The Beach Boys - Friends

Released when Cream and Jimi Hendrix were at their apex, the low-key pleasantries of Friends seemed downright irrelevant in mid-1968. Today it sounds better, but it's certainly one of the group's more minor efforts, as the members started to divide the songwriting more or less evenly among themselves, rather than letting Brian Wilson provide most of the material. The title track was a charming, if innocuous, minor hit. The bossa nova "Busy Doin' Nothin'" was a subtly subversive piece of rock Muzak, though hindsight reveals a rather worrisome indolence in the lyrics, as penned by Wilson, who was starting to withdraw into his own world. Read More