Using Chart Alt-Metrics to Find the Transcendent Beach Boys Singles
Using Chart Alt-Metrics to Find the Transcendent Beach Boys Singles
By Bill Carroll
Whether the Beach Boys created surf music and the California
ethos is immaterial. They were its official
spokesmen. The band was responsible for
one transcendent hit (Top 1% of all records 1955-1991) and one close to that level. I Get
Around was from the surf genre, and Good
Vibrations was distinctly not, but was a production masterpiece.
The nine highest-charting songs that broke out of the pack
are all memorable; some others inexplicably did not make as strong a
showing. I can’t explain the huge difference
between I Get Around and Little Deuce Coupe.
Without recounting the group’s history here it’s fair to say
there were good times and less good times.
And as with most bands, their most popular stuff came early. But there were three notable comebacks, years
after their heyday. The first, Rock And Roll Music was a return to the
Chuck Berry catalog from which the licks for Surfin’ U.S.A. were appropriated fifteen years prior. The second, was a medley of their old songs
that sounded great to a new generation of ears, and finally Kokomo, from the Cocktail soundtrack; not loved by the critics, but an earworm nonetheless. Kokomo was also a writing comeback for Scott McKenzie and John Phillips, ably given the final touches by Mike Love
and Terry Melcher.
Both Kokomo and Good Vibrations made it to #1 in Billboard,
nearly 22 years apart, the longest span between #1s by one act in Billboard
history.
As a reminder, these scores are obtained by combining the
chart scores from all three of the major magazines of the day, Billboard, Cash
Box and Record World (until its demise in 1982) then dividing each record’s
score by the average score of all records entering the charts +/- 26 weeks. Doing this normalizes for changes in chart
methodologies by expressing scores as multiples of the average record score of that time.
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