The Beach Boys

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The Beach Boys are a pop music group from Hawthorne, California. They formed in 1961, and the original members were Brian Wilson (keyboards, bass guitar), his brothers Dennis Wilson (drums) and Carl Wilson (lead guitar), their cousin Mike Love (lead vocals), and close friend Alan Jardine (rhythm guitar). David Marks replaced Jardine briefly when he went away to school, and Bruce Johnston (keyboards) later became a regular band member. Many of their songs were about life in southern California, the beach, girls, cars, and surfing (though Dennis Wilson was actually the only member in the group who surfed).

Some of their songs include "Good Vibrations", "Fun, Fun, Fun", "Help Me Rhonda", "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "God Only Knows". Brian Wilson was influenced by people like Burt Bacharach and Phil Spector and started making music like theirs. Among critics and fans in most countries, the best-known Beach Boys album was their eleventh, Pet Sounds, which featured this kind of music. In the United States, however, Pet Sounds was the first album since their first one to not get a gold certificate in sales, and peaked at number ten, lower than all but two of their previous albums.