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Brian Wilson’s Genius Was the Surest Sign We’ll Ever Have That Pop Music Is Religious

The Beach Boys' guiding genius created songs of beauty as a form of faith.

As the Beach Boys sang “house,” the song, “All Summer Long,” didn’t just change chords — in a luscious instant, it ascended to a higher place. And let’s be clear: This impulse isn’t limited to artists like Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney and Richard Rodgers and Burt Bacharach and Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson. Apart from every last track on “Pet Sounds,” along with the early classics (my favorite: “Don’t Worry Baby”), there is, for me, the bracing bliss of “Darlin’,” the lush incandescence of “‘Til I Die,” the momentous sunset melancholy of “Sail On, Sailor.” But the Brian Wilson song that may mean the most to me is one that showed me faith when I needed it most.

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