Brian Wilson, R.I.P.
Wilson is most likely to be remembered for his mastery of the recording studio, where he pursued his vision with singleminded tenacity. His control has been likened to that of celebrated film auteurs.
Born on June 20, 1942, in Inglewood, California, Wilson as a boy in the '50s absorbed from rock-n-roller Chuck Berry an appreciation for hard-driving rhythm and catchy lyrics, and from the Indiana-based quartet the Four Freshmen he acquired a taste for pristine harmony and the haunting sound of a high falsetto lead voice.
In high school, Wilson formed a band with his cousin Mike Love; his two younger brothers, Dennis and Carl; and a classmate, Al Jardine. The Pendletones, as they were briefly known (a play on the brand of a popular shirt, Pendleton), recorded Wilson and Love's 'Surfin',' in 1961. The two wrote the song at the suggestion of Dennis Wilson, who was enamored of surfing. Brian Wilson was an avowed non-surfer. In a brilliant bit of marketing, 'Surfin'' was released under the band's new name, the Beach Boys.
Many of the songs that followed in the next four years—'Surfin' Safari,' 'Surfer Girl,' and 'Little Deuce Coupe'—explored similar topics: beach life, California, teenage life.
Wilson's greatest achievement came in 1966 with the album Pet Sounds. By this time, he had absorbed another influence, the 'Wall of Sound' pioneered by producer Phil Spector in his work with the Ronettes and other groups. Relying on multitrack recordings, with layer building on layer, and on the use of a cadre of topflight studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, Wilson brought to pop music a new level of sophistication in Pet Sounds. (Paul McCartney and George Martin attested to the influence of the album on the Beatles' 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.)
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The songs of Pet Sounds, nearly all of them composed by Wilson, explored more serious topics than the Beach Boys had dealt with in the past: the struggle of fitting in ('I Just Wasn't Made for These Times'), the challenge of finding one's true self ('I Know There's an Answer'), and the small hopes and immense promise of love ('Wouldn't It Be Nice' and 'God Only Knows'). 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' packs a symphonic variety in two and a half minutes of music, with harmony vocals darting in and out, tympani strokes lending an air of grandeur, an interlude introducing a dreamier musical atmosphere, and a pronounced slowing down before the resumption of the original tempo.
Pet Sounds was followed by the single 'Good Vibrations,' perhaps the Beach Boys' best-known song. An ambitious follow-up album, SMiLE, was planned but progress ground to a halt. As chronicled in his autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson (cowritten by Ben Greenman), he observed, 'It was too much pressure from all sides: from Capitol [Records], from my brothers, from Mike [Love], from my dad, but most of all from myself.' Wilson's relationship with his father Murry was uneasy, the father subjecting the son to physical and verbal abuse.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, Wilson resorted to alcohol and drugs because his 'head wasn't right.' He would be diagnosed with depression and schizoaffective disorder. In the mid-1970s he came under the care of Eugene Landy, a controversial psychotherapist who inserted himself into Wilson's business dealings in an exploitative way; the first sentence of Landy's 2006 Los Angeles Times obituary says he 'was denounced as a Svengali for his controversial relationship' with Wilson. (Their relationship is examined in the 2014 movie Love and Mercy.)
Wilson worked off and on with the Beach Boys in addition to releasing solo albums, including a self-titled album in 1988. In 1995 he teamed with Van Dyke Parks on 'Orange Crate Art.' Two years later, he performed on The Wilsons, featuring his two daughters Wendy and Carnie Wilson. He won Grammy Awards in 2005 and 2013. His last album, At My Piano, was released in 2021.
Brian Wilson's talents were so considerable that musicians of today remain awed by his creativity. Illustrative is the reaction of Gen-Z producer and composer Isaac Brown, who has a YouTube channel on which he posts videos of himself reacting to older music he'd never heard before. Listening for the first time to 'Good Vibrations,' Brown, at the beginning of the song, wears an engaged look that gives way to one of curiosity. What is he hearing? Where is this song going? When the first chorus arrives ('I'm picking up good vibrations') and the eerie theremin enters, his expression turns to bafflement. 'Really?' he exclaims. 'Whoa.' When the chorus returns, he exclaims, 'I don't even know what to do with this.' As the music comes to an end, he concludes: 'I cannot believe this song exists. I love this.' A follow-up video in which Brown listens to Pet Sounds for the first time ends with him gobsmacked by the creativeness and even bravery of the album's harmonies, lush instrumentation, and production. As Brown's reaction suggests, even after more than a half century, the best work of Brian Wilson retains the power to surprise and delight.
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USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Metal heads, TikTokers, shiny new airports: Greenland, but not as you think you know it
Special Report: Greenland's relatively isolated indigenous Inuit culture finds itself increasingly exposed to the world just as President Donald Trump pushes to take over the territory. NUUK, Greenland − Musicians Pani and Sebastian Enequist sport once-suppressed Inuit face tattoos, hunt seals for food in remote fjords and honor nature "like a God." But they found their calling − and each other − while they were obsessing over the American heavy metal band Slipknot. For thousands of years, Greenland's Inuit people survived the world's harshest conditions by living off whales, seals, polar bears, fish and caribou. Now, gleaming new airports are opening up. TikTok stars are proliferating. A relatively isolated indigenous culture, long dominated by ruling Denmark, finds itself increasingly exposed to the world just as President Donald Trump pushes to take over the Arctic territory. Still, if music can tell ancient and modern stories alike, then the Sound of the Damned, the Enequists' Nuuk-based hardcore metal band, has a musical plotline that wends across time and place. The group's raspy, guttural-growl vocals, introspective lyrics and aggressive beats are old and young. Native and foreign-born. They illustrate how change is sweeping through the island's unique heritage, even as some things stay the same. 'Buy us!': Greenlanders shocked, intrigued, bewildered by Trump zeal for Arctic territory "We want to play metal. We also want to represent our culture," said Pani Enequist, 32, who writes Sound of the Damned's lyrics and recently began performing with them. Her husband Sebastian, 29, is the band's lead singer and guitarist. The group's new material incorporates an Inuit drum called a "qilaat," mask dancing and throat singing, where hums, gasps and grunts mimic the sounds of animals, streams and icebergs. The Enequists said that in 2016, they were among the first of a new generation of Greenlanders to get face tattoos, known in Greenlandic as Kakiuineq, as a way to reclaim and celebrate their Inuit ancestral roots, traditions and spirituality. They also view them as a way of rejecting the legacy of Denmark's 18th-century Christian missionaries, who labeled the practice as pagan and sought to have it banned. Their meanings are linked to Inuit cosmology and rites of passage. Trump wants to buy Greenland: Denmark's first move? Alter its royal coat of arms Greenland's music scene: small but mighty Greenland's music scene is small, with the number of musicians and bands working in Nuuk estimated in the low dozens, according to Christian Elsner, whose family owns Atlantic Music, a record label and music store in Greenland's capital that sells instruments and albums. Greenland has a Spotify-style streaming service called Tusass Music, linked to its postal service, only accessible to users in Greenland and Denmark. Atlantic Music also houses one of Greenland's few full-blown recording studios. It sits in the basement of a squat, gabled house framed by a veranda-style front porch. Across the street is Nuuk Center, an eight-story ultra-modern office tower, which would not look out of place in a European city. Greenland's not for sale: It is welcoming Americans with direct flights. On Trump's birthday Nuuk Center is Greenland's tallest building. It is also home to its first shopping mall, which opened in 2012. On its upper floors are offices for the Naalakkersuisut or Greenlandic government, which is trying to boost tourism and the local economy by rebuilding and expanding three new airports for direct international flights. The first direct U.S. flights to Greenland began on June 14 − Trump's birthday. This is something many Greenlanders feel ambivalent about. They want American tourists to visit. They don't want to become part of the United States, polls show. Sounds of the Arctic Laura Lennert Jensen works for Arctic Sounds, a Greenland-based music management company that represents and promotes local artists. Arctic Sounds also stages an annual music festival − the Arctic Sounds Festival − in Sisimiut, in central western Greenland, which showcases original music acts from Nordic countries. About 90% of Greenland's 57,000 people identify as Inuit. Jensen said Greenlanders first started making popular music that wasn't traditional Inuit music in the 1970s. In keeping with the times, it was influenced by popular British rock and roll acts of the day, such as Pink Floyd and Deep Purple. Over time, access to the internet improved. So did the advent of software that made it easier for musicians to write and record music without a professional studio. Greenland's music has diversified to include rap, reggae, electronica, country, pop and everything in between. 'One way or the other': Five ways Trump's Greenland saga could play out On a recent evening in Nuuk, Jensen took USA TODAY on a whistle-stop tour of a few of Nuuk's live music hotspots, where the acts included lounge singers, folk rock bands and jazz artists. All sang in Greenlandic to attentive local audiences. As did Kuuna, an up-and-coming pop singer who strode self-assuredly around the ring, belting out tunes in between rounds at a Thai boxing event like a fledgling Greenlandic version of Beyoncé. "Some of our musicians do not carry a single trace of Inuit music in what they create," Jensen said. "Others carry it as symbolism, to reflect history or to revitalize techniques that have been lost." Denmark's Greenland experiment Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953. For hundreds of years prior, it was under Danish authority. That era began with the arrival of a Danish-Norwegian Lutheran missionary priest named Hans Egede in 1721. In 1979, Greenland was granted home rule. Thirty years later, it became a self-governing entity. Today, Denmark retains control over Greenland's foreign affairs, defense and macro-economic policy. The Greenlandic government manages areas such as education, healthcare, natural resources and culture. During colonial rule, Denmark enforced assimilation policies for the Inuit population. It unofficially prohibited the Greenlandic language. In 1951, it removed 22 children from their families and put them in Danish homes, an experiment aimed at turning them into model "Little Danes." 'We want to be Greenlanders': Slow independence party wins vote, but pro-US party gains In the 1960s and 1970s, as many as 4,500 women and girls − half of the fertile women in Greenland, according to Danish authorities − were subjected to forced sterilization by government physicians, using painful intrauterine devices. Greenland was in the early stages of its modernization. This included a construction boom that attracted many Danish workers and led to a high birth rate among Inuit women. Denmark's city planners wanted to limit Greenland's population growth. The Danish government has issued formal apologies for these policies. But many Greenlanders remain shocked and bitter about these episodes, which helped fuel calls for independence from Denmark. Greenlanders also believe that deep-rooted biases remain and a broader pattern of ongoing systemic discrimination favors Danes in areas such as access to lucrative jobs and promotions, according to Ulrik Pram Gad, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen. "Many of us feel like there is discrimination in the workplace in Greenland when it comes to high-ranking positions," said Orla Joelsen, a prison official in Nuuk whose job falls under the authority of Denmark's justice department. Joelsen said he was speaking in a private capacity. Greenlanders are underrepresented in the upper echelons of the island's corporate world, according to Gad, the Denmark-based researcher. In his spare time, Joelsen runs a popular X account about Greenland that has been highly critical of Trump's interest in Greenland. "It's going to be a long four years," he said. Greenland's influencers Some Greenlanders appear more ready than others for Greenland's shifting cultural tectonic plates. "On my TikTok account, I talk a lot about what groceries I'm buying," said Malu Falck, 32, a singer and graphic designer in Nuuk whose short-form social videos about everyday life in Greenland have helped bring her a whole new following. Falck has almost 10,000 followers on TikTok. She is not yet making money off of TikTok, she said, though her image was displayed as part of an ad in the window of a Nuuk storefront. "It's new in Greenland, but people are getting used to it," Falck said of TikTok. She estimated that about 100 Greenlanders are "very active" on YouTube, TikTok and other social media. One of them is Qupanuk Olsen, a Greenlandic mining engineer and politician known for her vlogs about Greenland's culture, history and traditional Inuit life. Olsen's posts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube routinely reach half a million people. But it is in music where Greenland's overlapping identities are perhaps most directly observable. Varna Marianne Nielsen, 44, is a Greenlandic filmmaker, music producer and practitioner of traditional drum dancing and drum singing. The latter involves performing with a stick made of bone or wood that is rhythmically struck against a frame drum or qilaat to make an echoing beat. Distorted maps have misled you: Greenland isn't as big as you think. Nielsen descends from a long line of drum dancers, but grew up listening to American blues, jazz and rock music. "I have both of these traditions in me," she said. Nielsen described her music as "sweeping from the ice and the land." In 2014, she had a role in an episode of the TV series "True Detective," for which she co-produced multiple original scores. Nielsen said that, as a child, she was proud of her Greenlandic heritage but didn't necessarily understand how her identity had been shaped and influenced by Denmark. As an adult, Nielsen said, she has felt compelled to help revive the drum dancing and drum singing tradition that was neglected by earlier generations. Her work includes field recordings and electronically-composed beats. Nielsen was surprised to learn recently, while doing research in Denmark, that her grandfather's drum was exhibited in the National Museum in Copenhagen. She found this discovery upsetting because it illustrated how, even now, Greenland's culture is being expropriated by Denmark. "It is still difficult to access our treasures when they are in a different country and not home where they belong," she said, adding that she hoped Danish authorities would repatriate Greenland's drums. Like Pani Enequist from Sound of the Damned, Nielsen's fingers are encircled by tattoos. Their meaning connects to Sassuma Arnaa, or "Mother of the Sea," an Inuit creation myth about the goddess Sedna. Versions of the myth vary. But the story tells how Sedna came to rule over the Inuit underworld. In one version, Sassuma was a woman who was mistreated by her family and thrown into the sea by her father, when her fingers were severed and became seals, whales and other marine life for which the Arctic is known. Sound of the Damned is spending several weeks this summer touring Danish schools, where band members will talk to children about Greenland's Inuit culture. On stage, they wear "corpse paint"– a style of makeup that gives them a macabre look. Enequist said this has little to do with Greenland and everything to do with music from Metallica to Slipknot that shaped the band's sound and formed the backdrop to her courtship with her husband. "There is no contradiction in that," she said. Keeping it Greenlandic Elsner, whose family owns Atlantic Music, is also a musician. He plays in Nanook, perhaps Greenland's most successful band of the modern era. The group's name refers to Greenland's mythological polar bear, which is on the territory's coat of arms and symbolizes Greenland's wildness. Since the band formed in 2008, Nanook's brand of melancholic folk-pop has sold around 5,000 records in Greenland − meaning that about 1 in 10 Greenlanders, 1 in 4 or 5 households, could own one. Nanook refused an offer to sign with the Sony record label early on in the band's career because it wanted them to sing in English. Elsner said he and his brother, also a vocalist in Nanook, found the idea "too awkward and unnatural." They also worried it would be a kind of betrayal of their Greenlandic inheritance. Not many international music artists travel to Greenland, Elsner said. Distance and expense are factors. Also, there are no roads connecting Greenland's settlements. Nanook has toured Greenland by boat, plane, helicopter, dog sled and snowmobile. Never a tour bus. Elsner said that even though the American metal band Metallica has a Danish drummer in Lars Ulrich, the California-based group has never made the trip. But in the late 1990s, a British band called Blur did show up in Greenland. They played to about 1,000 people in a now-defunct Nuuk bowling alley. And Damon Albarn, Blur's lead singer, endeared himself to Greenlanders, Elsner said, because he did an interview that featured in a documentary saying it was hypocritical for Westerners to criticize Greenlanders for eating seals, whales and other Arctic marine life when there wasn't any major livestock industry in Greenland. "Seals," Albarn said, were "the cows of Greenland" and they had much better lives – and deaths − than Western industrial livestock, which are often raised in intense confinement in pens and cages. Elsner said Greenland is a paradox. "It's this crazy beautiful place where there is a dark side," he said, referring to high rates of alcoholism, suicide and incest in some communities. He said Greenland's good and bad, old and new, seeps into its music. Socially conscious rappers talk about colonization. Metal bands like Sound of the Damned sing about "how they want their culture back." Other musicians address the idea of independence from Denmark. And others still, like Elsner's own band, write songs about nature and "stuff that happens to us" and deliberately avoid writing political songs. And if they do, couch them in metaphors "so it doesn't affect some people the wrong way," he said. Greenland's music, Elsner said, is, like the place, staying true to its origins yet also evolving. There are signs, beyond music, of Greenland on the move. A reporter saw one Tesla hum and whir by in Nuuk. There's rumored to be a second one among Greenland's approximately 6,500 cars for an island that's about half the size of the Indian subcontinent and has fewer than 60 miles of road and just three traffic lights. A local boat captain who sails with tourists in Nuuk and elsewhere said that he'd seen only one polar bear in his entire life. It was in a zoo in Copenhagen.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Iconic '80s Rocker Going Viral With 'God Only Knows' in Memory of Brian Wilson
Iconic '80s Rocker Going Viral With 'God Only Knows' in Memory of Brian Wilson originally appeared on Parade. A legendary British rocker is going viral with his new, stripped-down recording of God Only Knows as a tribute to the late, great . Howard Jones, 70, the British singer/songwriter with a very distinct voice, was, like many, many other artists, quick to express their admiration, love and grief over Wilson's passing on June 12. "I loved the music of Brian Wilson and was so happy to meet him backstage at a gig in Brooklyn. I was able to say to him what a profound influence he was on my musical life. Thank you, Brian, you will always be in my heart," wrote Jones on Facebook. He then posted a video of himself at the piano playing a gorgeous, stripped-down version of "God Only Knows" in memory of Wilson, captioning the video, "Perhaps the best pop song ever written." In the comments on the Facebook video, one fan wrote, "Howard Jones, your cover of 'God Only Knows' is a beautiful tribute to Brian Wilson."Another fan wrote, "A really exquisite tribute. He'd love it, and clearly you're really connected to the emotion of this song." "Just 20 seconds in and feeling the vibe, and that moment the hair stands up on the back of your neck… pure class….👏👏👏," wrote a third fan. Jones is the voice behind such hits as "New Song," "What is Love?", Pearl in the Shell," "Like to Get to Know You Well," and "Things Can Only Get Better," but perhaps his greatest hit was the 1986 single "No One is to Blame," which peaked at No. 4 in the U.S. — personally, we find it to be his most beautiful song lyrically and melodically. Wilson was a founding member of the Beach Boys and was responsible for writing some of their greatest hits like "Good Vibrations," "God Only Knows," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," among hundreds of other songs. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 Iconic '80s Rocker Going Viral With 'God Only Knows' in Memory of Brian Wilson first appeared on Parade on Jun 15, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 15, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Beach Boys Announce First Major Live Performance Since Brian Wilson's Death
Beach Boys Announce First Major Live Performance Since Brian Wilson's Death originally appeared on Parade. The iconic 1960s and '70s group has announced its first major live performance since founder Brian Wilson died in early June. Wilson died on June 11 at the age of 82 after a battle with dementia. Now his group will honor the sounds of Americana by performing for A Capitol Fourth for PBS. Alfonso Ribeiro returns as host, and the Beach Boys are the headline act for the 2025 Capitol Fourth, which is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. The all-star lineup for the nation's birthday celebration includes: the iconic multi-platinum selling music legends The Beach Boys; world-renowned Motown stars The Temptations; Grammy Award-nominated multi-platinum-selling country music superstar Josh Turner; Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Lauren Daigle; legendary Grammy Award-winning musician and producer and New Orleans icon Trombone Shorty; platinum-selling hitmakers LOCASH, named "country music's iconic feel-good duo" by People; four-time Grammy Award-winning Gospel music legend Yolanda Adams; acclaimed singer-songwriter and American Idol Season 22 winner Abi Carter; the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of top pops conductor Jack Everly"I'm honored to be back hosting the 45th anniversary of A Capitol Fourth," said Ribeiro in a statement. "It's everything you want in an Independence Day celebration - great music and fantastic fireworks. For me, the best part is always the crowd: so many happy, patriotic faces, from grandparents to little kids. You don't want to miss this party!" Also participating in the event will be Members of the Armed Forces carrying the State and Territorial Flags, the Armed Forces Color Guard and Service Color Teams provided by the Military District of Washington, D.C., the Choral Arts Society of Washington, and Patrick Lundy & The Ministers of Music. There's no word as to whether John Stamos will perform with The Beach Boys for A Capitol Fourth, but he has hosted the event three times — in 2017, 2018 and 2019 — so it would not surprise us if he sat in with the Beach Boys. A Capitol Fourth airs live on Friday, July 4, from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. PT on PBS, as well as airing live on the American Forces Network to troops around the world. It will be available on demand here from July 4 to July 18. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 Beach Boys Announce First Major Live Performance Since Brian Wilson's Death first appeared on Parade on Jul 1, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 1, 2025, where it first appeared.
