Quote:
Originally Posted by streetwaves
Pet Sounds is on a completely different level than Help. Help is nothing more than a pop record, you're right. Pet Sounds, though, is full of impeccable arrangements and it's certainly more emotionally powerful.
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So is a lot of music that you kids hate so much and call overblown and whatever. Why is Pet Sounds the greatest pop record? Because it has such lush arrangements? The arrangements are very ahead of their time but the music structure is nothing out of the ordinary in pop music. Besides lush arrangements in pop music wasn't really anything new, guys like Burt Bacherach (an undeniable influence on Pet Sounds) were doing it all the time.
By comparison lets look at two other records released that year. Freak Out by the Mothers of Invention while far less accessible was something never done before in rock or pop music, a combination of biting social satire, genre parody and crazy avant garde experimentation. It was a commercial failure but it's influence and innovations are argubly greater than Pet Sounds.
The other groundbreaking record of that year is more obviously Revolver by The Beatles. Unlike Pet Sounds this was NOT just pop music with more elaborate arrangements. Every song is in a different style, while some were The Beatles attempt at already established forms of pop music, others were brave new experiments, the band and George Martin used all kinds of new techniques and gadgets that really showed what could be done in a studio, stuff that couldn't be imitated live at the time. Sgt Peppers and Magical Mystery Tour expanded on these concepts and were the gateway to progressive rock music.
That being said you can still say Pet Sounds is the better record in pure musical quality, I'm just tired of everyone saying it's the most important record ever made.