Then I saw what was number 1 the previous week: Reach Out I’ll Be There.

I dunno about Marvel comics, I really don’t. What I do know is that the more I listen to late 60s Motown, the more marvellous it becomes. And Reach Out is pretty much the most marvellous of all, give or take a couple of others. I can still picture the Four Tops on Top of the Pops, and thinking then (as I still think know) that this was a truly awesome piece of popular music. Turns out it was more than that. It was a kind of art we’d never thought of as art before.

So there you go, Tom. I’m not gonna quibble with your 9 for Good Vibrations. But if you’re asking me TODAY, at nearly forty years’ distance, which one I think has the most legs, I’d have to insist on the Four Tops getting up there among the 10s.

It is of course impossible to estimate what this must have sounded like on the 1966 radio; for those who lived in a world where “Good Vibrations” once did not exist, it must have sounded astonishing and ecstatic.

No, because all of 1966 sounded astonishing (though I’d insert “terrifying” in place of “ecstatic”), and “Good Vibrations” was just another song mixed in there with “When I Was Young” and “Sunshine Superman” and “96 Tears” and “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Turned Down Day” and “Steppin’ Stone” and “I Got Rhythm” and “Hanky Panky,” all of which had way more impact on me than “Good Vibrations” did. Believe it or not, I barely noticed “Good Vibrations.”

Not to mention the good vibration dancehall comp that would follow (incl. special remix f. Willie Nelson, Busta Rhymes, and Elephant Man), and the reggaeton video prod. by Lil Jon, featuring Fat Joe.

Also I reckon we’ve had the last truly great Beatles #1 (except maybe Hey Jude - Strawberry Fields famously stalling at #2)

Tommy Mack

It’s a slightly strange thing because it’s a song that I hear so much of that it’s almost impossible to have an opinion on at all - I too have never known a time without it. Remarkably, though, I’ve never not enjoyed it - at worst I’ve been mildly disappointed that they’re not playing something less obvious on the radio.

I think I’m still noticing things in it too. I also like the jumps; the fact that it’s so unashamed. For those interested, Keith Badman’s book dissects exactly where the cuts are.

As a native Californian, Angeleno to be precise, I can’t help but be happy and surprised that this got to #1, weird as it is. I remember watching a documentary on the theremin and Brian Wilson was so happy remembering his getting it on the song and it doing so well, kind of like a madman whose idea worked; I agree with Tom that this is a digressive and jumpy happy mess of a song. I don’t know if this means anything, but my father, who hated most rock/pop music altogether, liked this song a lot, and I grew up on Smiley Smile and Wild Honey and yet had to catch up to Pet Sounds many many years later.

And this also reminds me a bit of a druggier, deliberately weirder Sufjan Stevens, somewhat.

And I don’t fully disagree with you - the chorus is the mortar and other bits are just as hooky, but it’s doing an essential job AS mortar.

On this occasion, I have a completely different take from yourself (and that businessman) though. It’s always been the verses and the “I’m pickin’ up…” bit that I considered the hookiest bits. The “Good, good, good…” sections have always seemed to me to be incidental to the song, the LEAST important part. just a bit of mortar to hold all the bricks together.

The overall ‘oddness’ and novelty feel of the song you identify stems I guess mainly from the fact that the final master is a mosaic, pieced together from numerous sessions and takes. Listening to Wilson’s very first studio run through of the song (it’s on the “Smiley Smile”/”Wild Honey” CD) reveals that the structure was in place long before he “got to work on it” the track with his splicing block and razor.

Jeff W

Is a Bosh Vibrations in existence?