"Wouldn't It Be Nice" Is The fifth most conservative rock song of all time?

By DJ M on May 22nd, 2006
In Brian Wilson/B. Boys


NATIONAL REVIEW As I recall, the Godfather of the Conservatives, Ronnie Reagan, chose a Secretary of the Interior, JAMES G. WATT, who wouldn't allow the Beach Boys to play in Washington D.C. on July 4. Hooray for hypocrisy!

Watt said that rock music attracts "the wrong element," and that the Beach Boys, and other such groups, "have not attracted families and have in fact created drug and alcohol problems and other serious dangers for visitors."

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1 comment

Comment from: Peter Ames Carlin [Visitor]
Peter Ames CarlinI just read that guy's bit on "WIBN," and couldn't go farther 'cause the jump was on a pay site and I dind't have the time/energy to go to Nexis and dig it out for free.

So maybe it's not fair to judge based on this one illustration. But what this snapshot tells us is how useless aesthetic analysis can be, when it comes from someone attempting to use aesthetics to make a political point. "WIBN" may indeed reflect what you may define as "traditional" values, but it does so through the eyes of an innocent -- and not all that sophisticated -- person. Which is precisely the point of the song. And even if it were intended to describe or analyze a particular political/social construction, it would be doing so within the larger context of "Pet Sounds" as a whole. Which ends, let us recall, in near-abject desolation. That conservative world has turned Caroline cold and hard. Our narrator is lost and alone, wandering somewhere near a railroad (see also: manifest destiny; westward migration; the rape of the environment) that is as unfeeling as it is unknowing.

So how conservative is that?
05/22/06 @ 19:21