On this day in 1966, The Beach Boys released their most well-known album, Pet Sounds

The Beach Boys formed in 1961 as an American garage-band and enjoyed huge success over the following years with a string of hits inspired by surfing. They are often credited with launching the “surf music” craze that took over the US and spread to other countries around the world, including Australia. The band would release ten albums between 1961 and 1966, and Pet Sounds would be their eleventh.

Since The Beatles’ rapid rise to fame in 1964, they were considered as rivals to The Beach Boys by the media, though many noted the similarities between the groups aesthetics and sounds. When Rubber Soul was released by The Beatles in December of 1965, Beach Boys singer, musician and producer Brian Wilson was impressed by the album and its lack of filler, and the conceptual production. Inspired, he set about making his own album, utilising similar production techniques to the “Wall of Sound” method popularised by producer Phil Spector. Other sources of inspiration included popular music trends of the time,  as well as spirituality and psychedelia. 

The resulting album was an interesting blend of elements from a variety of genres, ranging from jazz, to classical, to avant-garde. Reviews from critics were mixed, with a number of negative reviews in the US and overwhelmingly positive reviews in the UK. Even negative reviews however, did praise several songs from the album and the progressive nature of the production. It was also overwhelmingly popular amongst other musicians, with members of the Spencer Davis Group and Cream publicly praising the album, and Paul McCartney later listing it as one of his favourite albums of all time. 

Despite the positive reviews, Wilson was disappointed by the commercial results of the album, with it selling less than their previous album. Some of this could be attributed to lacklustre promotion efforts by Capitol Records, that did little to differentiate the album from previous releases. Regardless, it did perform well enough to peak at number ten on the Billboard LP charts, and to stay on the chart for a total of ten months. Since then Pet Sounds has come to be considered a classic, and as the most renowned and well-known album from The Beach Boys. It has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, appeared on numerous greatest albums of all time lists and been preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”