(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Thu 9 April 2026 0:04, UK
Nothing that Brian Wilson ever made was going to get by his watchful eye without some production flourishes.
Despite being one of the best singers that the world has ever produced, his real gift was in arranging every single voice to make every one of those Beach Boys albums sound huge, whether that was the weirdness of ‘Good Vibrations’ or showcasing every single person’s strength on ‘I Get Around’. But even if he had some true rock and roll gems under his belt, he was forever going to be indebted to the music that got him interested in pop music to begin with.
And if you’re talking about Wilson’s greatest inspirations, it all comes back to someone like Phil Spector. The genius behind ‘The Wall of Sound’ was far from the greatest person in the world, but whenever Wilson heard tunes like ‘Be My Baby’ by the Ronettes on the radio, he was absolutely in love with what he heard. The Beatles could make a hell of a noise, but no one seemed to have that same attention to detail when he turned on the radio.
Spector was making bite-sized rock and roll operas whenever he made a new song, and Wilson wanted the chance to make the same thing. And while Wilson did end up having a few great songs of his own under his belt, he still felt that Spector’s handling of holiday classics on his Christmas album was still one of the finest records that he had ever heard, even years after the fact.
Sgt Peppers by The Beatles and even a few Bob Dylan records deserved their kudos, but Wilson said there was no competition when it came to Spector, saying, “My favourites, personally? Well, the Phil Spector Christmas album is probably the greatest album ever produced, I think.” But if you take the holiday connotations away from it, why do all of those songs work so well in that context?
Well, part of it comes from being able to make rock and roll work in that jolly atmosphere. Half the reason why rock and roll was made in the first place was to be party music, and while there are more than a few songs that are reverent to the originals, that ‘Wall of Sound’ is what’s doing a lot of the heavy lifting whenever you look at the kind of vocal arrangements going on in songs like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Sleigh Ride’.
But beyond being a great producer, Spector’s true strength was being a curator of talent, and part of the magic is getting the right singer for the right song. He knew when someone’s voice was better for a particular song, and Wilson seemed to be thinking along the same lines when he started making the calls on Beach Boys records, like getting Hal Blaine and Carol Kaye to replace the rest of the rhythm section in the band.
It’s not that his brothers were terrible musicians by any stretch, but he knew that if he was going to make music that hit him the same way that Spector’s did, he wanted to have people who could eat, sleep, and breathe a song until it was finished. And while Wilson did at least try to do the same thing when he released a Christmas album, there was no way that their surf-infused music was ever going to hold a candle to what Spector had done.
This was a producer operating at the peak of his powers, and while Wilson had a much more spiritual relationship with his music after a while, he couldn’t deny that Spector was the blueprint for what he was working with. He spent his life trying to match those songs, and in doing so, his music seemed to create the entire pop landscape that everyone is chasing after to this day.
