thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard

Good Time, a new song by Owl City (an American synth pop artist), which features Carly Rae Jepsen (a Canadian singer), just screams “Summer is here!” to me.  No matter how tired or stressed I am this song makes me smile and want to get up and move.

The Beach Boys have always meant summer and this summer, the surviving original members of the group have patched up their differences and are making one last tour this summer to celebrate their 50th anniversary.  Yes….these guys are in their late sixties but they still have the most amazing vocals ever and Brian Wilson at 70 still has more musical genius in his little finger than most of today’s musicians.

This first clip was put together by 46807nipster on YouTube and features We’re Together Again (a 1968 Beach Boys song) paired with the lead off song on their new album Think About The Days.

There was a great story about Think About The Days in the June 21, 2012 Rolling Stone.

“Last May, the Beach Boys got to together at Capitol Studios to test the waters for a 50th-anniversary reunion.  The objective that day was to remake “Do It Again” a 1968 single that itself was a throwback to the group’s early sound.  But Wilson had something else in mind, too – so he asked the Beach Boys to gather around the piano to sing some new music he had  been working on.  “None of them knew what he was doing,” says Joe Thomas, a longtime Wilson collaborator who was enlisted to help bring the reunion together.  But Wilson kept on – “C’mon guys, let’s go.”

“When he first started playing the chord progressions,” Love remembers, “I was standing there , thinking ‘Wow, that’s cool, that’s a certain type of Brian Wilson chord change.’  I thought, ‘Shit – he’s still got all of his talents intact.'”

Then Wilson began to call out instructions for the vocals – “layering in our voices,” says Jardine.  “Somehow he had worked out the entire arrangement in his head.  He knew each person’s range, and just stacked one voice on top of the other.”

As great as Think About The Days is, it is the last song on the album, Summers Gone, that is the real masterpiece.  I guarantee that Summers Gone is a song that will makes us all cry the first time we listen to it in the future after Brian has left this world.  See what you think….