(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 9 January 2026 19:00, UK
The bar is insanely high for anyone hoping to do a fraction of what Brian Wilson could whenever he walked into the studio.
Half of the power that Wilson had putting together arrangements was practically a gift from the heavens, and when even members of The Beatles were looking on in awe, everyone knew they were looking at a true legend. So when something came out that fell beneath what Wilson wanted out of his music, there was never a chance it would end up on one of his albums.
If there’s one thing you need to know about The Beach Boys, it’s that the quality control was never the greatest from one record to the next. There are many great songs across a number of their classic releases from the 1960s, but the fact that they are the same band that gave the world albums like Summer in Paradise doesn’t exactly bode well for their overall track record, especially with tunes like ‘Summer of Love’ and the John Stamos version of their beloved ballad, ‘Forever’.
Hell, even when they were making some of their greatest songs with Wilson at the helm, there were still some strange detours that had people scratching their heads a little bit. ‘Roller Skating Child’ does have a fairly decent melody, but the fact that it keeps flipflopping between Wilson talking about picking up a girl and going to a roller rink with his daughter can make for an uncomfortable listening experience when both of them don’t come together that well.
But if there was ever a moment where Wilson could really thrive, it would have to be on his own. Having to answer to what the rest of the band wanted every single time he made a record wasn’t exactly his idea of fun, and when listening to his first solo record, he felt much more at home, even if he still had therapist and professional piece of shit Eugene Landy “guiding” him through the sessions.
The album was still a great time, but after spending years trying to capitalise on that momentum, the follow-up got trapped in development hell for years at a time. Wilson could clearly write great songs again, but after looking at the material, he managed to tuck it away the same way that he did for Smile all those years before.
Then again, if Smile was an undiscovered gem that actually got its due praise decades after the fact, Wilson was emphatic that the lost album Sweet Insanity never had what it took to stand alongside his greatest tunes, saying, “Sweet Insanity was never really released. You’ve got bootlegs, but it was never released. And I thought some of the stuff was pretty good. It wasn’t the best album I ever wrote. We just didn’t think it was good enough.” But was it really that bad?
We’ll never know what it truly sounded like, but, really, how bad could it have been? It’s completely understandable for any artist not wanting to air their dirty laundry out in public, but if Wilson had the gall to release a song like ‘Smart Girls’ with him doing a meagre attempt at rapping, who’s to say that any of the songs that he had worked up there can’t end up seeing the light of day eventually?
What’s left of those sessions might not be enough to give Sweet Insanity the same kind of treatment The Beatles gave to their Anthology songs, but since he’s no longer with us, this could have been a perfect way for people to see the back pages of Wilson’s mind. It might have been embarrassing at the time, but musicians around the world would give anything to hear about what made him tick when finishing his classics.
Related Topics