(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 31 October 2025 19:33, UK
In 2025, the musical fraternity became weaker following the sad passing of The Beach Boys’ songwriting giant Brian Wilson.
The death of Wilson was a heartbreaking loss. However, one positive to mine from the unwanted situation was an excuse to dive back into his world-class repertoire of material, and reflect upon the gift of music that he left behind.
The term ‘legend’ gets used liberally in a musical setting, but it is one of the only adequate phrases to describe Wilson, who gave everything to his pursuit of musical brilliance. He single-handedly changed how people viewed the album format with Pet Sounds and pushed production into an entirely new era.
He was the person responsible for writing beloved songs such as ‘Surfin’ USA’, ‘Good Vibrations’, ‘God Only Knows‘, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, and bundles more classics that are among the best pop compositions in history.
Wilson’s incomparable talent was best summarised by Bob Dylan, who once said: “Jesus, that ear. He should donate it to the Smithsonian. The records I used to listen to and still love, you can’t make a record that sounds that way. Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn’t make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.” Dylan then lauded him as a “genius” following his death.
The Beach Boys with Brian Wilson. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Picking one favourite song from Wilson’s career is a difficult enough task as a fan, let alone as the person responsible for birthing the string of timeless creations.
His answer to the impossible question is a surprising one, but like with much of his best work, it’s a song that didn’t come easily to Wilson. However, rather than one of his best-known creations, Wilson opted for ‘Darlin” from 1967’s Wild Honey as his career highlight.
Despite Wilson’s warm feelings for the song, ‘Darlin” wasn’t a hit for the group, charting at 19 on the Billboard Hot 100. Moreover, Wild Honey was the worst-selling album of their career upon release. On the LP, The Beach Boys moved into a blue-eyed soul direction and away from their pop-rock roots. For most fans, this was an unpopular decision, but Wilson never considered the opinions of others when it came to his career.
The revelation came during an interview with American Songwriter about his “favourite song” he’d ever written in 2015, to which he simply responded: “I like a song called ‘Darlin’.’ I just like the melody.”
However, despite Wilson considering ‘Darlin” to be the zenith of his songwriting career, he did try to give it a way.
In an interview with Goldmine in 2011, Wilson said of the backstory to the track: “I was writing more in a soul/R&B bag. The horns were conceived as a Phil Spector kind of a horn thing. ‘Darlin’ was for Three Dog Night (known as Redwood at the time). They recorded it and said, ‘No, you can have it,’ so I gave it to Carl to sing. That song took about a week to write.”
Three Dog Night were a group led by Danny Hutton. He has a different version of events from Wilson, and claimed The Beach Boys rescinded their offer of gifting ‘Darlin” rather than the other way round. Speaking to Hamptons in 2019, Hutton said: “[Wilson] actually helped us record his song ‘Darlin’,’ that he had just written.”
He added: “However, when The Beach Boys came back from on tour, they were not happy about that, so they stripped our vocals off the track and put theirs on it.”
Considering how highly Wilson adored ‘Darlin”, it seems far more feasible that Hutton’s story is closer to the truth than The Beach Boys icon. However, he was the person who wrote it and considering the love he had for it, then, who can blame him for keeping ‘Darlin” all to himself.
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