Why the Beach Boys Matter

by Tom Smucker Narrated by Joe Hempel Unabridged

Overview

Of all the white American pop music groups that hit the charts before the Beatles, only the Beach Boys continued to thrive throughout the British Invasion to survive into the 1970s and beyond. The Beach Boys helped define both sides of the era we broadly call the sixties, split between their early surf, car, and summer pop and their later hippie, counterculture, and ambitious rock. No other group can claim the Ronettes and the Four Seasons as early 1960s rivals; the Mamas and the Papas and Crosby, Stills and Nash as later 1960s rivals; and the Beatles and the Temptations as decade-spanning counterparts.

This is the first book to take an honest look at the themes running through the Beach Boys' art and career as a whole and to examine where they sit inside our culture and politics-and why they still grab our attention.

Editorial Reviews

Mark My Words

Smucker is a long-time fan of the Beach Boys, and his passionate defense of their importance is carefully thought out…Why The Beach Boys Matter packs a lot of content into a short volume. Smucker does an excellent job summarizing the Beach Boys' long career, examining their influences and their place in American pop culture.

Critics At Large

Smucker's book on Why The Beach Boys Matter tells us exactly that, and quite evocatively.

New York Journal of Books

Why the Beach Boys Matter provides an excellent introduction to the band that might have evolved, Smucker suggests, into the Beatles…We were ready to abandon the Beach Boys. Now, with Smucker's book, we can reconnect to them.

Comics Worth Reading

It's a pretty tall order to tell the Beach Boys' oft-confusing, decades-long history in a 176-page, 5" x 7" book, but Tom Smucker does an admirable job in Why the Beach Boys Matter.

Journal of Popular Culture

Rather than land on a single thesis in answer to the book’s title, Smucker gives the reader myriad starting points for determining why the Beach Boys matter...While the rhizomatic nature of the book’s short, chronologically nonlinear chapters may frustrate some academic readers, others will find that the structure is a perfect metaphor for the answer to the problem posed by the book’s title. There is a multiplicity of reasons for the importance of the Beach Boys, musically and historically, and to say otherwise for the sake of a central thesis would be to attempt to insert an intellectual square into an intellectual circle...the arguments...[are] just right.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175745420
Publisher:	OrangeSky Audio
Publication date:	08/02/2022
Series:	Music Matters
Edition description:	Unabridged

Related Subjects

• General & Miscellaeous Music Reference
• Rock & Roll - General & Miscellaneous