Random Beach Boys Songs You Never Realized Are Super Dark And Depressing (14 items)

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  (#4) I Just Wasn't Made for These Times

  • The Beach Boys

  If you’ve ever felt lonely and adrift in the world, Pet Sounds’ "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times” might be your jam. The introspective Brian Wilson/Tony Asher-penned lyrics take the point of view of an empathetic, yet alienated, protagonist who can’t find comfort in any crowd.

  In 2011, Wilson said, “Either I'm too far ahead of my time' or 'I'm not up to my time'... [Now] I do feel I was made for these times."
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  (#1) Never Learn Not to Love

  • The Beach Boys

  "Never Learn Not To Love" is a darker-than-usual Beach Boys song, not only because of its unhealthily obsessive lyrics, but due to its authorship. Charles Manson, the infamous murderer-slash-cult leader, first composed the song under the title "Cease To Exist." A frustrated musician, Manson was elated when Dennis Wilson asked to record it. However, there was one caveat: he was not to change Mason’s composition in any way.  

  But Wilson did. He changed the title, he punched up the lyrics, and he put his name on it. An enraged Manson showed up at Wilson's house and threatened to kill him, but didn't go through with the violent act; instead, Wilson supposedly beat Manson up. The humiliated Manson’s grudge against Wilson, music producer Terry Melcher, and the Hollywood elite overall eventually led to the Tate-LaBianca murders of August 1969.
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  (#8) Caroline No

  • The Beach Boys

  As Brian Wilson explained, the Pet Sounds track "Caroline, No" was about "the loss of innocence" that comes with aging:

  "I'd reminisced to [producer] Tony Asher about my high school crush and sighed, 'If I saw her today, I'd probably think, God, she's lost something, because growing up does that to people.' But the song was most influenced by the changes [wife] Marilyn and I had gone through. We were young, Marilyn nearing 20 and me closing in on 24, yet I thought we'd lost the innocence of our youth in the heavy seriousness of our lives."

  Asher saw the song as, "Brian's wish that he could go back to simpler days... that the group could return to the days when the whole thing was a lot of fun and very little pressure."
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  (#6) "She Knows Me Too Well" Is About Emotional Abuse

  "She Knows Me Too Well" appears on the 1965 release Beach Boys Today! Penned by Mike Love and Brian Wilson, the somewhat disturbing lyrics offset the song's lush harmonies. The protagonist is the type of man your mother always warned you about – jealous, insecure and possibly dangerous. As he explores his abusive behavior toward his girlfriend throughout the song ("I get so jealous of the other guy / And then I’m not happy till I make her break down and cry"), he deludes himself with the notion that everything’s all right in the relationship because "she can tell I really love her."
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  (#5) The Trader

  • The Beach Boys

  Holland, the group's 1973 album, is rife with themes of separation and mortality. It's also the last place you’d expect a history lesson on Manifest Destiny, but “The Trader” is just that. The Carl Wilson/Jack Rieley penned tune tells the tale of a man who comes to the New World and claims the land as his own. With approval from the European powers-that-be, he then sets about displacing, enslaving, and slaughtering the native peoples he finds upon arrival. That's about as far from fun in the sun (or "the formula," as Mike Love allegedly called it) as you can get.
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  (#10) "In My Room" Foreshadowed Brian Wilson's Agoraphobia

  Brian Wilson wrote the 1963 song "In My Room" from the viewpoint of a teen who feels safest and most comfortable in his bedroom. It's easy to see the tune as a foreshadowing of his agoraphobia; less than a decade later, he wouldn’t leave his bedroom for almost three years. He said of the song:

  "When Dennis, Carl and I lived in Hawthorne as kids, we all slept in the same room. One night I sang the song 'Ivory Tower' to them, and they liked it. Then a couple of weeks later, I proceeded to teach them both how to sing the harmony parts to it. It took them a little while, but they finally learned it. We then sang this song night after night. It brought peace to us. When we recorded 'In My Room,' there was just Dennis, Carl and me on the first verse... and we sounded just like we did in our bedroom all those nights. This story has more meaning than ever since Dennis's death."

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