Pet Sounds: Most Overrated Album of All Time?

The album is very good and I suppose overrated; personally I prefer "Surfin USA" and "Surfer Girl".

However, it's a marvelous showcase for Brian Wilson's production and vocal arranging skills.

That is the "genius" of the album IMO.

Pet Sounds is not overrated at all. It was one of the few albums at its time that was visioned as a complete work. Before that time, only Sinatra (another performer not recognized for his musical smarts) was putting together thematic albums. The genius of the work is one of those things that you either get or not get or more importantly, like or not like.

Part of considering any album from 40 years ago is understanding what was going on at the time. The Beach Boys were primarily a singles group doing surfer ballads and pop and they came up with a symphonic type work that lit a fire under the Beatles. Look at the top 15 Cash Box Albums for 1966 to see what was popular at the time (source Lillian Roxon's "Rock Encyclopedia"):

1. Sound of Music - Soundtrack
2. Whipped Cream - Herb Alpert
3. Going Places - Herb Alpert
4. Dr. Zhivago - Soundtrack
5. South of the Border - Herb Alpert
6. Best of Herman's Hermits
7. Best of the Animals
8. What Now My Love - Herb Alpert
9. Lonely Bull - Herb Alpert
10. Why Is There Air - Bill Cosby
11. Fiddler on the Roof - Original Cast
12. If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears - Mamas & Papas
13. Big Hits - Rolling Stones
14. My Name is Barbra, Two - Barbra Steisand
15. September of My Years - Frank Sinatra ...
33. Pet Sounds - Beach Boys

Regards,

Rich

its still being played regularly 40 some years after the fact on my stereo for sure. however my favorite beach boys albums are sunflower(tremendous), 20/20(pieced together with sinles. b sides, and relics from the unreleased 'smile' it hangs together, and is still great,and friends(one of the great sunday morning albums ever)...i've heard friends is brian's as well......ps, the beach boys hold my personal record for live concert events. i saw them 19 times beginning in 65. after carl died, i called it quits....couldn't imagine the band playing on without him.

one more tidbit...pet sounds was a commercial failure at the time..the poorest selling lp the band had released to date(1966). it would years before many of their fans would come back to the band....and new lp sales never did. like hendrix, the stones, and others, you either 'get' the beach boys, or you don't. if you don't its not a high crime....thats just rock n roll.

"What am I missing?" Well, for starters - just how old are you? If you weren't around then that explains a lot...

We're all a product of our experience, and the collective wisdom that identified this as one of the greatest all lived through that era. Narrod and Rar1 give a hint of some of the reasons - the Beach Boys were practically the major competitors in the U.S. to the Beatles (and Stones, maybe). They sounded like nothing else around (at the time...) and this did provide a significant spark for Dr. Pepper's.

Once you've heard so much that's been produced since that time then Pet Sounds may not seem like all that much - until you step back and realize that so much of what followed is often quite derivative in some way. This was such a change (as Jaybo noted) from the norm at that time that even many fans of the most popular group in the U.S. didn't get it nor buy it. It was just those guys like the Beatles, etc. who were knocked out by Pet Sounds and the rest has become history...