At one point, the brilliance of the Beach Boys seemed to have no top.
Principal architect Brian Wilson and a group of family and friends moved from strength to strength, releasing 1964's "I Get Around" and "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)," then 1965's "Help Me Rhonda" and "California Girls" followed by 1966's "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "God Only Knows." Everything came crashing to a halt after the release of
A follow-up album didn't arrive until September of the following year, with a historic stand-alone single they'd already been working on as the lone stopgap. Wilson was stuck in a spiral of perfectionism that ultimately led to the shelving of an album he'd intended to call