Y'know I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't even a fair question anymore. On the one hand we can applaud the songwriters of the 60's for their innovation, but on the other hand, musicians these days have so many more tools to work with to create sounds songwriters in the 60's could only dream of.
Could Brian Wilson have even thought of something like this?
This is the closest he could manage at the time.
One can argue the BB song is "better" than the AnCo song because the AnCo song is derivative of the BB song, and thus "copying" it ... but on the other hand you can't blame AnCo for copying a successful formula - even the BB's did that.
And yet, the AnCo song is clearly more complex than Good Vibrations (which says a lot), with a density of sound and layers of counter-melodies even the BB's would have had a difficult time pulling off. But I dunno, a lot of people will say the added complexity is a weakness, not a strength, because it makes the song too busy. But there were people at the time who thought Good Vibrations was too busy.
Or maybe the complexity is neither 'better' or 'worse' and it just depends on how you pull it off. Or maybe it's both, depending on who you ask and what their tastes are.
Maybe this is like comparing the pop of the 60's with the pop music of the 20's? Not sure it's really fair. In the 60's they had so much more to work with than they did in the 20's, kinda like what they do now. I've little doubt there were a lot of older people in the 60's who thought the tunes from the 20's and 30's was better. Sometimes when I listen to Sinatra I can understand the "older is better" mindset.
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