(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 3 April 2026 20:30, UK
From the day that the Beach Boys first got hits, Brian Wilson seemed to be put on this Earth to make the happiest music that he could.
There were more than a few times where their songs could sound too similar when working on their surf-oriented tunes, but underneath all of those soaring harmonies was someone who wanted to make tunes that could make the entire world smile. And while a lot of the greatest music that he ever made had to be put on ice for a while, most of us are lucky to have had an album like Pet Sounds come out.
Never before had one album managed to sound so bittersweet when you look at the track listing. There are so many songs on there that are so emotional they can make you cry, but every single tune ends up sounding so happy when you hear it in context. Those vocal runs in ‘You Still Believe In Me’ would have never had the same kind of impact if Wilson had given it to anyone else, and in ‘I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times’, you can hear the kid that doesn’t fit into the normal world finally coming out.
But even if Wilson didn’t want the album to be a pure solo record by any stretch, ‘Caroline No’ is always going to be the one exception. Wilson loved the idea of making ballads since the day he first wrote ‘Surfer Girl’, and years after the fact, he considered ‘Caroline No’ to be one of the only times where he felt that every single part of the song was exactly right from the moment that he laid it down.
The whole thing is a Brian Wilson solo song in everything but name, and Wilson knew that he had hit a new standard on the tune, saying, “That’s my crown achievement for a ballad. That’s the feminine side of me coming out once again. I enjoyed singing it and I thought that’s a very pretty melody and it has a very Glenn Miller thing with the horns at the end. That was very beautiful.”
And while Wilson could have left the song to the rest of the band to complete, there might be a lot more personal pieces of the song than we realise. He had already been hung up on one of his old flames from high school, named Carol, when he wrote the tune, and if he could never fully express how he felt, singing it was always the best substitution whenever he came upon the right melody.
The other Beach Boys would have been too much to put on this kind of ballad, and the bridge of the song is still one of the most emotional pieces of any Beach Boys record. Hearing Wilson sing his heart out and sound like he’s on the verge of tears is one of the most heartbreaking moments on the record, and considering it comes right at the end, it’s almost as if the happy couple that were trying to make things work on ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ finally came to a tragic ending right at the end of the record.
While Wilson didn’t intend for any of his songs to be this overtly sad by the end of the tune, ‘Caroline No’ always stands out the most because of how real it feels. Many of The Beach Boys’ best tunes are about them trying to make the dream-like scenario of what California is, but everyone needs to know that sometimes the dream doesn’t come true, and even people like Wilson need to move on after the love of their life walks away from them.
Did Wilson intend that when he was writing it? Probably not, but that’s what the music ended up pulling out of him a lot of the time. He wasn’t supposed to be one of the deepest songwriters of all time, but if he was writing melodies on the same level as Mozart, he was going to need lyrics that followed suit whenever he had the kind of backing track that would make the greatest names in pop proud.
