Word: smile
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Until September, no official Smile album had ever existed. Brian Wilson made more than fifty trips to the recording studio in 1966 and 1967, intending to record the follow-up to 1966’s Pet Sounds, but nothing came of it. The Beach Boys, with Wilson now an indifferent participant, moved on to other projects, and would be increasingly marginalized as has-beens in the decades to come...
That’s the history of Smile, possibly the most talked-about legend in pop music. The narrative proved hard to resist: Wilson, a musical genius, mysteriously imploding at the peak of his ability, leaving unfinished what might have been the answer to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band...
Over the years, the incomplete Smile recording sessions became available as bootlegs; some of the songs found their way into later Beach Boys albums and compilations. Fans compiled song orders as they saw fit. Books speculated about the causes (drugs, depression, family strife) of Wilson’s unraveling. Smile was frequently called the greatest unreleased album in history—a judgment undoubtedly influenced by its rich back story...
...first indication that Smile was not to remain an asterisk in pop history came in 2003, when Wilson (now severed from the Beach Boys) announced his intent to reconstruct and play the album in concerts across Europe. The first of those, in London, attracted instant claims of “timelessness,” both for the concert and what was increasingly seen as a new ordering and orchestration of Smile itself...
...rest is already celebrated history: Wilson decides in 2004 to re-record the album from scratch with his backing band; Sept. 28 it is released and the predictable adulation streams from the press; Wilson announces more concerts across America and even hints at post-Smile work, including a possible collaboration with Paul McCartney...