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'Til I Die

"'Til I Die"
'Til I Die single.jpg
Single by The Beach Boys
from the album Surf's Up
A-side "Long Promised Road"
Released October 11, 1971 (1971-10-11)
Format 7-inch vinyl
Recorded August 15, 1970 (1970-08-15); July 30, 1971 (1971-07-30), Brian Wilson's home studio, Los Angeles
Genre Progressive pop
Length 2:29
Label Brother/Reprise 1047
Songwriter(s) Brian Wilson
Producer(s) The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys singles chronology
"Long Promised Road" / "Deirdre"
(1971)
"Long Promised Road" / "'Til I Die"
(1971)
"Surf’s Up"
(1971)
"Long Promised Road" / "Deirdre"
(1971)
"Long Promised Road" /
"'Til I Die"
(1971)
"Surf’s Up"
(1971)
Audio sample

"’Til I Die" is a song written by Brian Wilson for the American rock band the Beach Boys, released on the band's 1971 album Surf's Up and subsequently chosen as the B-side of the single "Long Promised Road". With autobiographical lyrics about death and hopelessness, it is one of the few songs in which both the words and music were written solely by Wilson.

Biographer Jon Stebbins wrote: "''Til I Die' proves that Brian could not only write beautiful music, but that he had the ability to communicate honestly and artfully with his lyrics as well. The track is decorated with a haunting vibraphone and organ bed, which frames the strong harmony vocal arrangement perfectly."

According to Brian Wilson's now-largely discredited 1991 autobiography Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story, the song was inspired after a late night trip to the beach:

Lately, I'd been depressed and preoccupied with death…Looking out toward the ocean, my mind, as it did almost every hour of every day, worked to explain the inconsistencies that dominated my life; the pain, torment, and confusion and the beautiful music I was able to make. Was there an answer? Did I have no control? Had I ever? Feeling shipwrecked on an existential island, I lost myself in the balance of darkness that stretched beyond the breaking waves to the other side of the earth. The ocean was so incredibly vast, the universe was so large, and suddenly I saw myself in proportion to that, a little pebble of sand, a jellyfish floating on top of the water; traveling with the current I felt dwarfed, temporary. The next day I began writing "Til I Die", perhaps the most personal song I ever wrote for The Beach Boys…In doing so, I wanted to re-create the swell of emotions that I'd felt at the beach the previous night.

The song was written over the course of several weeks as Wilson tried to express the feelings he had experienced on that night he had spent alone at the beach. As he explains, "I struggled at the piano, experimenting with rhythms and chord changes, trying to emulate in sound the ocean's shifting tides and moods as well as its sheer enormity. I wanted the music to reflect the loneliness of floating a raft in the middle of the Pacific. I wanted each note to sound as if it was disappearing into the hugeness of the universe.


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