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Fri 28 August 2026 23:00, UK
Rick Rubin always tended to have his own specific language as a producer.
He didn’t have the traditional methods of telling people to play a song multiple times in a row all the time, because whenever he heard some of his clients, he was searching for music that had something that spoke to him a lot more than the simple notes being played and every note being in tune. He was after something that was a little bit more human, but there are some musicians that he heard throughout his career that had a superhuman ability every time they walked into the studio.
But a lot of what Rubin learned from working with his clients was always about finding the right kind of magic in the studio. No one could have possibly known what Public Enemy was going to become once they made It Takes a Nation of Millions, but as soon as anyone heard Chuck D blare out the first few lines of ‘Bring the Noise’, everyone in the world knew exactly what Rubin and the rest of the band were going for.
The bearded guru was after music that could physically move you, but it turns out that some of the greatest songs ever made are usually the ones that have a more subtle approach to everything. Johnny Cash wasn’t going to be playing the same kinds of songs that Slayer had done when Rubin worked with them, but when you look at the way that ‘The Man in Black’ lived through every song he sang on his American series of albums, his voice was heavier than most metal bands could ever hope to be.
That kind of effect wasn’t lost on Rubin whenever he was in the presence of a true original, but not everything was about trying to capture that sort of emotion. Sometimes the biggest names in music are practically born with that musical bug deep inside of them, and while Rubin definitely heard it in people like Paul McCartney when talking with him, Brian Wilson was the kind of musician that no one has a proper category for.
And that’s not because he was too weird for the average listener. The Beach Boys’ early hits had some of the finest harmonies that have ever been put to tape, but the real challenge was wondering how the hell so much brilliance could come out of one man. Pet Sounds was already a masterpiece, but the fact that all those harmony parts on ‘Surf’s Up’ could come out of one person’s head defied any kind of explanation.
Rubin didn’t even try to understand it most of the time, because for him, half of the fun was knowing that Wilson’s music was almost divinely inspired, saying, “He heard things that other people couldn’t hear and would make the effort to get them onto tape so that we could all hear them. And they were often unusual things, very beautiful things, very beautiful harmonies and arrangements that might not make sense to anyone else at the time.”
Further reading: From The Vault
Granted, Wilson admitted that lyrics weren’t always his strong suit, but even for the simplistic rhyme schemes that he would have from time to time, every one of his songs hit on the kind of basic human emotion everyone feels. No one falls in love without thinking of the lyrics to ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times’ is the kind of feeling that any teenager has gone through when they feel like no one understands them.
So while Wilson did have a knack for making music that touched people’s hearts on the pop charts, his legacy isn’t just reserved for being one of the best in pop music. Rubin understood that he deserved to be on a higher plane of songwriters, and when looking at the rich legacy he left behind, Wilson seems to occupy the same space that people like John Williams have had in everyone’s heart.
