The Elements (The Beach Boys song)
| Smile | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Official planned LP cover with artwork by Frank Holmes. Other versions included a "duophonic stereo" banner on top.
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| Studio album left unfinished by the Beach Boys | ||||
| Recorded | February 17, 1966 – May 18, 1967 (original recordings) | |||
| Studio | CBS Columbia Square, Gold Star Studios, Sunset Sound Recorders, United Western Studios, and misc. California locales | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Label | Brother/Capitol (projected) | |||
| Producer | Brian Wilson | |||
| The Beach Boys recording chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Stylus Magazine | A+ |
Smile (sometimes stylized as SMiLE) was a projected album by American rock band the Beach Boys intended to follow their 11th studio album, Pet Sounds (1966). After bandleader Brian Wilson abandoned large portions of music recorded over a ten-month period, the band substituted its release with Smiley Smile (1967), an album containing stripped-down remakes of some Smile material. Some of the original Smile tracks eventually found their way onto subsequent Beach Boys' studio and compilation albums. As more fans learned of the project's origins, details of its recordings acquired considerable mystique, and it was later acknowledged as the most legendary unreleased album in the history of popular music.
Working with lyricist Van Dyke Parks, Smile was composed as a multi-thematic concept album, existing today in its unfinished and fragmented state as an unordered series of abstract musical vignettes. Its genesis came during the recording of Pet Sounds, when Wilson began recording a new single, "Good Vibrations". The track was created by an unprecedented recording technique: over 90 hours of tape was recorded, spliced, and reduced into a three-minute pop song. It quickly became the band's biggest international hit yet; Smile was to be produced in a similar fashion. Wilson touted the album as "a teenage symphony to God", incorporating a range of music styles including psychedelic, doo-wop, barbershop singing, ragtime, yodeling, early American folk, classical music, and avant-garde explorations into noise and musical acoustics. Its projected singles were "Heroes and Villains", a Western musical comedy, and "Vega-Tables", a satire of physical fitness.
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