Of course it's such an easy win in a way. If you name a song "Southern California", I will at least try to like it.
It is a very beautiful song though.
Truth be told, the way the lyrics rely on the nostalgia of Brian's famous life story only works about 75% of the time and when it doesn't it's kind of way over the top, but there is definatly some real magic here too.
Tailwinds
will spin
down the pacific coast
The short vibraphone passage after the first chorus reminds me of my friend Douglas and the fact that his friend played on the Smile tour. That is one excellent vibraphone too.
Love songs
pretty girls
I didn't want it to end
There's a lot of things going on when you hear an old Brian Wilson sing those lines. The teenager seen by the old man, who in a way still seems to believe in those teenage dreams.
At the same time it's just an old man delivering what is expected of him, the way all artist eventually end up being tired bodies singing the songs that they wrote when they were young. They evoke the image of the present day Brian Wilson the way he acts in interviews, but at the same time his dignity is fully intact. This is kind of a pointless paragraph because I can't seem to explain it well enough, but I guess I just wanted to highlight the fact that these lines (and the way they are delivered) hold more than meets the eye.
In the final part of the song the back up singers evokes the feeling of "Our prayer"-type things along with the spirit of the choir in Alice Coltrane's "Om Supreme" and it's something that I would have liked to do on my upcoming album.
Southern
Cali
fornia
Oh oh oh
it's magical
glad it happened to me
Listen to it here.
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