Why the Beach Boys Matter, Tom Smucker
Why the Beach Boys Matter, Tom Smucker
19 Rating(s)
List: $12.99 | Sale: $9.10
Club: $6.49

Why the Beach Boys Matter

Author: Tom Smucker

Narrator: Joe Hempel

Unabridged: 4 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/02/2022


Synopsis

Of all the white American pop music groups that hit the charts before the Beatles, only the Beach Boys continued to thrive throughout the British Invasion to survive into the 1970s and beyond. The Beach Boys helped define both sides of the era we broadly call the sixties, split between their early surf, car, and summer pop and their later hippie, counterculture, and ambitious rock. No other group can claim the Ronettes and the Four Seasons as early 1960s rivals; the Mamas and the Papas and Crosby, Stills and Nash as later 1960s rivals; and the Beatles and the Temptations as decade-spanning counterparts.
This is the first book to take an honest look at the themes running through the Beach Boys’ art and career as a whole and to examine where they sit inside our culture and politics—and why they still grab our attention.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on November 01, 2019

On page 84 Tom is contemplating Pet Sounds: I sometimes wonder if the album's long-term elevated reputation is really the result of a lot of sensitive old white men like me rising to positions of influence and power. It's a good question. In 20 years or so, all these old white sensitive guys will be d......more

Goodreads review by Ryan on March 10, 2021

Fantastic. This is not a biography, but an ambitious exploration into what the Beach Boys meant throughout their career and what they mean now. And Tom Smucker goes deep. It's incredible. 'What did those harmonies mean? (this question floored me). Sometimes they were a part of the palette, a piece of......more

Goodreads review by Mark on March 19, 2019

The Beach Boys have been one of my favorite groups since I was a little kid. Even before I got into the Beatles, I was a Beach Boys fan. I’ve been listening to a lot of the Beach Boys lately, so I was pretty excited to pick up a copy of Tom Smucker’s 2018 book Why The Beach Boys Matter. Smucker is a......more

Goodreads review by Amy on September 17, 2022

If you are looking for a biography of the Beach Boys or Brian Wilson, keep looking because this is not it. It's a combination sociology/musicology/history text about a band that was formed out of a mythological Southern California that fell out of fashion, but came back into fashion again. Well, to......more

Goodreads review by Jim on September 01, 2019

4.5 stars. I learned quite a bit from reading this short book......more