Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2 | ||||
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Greatest hits album by The Beach Boys | ||||
Released | July 24, 1967 | |||
Recorded | April 1962 - September 1965 | |||
Genre | Rock | |||
Length | 28:43 | |||
Label | Capitol | |||
Producer | Brian Wilson | |||
The Beach Boys chronology | ||||
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Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2 is the 1967 sequel to the previous year's hits package. It was compiled by Capitol Records rather hastily after Brian Wilson had announced the shelving of Smile, the album he had spent the better part of a year toiling on.
Released at a perilous moment in the Beach Boys' career, the appearance of their past glories on Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2 perhaps helped confirm to the general public that the band was not up to the challenge of the new psychedelic music, spearheaded by The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Jimi Hendrix Experience's radical debut Are You Experienced.
Although it is hard to argue with a line-up that includes "I Get Around", "California Girls", "Let Him Run Wild", and "Please Let Me Wonder", those songs were considered old hat in the face of psychedelia, and as a result Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2 initially flopped in the US, only reaching #50. The fact that Smile had been shelved two months earlier meant the group had no new material to release in time for the Summer Of Love. Another commercial blunder came from their failure to appear at the Monterey International Pop Festival, which they had helped organised, and were suppose to Head-line and be the closing act. In time, the album would go on to sell over two million copies, but it was likely with the reaction to this album that the Beach Boys knew they were in trouble commercially in their homeland.
However, a reworked tracklist issued under the same title in the UK in late 1967 proved to be another big success.
Like its predecessor, Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2 is out of print.
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Allmusic | link |
"Please Let Me Wonder" and "Little Saint Nick" do not appear on the cassette tape version.
Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2 (Capitol (D) 2706) hit #50 in the US during a 22 week tenure. In the UK, it reached #3.
The British version of Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2 was released in mid-1967 with 14 songs, instead of the usual 12 found on American albums.
The following songs were found on the British version of Best of The Beach Boys Vol. 2: