I am one of the very few people left in America whose favorite music is the Beach Boys. Most real BB fans today are in the UK, Japan, or Australia, where melody and harmony are still appreciated and where the violent and negative AUSTN culture has not completely taken over, as it has here. Still, the Del-Vikings' version is by far the best, and if you disagree with that, you are disagreeing with every member of the Beach Boys, including Al Jardine, who sang lead and who brought the song into the band. Most people under 40 years of age can't appreciate that the beauty of the original recording, and the beauty of most R&R and R&B recordings from the '50's and '60's, lies EXACTLY in the lack of sonic studio perfection and clarity (due to the limited studio resources of the time) and in that the performance itself was not overly polished or overly produced as it would be if recorded today. In the 1950's, one-hit wonder doo-wop groups such as the Del-Vikings did not have the opportunity for multiple takes and so the raw doo-wop feel comes through. That's what makes the original so great and what makes surviving members Al, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston and 99% of people over 40 overwhelmingly prefer the original. For a bit of a fictionalized but still interesting portrayal of the song originally being recorded, rent 1978's "American Hot Wax", the story of Alan Freed, the pioneering DJ of the 1950's credited with coining the term "rock and roll".
I am one of the very few people left in America whose favorite music is the Beach Boys. Most real BB fans today are in the UK, Japan, or Australia, where melody and harmony are still appreciated and where the violent and negative AUSTN culture has not completely taken over, as it has here. Still, the Del-Vikings' version is by far the best, and if you disagree with that, you are disagreeing with every member of the Beach Boys, including Al Jardine, who sang lead and who brought the song into the band. Most people under 40 years of age can't appreciate that the beauty of the original recording, and the beauty of most R&R and R&B recordings from the '50's and '60's, lies EXACTLY in the lack of sonic studio perfection and clarity (due to the limited studio resources of the time) and in that the performance itself was not overly polished or overly produced as it would be if recorded today. In the 1950's, one-hit wonder doo-wop groups such as the Del-Vikings did not have the opportunity for multiple takes and so the raw doo-wop feel comes through. That's what makes the original so great and what makes surviving members Al, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston and 99% of people over 40 overwhelmingly prefer the original. For a bit of a fictionalized but still interesting portrayal of the song originally being recorded, rent 1978's "American Hot Wax", the story of Alan Freed, the pioneering DJ of the 1950's credited with coining the term "rock and roll".