Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys

Revolver

The Beatles

Less than three years after Beatlemania, the Fab Four set pop on a new course.

One of the great, possibly true stories about 1966’s Revolver concerns an exchange between Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan at London’s Mayfair Hotel about what they were currently working on. (In Dylan’s case, it was Blonde on Blonde.) On hearing the tape loops and death poetry of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Dylan allegedly said to McCartney, “Oh, I get it. You don’t want to be cute anymore.”

For a band that put out “I Want to Hold Your Hand” less than three years earlier, the relative complexity of Revolver in both sound and subject matter not only challenged The Beatles’ image as the pop band the whole family could agree on, but it also put pop on a course toward unfamiliar horizons.

Not only were The Beatles able to bridge their interest in of psychedelia, experimental, and Indian classical music with Motown (“Got to Get You Into My Life”) and what we now think of as classically Beatlesque pop (“Good Day Sunshine”), Revolver cemented the idea of the pop album as an intricate, labored-over studio creation.

“When I met Paul McCartney, I said to him, ‘You know what I really loved about The Beatles? You always had the f*****g best melodies.’”

Ozzy Osbourne

Pet Sounds

The Beach Boys

When you’re young, everything hits with the weight of an orchestra.

Brian Wilson’s arrangements brought a complexity to rock music that nobody had heard before, but they also captured a simple, poetic point: When you’re young, everything hits with the weight of an orchestra. At a moment when bands like The Velvet Underground were starting to use pop to explore bracing realities, Pet Sounds reached back to the fantasies of ’30s pop and ’50s exotica, of old Hollywood and early television. And as sacred as the album’s mood is (Wilson called his next project, Smile, a “teenage symphony to God”), it makes sense that its co-lyricist, Tony Asher, had come from advertising: Despite the ambition, Wilson also knew he needed to project something neat, immediate, and universal.

“It really made people understand that an album can be an incredible journey.”

Graham Nash

Of all Pet Sounds’ legacies, the most profound is the idea that pop music—something accessible and extroverted—could be used to express deep, internal worlds. Wilson’s experiments with LSD aren’t obvious in any garish way, but you can hear him trying to excavate feelings buried so deep that seeking them out is an adventure on par with any.

Apple Music 100 Best Albums

Revolver

Pet Sounds