the Sun ' and ' Don't Back Down .'" Author Charles L. Granata referred to Pet Sounds as the culmination of Wilson's songwriting artistry, although his "transition from writing car and surf songs to writing studious ones" had already "exploded in 1965". Pet Sounds includes tempo changes, metrical ambiguity, and unusual tone colors that, in
28086-522: The sonority from phrase to phrase by telling changes of register ." The two chords that open and close Igor Stravinsky 's Symphony of Psalms have distinctive sonorities arising out of the voicing of the notes. The first chord is sometimes called the Psalms chord . William W. Austin remarks: The first and last chords of the Symphony of Psalms are famous. The opening staccato blast, which recurs throughout
28272-539: The sound of a delicate and nuanced orchestral texture : In these three bars, the Bass Clarinet and the Tuba simultaneously sound a sustained pedal point on a low E flat, creating a distinctive blend of timbres . Similarly, the harp arpeggios are also doubled at the unison by the violas, while the first violins and ‘cellos double the main melody an octave apart. One nomenclature for describing certain classes of voicings
28458-672: The themes and complex arranging style Wilson had introduced with The Beach Boys Today! Writing in The Journal on the Art of Record Production , Marshall Heiser observed that the album's music distinguished itself from previous Beach Boys releases in several ways: By contrast, musicologist Daniel Harrison contends that Wilson's advancement as a composer and arranger was marginal in relation to his past work. He wrote that Pet Sounds shows "comparatively little advance from what Brian had already accomplished or shown himself capable of accomplishing. Most of
28644-475: The themes and in Brian's voice." Johnston identified "a tremendous amount" of noticeable doo-wop and R&B influences. Journalist D. Strauss challenged the notion of whether Pet Sounds should be regarded as rock music. He argued that the album's quality and subversion of rock traditions is "what created its special place in rock history; there was no category for its fans to place it in ... But placed within
28830-610: The three-octave voice of Annie Haslam . Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market. The American brand of progressive rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa , Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat & Tears , to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston , Foreigner , Kansas , Journey , and Styx . These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO , all demonstrated
29016-477: The time the album neared completion, Wilson decided that the tracks worked better without vocals. Arranger Paul Mertens, who collaborated with Wilson on live performances of the album, believed that although there are string sections on Pet Sounds , "what's special about that is not that Brian was trying to introduce classical music into rock & roll. Rather, he was trying to get classical musicians to play like rock musicians. He's using these things to make music in
29202-450: The top ten for six months. Promoted there as "the most progressive pop album ever", Pet Sounds was recognized for its ambitious production, sophisticated music, and emotional lyrics. It is now considered to be among the greatest and most influential albums in music history. The album was produced, arranged, and almost entirely composed by Brian Wilson with guest lyricist Tony Asher . It was recorded largely between January and April 1966,
29388-475: The top voice, they are G D F B, B F G D, D G B F, and F B D G. Various drop combinations are possible, given enough voices, such as drop-3, drop-2-and-3, drop-5, drop-2-and-5, drop-3-and-5, etc. Drop voicings are often employed by guitarists , as the perfect fourth intervals between the guitar's strings typically make most close position chords cumbersome and impractical to play, particularly in jazz where complex extensions are commonplace. While open chords are
29574-415: The two instrumental pieces. Granata referenced "Sloop John B" and "Pet Sounds" as the tracks that undermine the album's "thematic thread" and supposed lyrical narrative, yet "contribute to the marvelous pacing". Pet Sounds is sometimes considered a Brian Wilson solo album, including by Wilson himself, who later referred to it as his "first solo album" and "a chance to step outside the group and shine". With
29760-415: The types of vocal harmonies themselves are more complex and varied. Instead of simple "oo" harmonies, the band showed an increasing engagement in multiple vocal counterpoints. There is also a greater occurrence of doo-wop style nonsense syllables, appearing more times here than on any of their previous albums. Wilson invokes his signature falsetto seven times on the album. With the exception of Today! , this
29946-409: The vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the U.K., the hippie movement and the wider Western counterculture movement that spread out from San Francisco in the U.S. in the 1960s, the latter of which continues to this day. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the goth , punk, and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of
30132-441: The violins, but selected phrases are doubled, firstly by the flute playing an octave above; followed by the bassoon an octave below. Finally the violin is joined by both oboe and bassoon together, creating a doubling spanning three octaves: The opening bars of the third movement of Janáček 's Sinfonietta combine unison and octave doublings. The passage illustrates how subtle and carefully differentiated doubling can contribute to
30318-410: The way that he understood, rather than trying to appropriate the orchestra." Musicologist Philip Lambert estimates that the album's "overall unity" is strengthened by "strong musical relationships among songs", for example, the use of 4–3–2–1 stepwise descents and the reverse. Perone concurred that the album contains musical continuity. On "You Still Believe in Me", he references a "stepwise falloff of
30504-524: The work of the Beach Boys , formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums included both instrumental surf rock (among them covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen . The Beach Boys first chart hit, " Surfin ' " in 1961 reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze
30690-533: The work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet (1968) and the Beatles' Let It Be (1970). Reflecting on this change of trends in rock music over the past few years, Christgau wrote in his June 1970 "Consumer Guide" column that this "new orthodoxy" and "cultural lag" abandoned improvisatory, studio-ornamented productions in favor of an emphasis on "tight, spare instrumentation" and song composition: "Its referents are '50s rock, country music, and rhythm-and-blues, and its key inspiration
30876-404: The world, except as a new brand of painkiller ... In the '70s the powerful took over, as rock industrialists capitalized on the national mood to reduce potent music to an often reactionary species of entertainment—and to transmute rock's popular base from the audience to market." Roots rock is the term now used to describe a move away from what some saw as the excesses of the psychedelic scene, to
31062-404: The writing of Pet Sounds because it "brought out some of the insecurities in me, which I think went into the music." He also attributed his greater sense of creative freedom to his use of marijuana. Much of the album's pessimistic and dejected lyric content was inspired by Wilson's marital struggles, which had been exacerbated by his drug habits in particular. Marilyn felt that their relationship
31248-570: Was John Mayall ; his band, the Bluesbreakers , included Eric Clapton (after Clapton's departure from the Yardbirds) and later Peter Green . Particularly significant was the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States. Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith , and Derek and
31434-676: Was 1963's " Wipe Out ", by the Surfaris , which hit number 2 and number 10 on the Billboard charts in 1965. Surf rock was also popular in Europe during this time, with the British group the Shadows scoring hits in the early 1960s with instrumentals such as " Apache " (1960) and " Kon-Tiki " (1961), while Swedish surf group the Spotnicks saw success in both Sweden and Britain. Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal pop music, particularly
31620-501: Was a central reference within the album's lyrics, namely on "You Still Believe in Me" and "Caroline, No". According to Asher, he and Wilson had many lengthy, intimate discussions centered around their "experiences and feelings about women and the various stages of relationships and so forth" in order to inspire subject matter for their songs. This included Wilson's doubts about his marriage, "[his] sexual fantasies", and "his apparent need to get with [his sister-in-law] Diane." Asher disputed
31806-473: Was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock , Chick Corea and Weather Report . The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan , Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music. Reflecting on developments that occurred in rock music in
31992-610: Was awarded co-writing credits on " Wouldn't It Be Nice " and "I Know There's an Answer", but with the exception of his co-credit on " I'm Waiting for the Day ", his songwriting contributions are thought to have been minimal. Commentators and historians frequently cite Pet Sounds as a concept album . Academic Carys Wyn Jones attributes this to the album's "uniform excellence" rather than a lyrical theme or musical motif. Wilson described Pet Sounds as an "interpretation" of Phil Spector 's Wall of Sound production technique. He stated: "If you take
32178-500: Was closer to his personality and perceptions. —Dennis Wilson Asher stated that Wilson aspired to create a collection of songs that were relatable to adolescents. "Even though he was dealing in the most advanced score-charts and arrangements, he was still incredibly conscious of this commercial thing. This absolute need to relate." Carl Wilson offered: "The disappointment and the loss of innocence that everyone had to go through when they grow up and find everything's not Hollywood are
32364-424: Was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers , but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock ), bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues rock began to slip out of the mainstream. By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of
32550-493: Was especially fascinated by the process of combining sounds "to make another", and for Pet Sounds , sought to emulate those aspects of Spector's productions. In a 1988 interview, Wilson said that his goal for the album was to "extend" Spector's music, as he believed that, "in one sense of the word", the Beach Boys were Spector's "messengers". On another occasion, Wilson credited Rubber Soul as his "main motivator" for Pet Sounds . He explained that he had wanted to create music "on
32736-561: Was founded in Britain), and Band of Gypsys , whose guitar virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated of the decade. Blues rock bands from the southern states, like the Allman Brothers Band , Lynyrd Skynyrd , and ZZ Top , incorporated country elements into their style to produce the distinctive genre Southern rock . Early blues rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be
32922-430: Was issued as Wilson's official solo debut. It was followed by two singles credited to the group: " Sloop John B " and " Wouldn't It Be Nice " (backed with " God Only Knows "). A planned successor album, Smile , was never finished . Pet Sounds revolutionized music production and the role of professional record producers, especially through Wilson's pioneering studio-as-instrument praxis . The record contributed to
33108-446: Was more what I would call exclusive collaboration not to specifically try to kick somebody's butt, but just to do it the way you really want it to be. That's what I thought we did." Pet Sounds incorporates elements of pop , jazz , classical , exotica , and avant-garde music . Genres that have been attributed to the album as a whole include progressive pop , chamber pop , psychedelic pop , and art rock . Wilson himself thought of
33294-469: Was released in 1997, featuring the album's first true stereo mix . The July 1964 release of the Beach Boys' sixth album All Summer Long marked an end to the group's beach-themed period. From then, their recorded material took a significantly different stylistic and lyrical path. In January 1965, to focus his efforts on writing and recording, 22-year-old Brian Wilson declared to his bandmates that he would not accompany them on concert tours. The rest of
33480-515: Was taken up by bands including Pentangle , Steeleye Span and the Albion Band , which in turn prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band , Spencer's Feat and later Five Hand Reel , to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic rock in the early 1970s. Folk-rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in
33666-606: Was taking place globally in the aftermath of the Second World War . Cliff Richard is credited with one of the first rock and roll hits outside of North America with " Move It " (1959), effectively ushering in the sound of British rock . Several artists, most prominently Tommy Steele from the UK, found success with covers of major American rock and roll hits before the recordings could spread internationally, often translating them into local languages where appropriate. Steele in particular toured Britain, Scandinavia, Australia,
33852-493: Was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation and the Beatles " I'm a Loser " (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan. The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with the Byrds ' recording of Dylan's " Mr. Tambourine Man " which topped the charts in 1965. With members who had been part of the café-based folk scene in Los Angeles,
34038-430: Was the major force in American record sales and crooners , such as Eddie Fisher , Perry Como , and Patti Page , who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed. Rock and roll has been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in
34224-475: Was the most he had on a Beach Boys album since 1963's Surfer Girl . His voice is also the most prominent on the album. Of the 11 songs, he sang lead on five, shares lead on two, and appears on the choruses of two more. Of the album's 36-minute runtime, his voice is heard for 16 minutes, three more than the rest of the band members. People always thought Brian was a good-time guy until he started releasing those heavy, searching songs on Pet Sounds . But that stuff
34410-450: Was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s. Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated
34596-443: Was totally committed [to writing the songs]. Let's say he was ... um, very concerned ." After their songs were completed, Asher visited a few of the recording sessions, most of which were string overdub dates. Wilson wrote two more songs with other collaborators. " I Know There's an Answer ", which predated the collaboration with Asher, was co-written by Wilson with the Beach Boys' road manager Terry Sachen . In 1994, Mike Love
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