Quote:
Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?
Because The Doors opened the door (no pun intended) for much darker music than had been seen in pop / rock n roll up till that point.
For all of Wilson's trickery in the studio none of it can hide the fact that the doo-wop & 50s style pop they were doing was old hat by that time.
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But by
Smile, though Wilson may still have been indebted to the styles you mentioned, he was also reaching for more classical expressions. There's a lot of jazz in the styling and swagger of certain songs (Holidays, Child is the Father of the Man), then others are very much pop-formatted homages to Gershwin (Surf's Up, Heroes and Villains); there are cartoonish world-inspired songs (Do You Like Worms) and hard edged instrumental passages (Fire). Plus, if you look at
Smiley Smile, though it is all toothy grins on the surface, there's really a dark undertone to the whole album; it's the rattled off evidence of failure that finds Brian Wilson just trying not to completely lose it, but still taking shots at himself for his lack of fulfillment.
Some of
Smiley Smile's eeriest moments: