Top 10 Best The Beach Boys Albums

The Top Ten

Pet Sounds

Pet Sounds totally changed the Beach Boys and showed the world what they could do. It's deeper and more personal than their early surfing-themed songs. At the time, Capitol Records considered this album to be a complete failure. However, over the years, it has grown to be considered one of the greatest albums of all time. I wonder if Capitol Records ate their words and apologized to Brian Wilson.

Listen to Paul McCartney about this one: "I believe nobody can claim to be musically educated until they have listened to this album." Those are not his exact words, but that's as close as I can get off the top of my head. He bought a copy for each of his children for their musical education. The Beatles played it for their sound engineers over and over while recording Sgt. Pepper's.

Surf's Up

This is actually a great album, featuring contributions from everyone except Dennis Wilson (marking the first time he didn't write a song since Wild Honey).

Wild Honey

Sunflower

The Beach Boys album where each member contributed a song.

Smiley Smile

Smile

Why this isn't #1 is just beyond me. SMiLE is the greatest piece of music humanity has seen so far. It doesn't matter that Brian didn't finish it in '67 - he did in '04. The whole thing works best as a whole, but come on, Surf's Up, Good Vibrations, Heroes and Villains - all on one album. And everything is linked together so well.

Even in its unfinished form, this album was way ahead of what anyone else was doing at the time, even the Beatles. How this is not #1 defies all explanation.

Greatest piece of music ever recorded.

Surfin' U.S.A.

Today!

Holland

Friends

The Newcomers

? Love You

? Stars and Stripes Vol. 1

The Contenders

Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)

My favorite Beach Boys album! I know I'm going against the grain here - Pet Sounds is number two for me. This album still has the beachy sound that Pet Sounds lacks, yet it has a more mature, jazzy vibe compared to the very early Beach Boys albums. California Girls, Then I Kissed Her, Help Me, Rhonda, and You're So Good to Me are all great songs.

I Love You