(Credits: Far Out / Caribou Records / Public Domain)
Sat 20 December 2025 14:46, UK
For someone who’s made as much material as Brian Wilson, you can forgive some of the more forgettable moments in his catalogue. As much as Mike Love made a mockery of The Beach Boys in the 1980s with the kind of kitschy muzak for baby boomers, there was always an innocence to Wilson’s melodies that made them sound timeless compared to the traditional surfing songs he spat out in his early days. While Pet Sounds is still justifiably considered his masterpiece, it’s insane to think that Wilson doesn’t like ‘I’m Waiting For the Day’.
If you were to take any cut off the album, you’d have a crash course on how to write a great pop song. Excluding the instrumental tracks that everyone normally skips past on their first run-through, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ and ‘That’s Not Me’ were made with the intention of throwing out the rulebook on what bubblegum pop should be.
Wilson was also ready to take on a lot more serious topics. Pop music is never going to run short on love songs, but hearing Wilson sing about a troubled relationship on ‘Caroline No’ or trying to understand his other half on ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)’ sounds like they could have been written today.
‘I’m Waiting for the Day’ definitely falls into that camp as well, but there’s a slight asterisk next to it. From the opening thumping drums to the very end, ‘I’m Waiting For The Day’ is just one of those songs that cheer you up. It’s like Wilson channelled pure serotonin into it, infusing each instrument and each field-recorded train sound with unabashed joy.
That’s all down to the song’s outright energy. It’s like you can feel that each and every element was played with real enthusiasm, as if the fun within the studio bursts out through your headphones. From a songwriting perspective, it’s not a major stand-out, but for vibes alone, this track has to rank highly as a major contributor to the album’s feel-good, sunny disposition.
The marvellous album cover for ‘Pet Sounds’. (Credits: Album Cover)
The song sounds like innocent romance when Wilson sings it, but the lyrics can also go in a bit of a different direction, depending on how you look at it. If he’s talking about his girlfriend having cold feet about going out with him, that’s fine, but considering Love had a hand in writing some lyrics, it gets a bit awkward coming from a man who is now known for trying to be a ladies’ man well into his 80s.
Then again, Wilson was more frustrated with how he delivered the song than anything else, recalling in the album’s liner notes, “That’s the one cut off the album I didn’t really like that much. But, you know, it’s okay, it’s not a case of liking or not liking it; it was an appropriate song, a very, very positive song. I just didn’t like my voice on that particular song”.
Although Brian Wilson may be one of the few artists who could probably make the most tone-deaf singer sound heavenly, you can understand where he’s coming from just a little bit. Love’s nasal delivery would have never worked on a track like this, but perhaps it would have been better suited to someone like his brother, Carl. He’d already worked his magic on ‘God Only Knows,’ so why not try the same thing here?
If you were to remove Brian from the final tape, something would have definitely been missing. It just comes back to the old saying that no one sings a song as well as its composer, and if Wilson believed these words in his soul, there’s a good chance that nobody could have matched his intensity.
Given how personal a track like this is, Pet Sounds feels less like a Beach Boys and more like a Brian Wilson solo album that happened to feature every member of the band sitting in. ‘I’m Waiting For the Day’ probably wasn’t the most high-profile song for a reason, but when that outro starts playing, there’s no one in the general vicinity of the record who doesn’t have a smile on their face.
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