Addendum to the Idea of the Week.
The final song on The Beach Boy’s last studio album: Summer’s Gone. One thought. Has there ever been a more perfect ending to an idea? The idea in question here being Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. Them, in their entirety. The concept of their creative existence. The definitive Summer surf sound as we know it now ending with a simple poetic statement: For them, Summer is over.
What makes this so powerful is how it’s framed as, not just the end of an album, or a band, but of an entire existence. It’s almost like this is what they intended for the song, that Brian knew it would take his own departure from this reality for the idea to be fully finished.
It makes you think about how an artist uses their own life as the canvas for their art. And when they do, when they live their idea, they arrive at a rare position come the end, where they can write a song like this, poignant in its self-awareness, able to execute something profound with minimal lyrics, as the music is not something emanating from the artist’s being, it is their being.
In movies, there’s usually a soundtrack to the final fictionalised moment. But this is real. The characters of this story have written their own goodbye ode.
Around the midway mark a sort of magic happens, a rush of love, a lift, where the relations harmonise for the last time in that definitive hymn-like manner. And it expresses a magnitude of feeling I lack the experience and depth to explain.
When you live as an artist, you can’t help but be defined by your work. It’s what makes up the sum total of your life. Your time. Your mark. And to have control over the end of your story, something we usually have zero control over, demonstrates the power of art to shape and wrangle certain legacies.
The song ends with just a minute or so of empty atmosphere. No voices. Just the hush of lapping waves. The tide. The surf. The beach.
Fuck. What an incredible idea. That’s all.
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