Pet Sounds

In December 1964, Brian Wilson had a panic attack on a flight to Houston and collapsed in the aisle sobbing. He was 22 years old and had been releasing albums and touring relentlessly for three years. He told the rest of The Beach Boys he was done touring, that he would stay home and write instead. What he produced in the following months, working alone in the studio with a revolving cast of Los Angeles session musicians while his bandmates traveled the world, was Pet Sounds, and it permanently raised the ceiling on what pop music could be.

Wilson treated the recording studio itself as an instrument. He layered bicycle bells, Coca-Cola cans, dog whistles, and orchestral strings over tracks that the session musicians, known as the Wrecking Crew, had laid down in elaborate, painstaking sessions. Vocals for "Wouldn't It Be Nice" alone took an entire week to record. The album was Wilson's direct response to hearing The Beatles' Rubber Soul, which had stunned him with its cohesion and ambition. His attempt to answer it in turn stunned The Beatles so completely that Paul McCartney has called "God Only Knows" the greatest song ever written, and George Martin credited Pet Sounds as the direct inspiration for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Capitol Records promoted it poorly and it sold modestly in the United States. That has not stopped it from landing at or near the top of every greatest albums list ever compiled. Wilson was 23 when he made it.