How good was Brian Wilson?
Wilson was, famously, plagued by mental illness
That Brian Wilson was a very good songwriter is beyond all question. He was also an imaginative stylist. Nobody else sounded like the Beach Boys, unless they were deliberately copying the Beach Boys (such as Paul McCartney's sweet attempt at Cold War rapprochement, Back in the USSR).
The songs, described by Wilson as 'teenage symphonies to God', were drawn from pre-rock origins – George Gershwin rather than Little Richard. The melodies veered from the sublime (God Only Knows, Don't Worry Baby) through the pleasantly disposable (Help Me Rhonda, Surfin' USA) to the hugely irritating (Barbara Ann, Sloop John B). And then there was Good Vibrations, Wilson's stab at psychedelia.
In truth, it was hard to listen to even their best albums (Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile) all the way through without feeling, at the end, a little bit icky, as if you had been immersed in corn syrup for half an hour. But there was a beauty there, in the harmonies and in the construction of some of those songs; a delicacy largely absent from the charts at that febrile time. And at a time when the USA was being taken over by British acts, they could hardly have been more all-American.
Brian died yesterday and we are right to mourn his passing. He was, famously, plagued by mental illness. But it is also likely that his slightly unhinged mentality was partly responsible for some very pretty pop music. Where does he rank? Not quite in the same league as Bacharach, Webb, McCartney, Lennon perhaps. But that is hardly a disgrace.
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Telegraph
27 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The zany tourism campaigns that worked – and the biggest failures
It's been 25 years since Tom Hanks lost his volleyball friend Wilson at sea in the hit film Castaway. And it's taken that long for Wilson to get his own happy ending – in an ad for Fiji, where the movie was filmed. During the ad, a little girl and her mum rescue the ball from the beach, mend it and then take it out to see the sites, from rivers, villages and forests to sandy shores. 'It feels like we're giving fans of the classic film the closure they've longed for,' Harry Willis of Special PR (the company responsible for the piece) told Little Black Book. Fiji will also be hoping it draws less inanimate visitors to its shores too. Tourism advertising is big business: when done right, it can generate huge interest in a destination and, ultimately, many more visitors. Do it wrong though, and it serves as just one more reason for tourists to stay away. Take a look at who got it right and who made a dreadful mistake, in this round-up of the best and worst tourism ad campaigns ever… The hits Aussie rules Paul Hogan's deadpan Fair Dinkum Holiday ads from the 1980s are still fondly remembered for their unique way of highlighting 'the Wonder Down Under'. So it was no surprise when Australia Tourism drew on his legacy for a star-studded 2018 trailer for the (imaginary) film Dundee: The Son of A Legend Returns Home. Featuring Isla Fisher as an outback vet, Chris Hemsworth as a wilderness guide and Margot Robbie as an out-of-control lager lout, it had viewers clamouring for the full-length feature – and resulted in a 26 per cent increase in initial enquiries about trips to the country, as well as its own entry on IMDB. Dubai's show tune Dubai spends a lot on high-profile ad campaigns (including 2021's offering featuring Jessica Alba and Zac Efron, and the latest one with a loved-up Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi). But its undisputed triumph was 2024's fantastic earworm, 'Where will Dubai take you now?'. The kind of catchy show tune people will be singing in the shower for years to come, it's the soundtrack to a video directed by The Greatest Showman 's Michael Gracey, in which a bespectacled and positively un-starry man belts out the song while jazz-handing his way along beaches and through restaurants, yoga pavilions and markets, showcasing the best that the city state has to offer. Is it a coincidence that visitor numbers and hotel occupancy levels rose last year? We think not. If only it was on Spotify. India's superlative spree In 2009, before every tourism ad had to be star-studded and/or hilarious, this country built on its long-standing 'Incredible India!' campaign with this heart-warming tale of one man's solo trip through the country, from palm-trimmed beaches to snow-covered mountain tops. Looking like a hoot to make, it also showed a host of brilliant experiences beyond the biggest-hitting sites – and it's still a fantastic advert for the country. New Zealand's political stunt What's New Zealand's best export? Rhys Darby, of Flight of the Conchords fame, of course – not least because he somehow managed to rope then-PM Jacinda Ardern into this 2018 mystery spoof about the country being left off maps on purpose. A few months' later, an equally surprising sequel – featuring a hunt using a map created by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson – included one unexpected theory about who was responsible for the country's erasure: unlikely baddie and New Zealand superfan Ed Sheeran, who wanted to keep it all to himself. Spain's glam turn The 1980s was a time of Jackie Collins bonkbusters, dubious cocktails and flash cars – and Spain ticked all these boxes and more in its successful, nine-year 'España: Everything Under The Sun' campaign. 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Stripping milkmaids and a rapping nutcracker, if this Noughties ad is anything to go by. The soundtrack, 'Gitcha Goomsba Up', doesn't quite have the finesse of 'Where Will Dubai Take You Now?', but that's far from the most problematic thing about this video, which combines a twerking troupe in dirndl tutus with wholesome clips of whitewater rafting, hot dogs and Christmas lights. Vilnius's awkward innuendo Sex sells – so goes the thinking behind Vilnius's campaign pitching the city as the 'G-Spot of Europe'. Why that tag line, you ask? Because 'nobody knows where it is but when you find it – it's amazing', apparently. And absolutely not because a certain section of the global population (the one with a penchant for stag parties involving low-cost flights to Eastern Europe) conflates Lithuania with escorts. This one feels very much like an own goal. However, if you're still interested, you can build your own innuendo-charged Pleasure Map here. 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Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
The Daughter of Time was worth the wait
That it has taken its sweet time getting here cannot be denied, but, at last, it has happened. More than 70 years after the novel by Josephine Tey became an overnight sensation in 1951, a stage adaptation of The Daughter of Time has arrived in the West End. Voted the greatest crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association back in 1990, The Daughter of Time is Tey's most unusual but brilliant detective story. It's her most unusual because its sees her Inspector Alan Grant – the central character in five of her detective stories – solving a crime from his hospital bed while recovering from a broken leg. And it's arguably her most brilliant because the crime he solves is one of British history's coldest and most high-profile cases – who murdered the Princes in the Tower in 1483. Yet while it's a brilliant book, because most of the action happens either inside Grant's head or in his hospital room, it has probably been judged undramatisable – until now. Playing at the Charing Cross Theatre just off Villiers Street, American playwright M. Kilburg Reedy's stage adaption takes Tey's classic and serves it up with a leavening Shakespearian twist. And what a historical tour de force it is. If you don't know your 15th-century history or House of York genealogy, you certainly will do after an evening here (the programme helpfully includes a family tree). We begin with Grant, who believes he can discern an individual's character through their face, so when his friend – glamorous actress Marta Hallard (played to the nines by Rachel Pickup) – brings him a selection of historical pictures to peruse, he becomes obsessed by the portrait of Richard III. This man doesn't resemble the devious hunchback of history who schemed his way to the throne and then had his nephews murdered in the Tower of London. If anything he looks cautious, thinks Grant (played with great bravura by Rob Pomfret) – sober, decent, more suited to the bench than the dock. So, since he's a detective and has nothing better to do, Grant embarks on a police-style investigation – complete with a board, map and pinned-up photographs of key individuals all connected with string – where with assistance from his sergeant (the excellent Sanya Adegbola) and a young lovelorn American named Brent Carradine (played by Harrison Sharpe, who nearly walks off with the show) he examines the contemporary and near-contemporary evidence for what really happened to the sons of Edward IV – namely Edward V and his brother Richard, Duke of York. What Grant discovers doesn't match up with what the traditional history and Tudor propagandists would have us believe. Chief among those propagandists was, of course, William Shakespeare. His history play Richard III was written in the early 1590s and was required to align with the sentiments of Elizabeth I, granddaughter of the man who defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485 – Henry Tudor. 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Drawing on original sources, the playwright has come to a different conclusion – but it's one which I think holds just as much water as Tey's prime suspect. It certainly works in the context of the play, even if there are many people around now who believe (based on sound evidence by the way) that both princes actually survived the reign of Richard III and didn't die at all in 1483. What would Tey have made of the playwright's handiwork? I'm not sure she would have approved of the romantic subplot, since she never chose to marry Grant off herself and she could have done in his last outing (The Singing Sands of 1952), published posthumously. But – and it's an important but – the rest of it, I think, is spot on. At the heart of her book is the very probable innocence of Richard III and the concomitant calumny done against him ever since, something this lively play brings indisputably to life. 'Truth is the daughter of time, not authority,' is the Francis Bacon quote that inspired the title. Time will tell if this is the play that finally gets Richard III off the historical naughty step. The Daughter of Time is at the Charing Cross Theatre until 13 September.
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
American in the UK baffled by Jaffa Cakes but everyone tells her the same thing
Though both countries speak the same language, there are many differences between life in the US and here in the UK - and one American woman couldn't wrap her head around Jaffa Cakes An American who moved to the UK to 'protect her peace' has been left baffled after spotting Jaffa Cakes in the supermarket. Despite speaking the same language as our friends across the pond, there's still a world of cultural differences between the US and the UK. Many Americans often take to social media to share their surprise over unexpected or unusual products they've spotted, the social rules and etiquette they've encountered, their battles with weather, and much more after relocating to England. One woman found herself perplexed after she saw Jaffa Cakes being sold in the biscuit aisle. The trusty Jaffa Cake, by best-selling biscuit manufacturer McVitie's, is a British icon. The sweet and tangy treat is concocted with a sponge base with a chunky layer of orange flavoured jam, which is then topped with a generous dark chocolate layer. The first Jaffa Cake was created almost 100 years ago and now they're a firm favourite in many supermarkets and stores across the nation, with in-house versions aplenty. Regardless of whether it's the original McVitie's Jaffa Cake or an own-brand version, they're typically found in the biscuit aisle despite being legally considered a cake after a 1991 VAT ruling. This is where American woman Elizabeth Walker's confusion stemmed from. In a popular TikTok video, the content creator penned: 'Protected my peace so hard I moved to another country and now drink hot tea in 40 degree weather (sometimes I'll put the milk in first) but am really confused as to why Jaffa Cakes are called cakes and not biscuits." The video was inundated with reactions, amassing more than 7.3 million views, 449,000 likes, 10,900 saves and over 2,000 comments from people keen to share their thoughts. One person said: 'When stale, biscuits go soft and cakes go hard. It was a legal case that Jaffa won with that argument to keep the name cake." Someone else said: 'For tax reasons mostly! And they are cakey on the bottom.' A third person commented: 'Anyone that tells you Jaffa Cakes are biscuits want to see you fail they're literally made with sponge cake." Someone else explained: 'McVitie's went to court, where it was decided by the judge that Jaffa Cakes were a cake, not a biscuit. That meant 0% VAT (cakes), rather than 20% (biscuits).' Another person simply added: 'Because they're cakes." After the strong reactions, Elizabeth created a follow up video in which she lip-synched to the lyrics 'it's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me' from Taylor Swift 's hit 2022 song, Anti-Hero. Over the top of the footage, she added the text: 'I was genuinely confused about Jaffa Cakes. Everyone in the comments: hold my beer." In the caption, Elizabeth quipped: 'Just a confused girl standing in front of TikTok asking it to not scream at her about milk in tea and tax codes.' In the comments section, one TikTok user replied: 'Ha! You did start it." Elizabeth replied: 'I didn't know what I was starting," with a crying laughing emoji.
