Surf's Up (song)

"Surf's Up"
Single by the Beach Boys
from the album Surf's Up
B-side	"Don't Go Near the Water"
Released	November 29, 1971 (1971-11-29)
Recorded	November 4, 1966 – July 1971
Studio	Western, Columbia, and Beach Boys Studio, Los Angeles
Genre	Progressive pop[1] symphonic pop[2] psychedelia[3]
Length	4:11
Label	Brother, Reprise
Songwriter(s)	Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks
Producer(s)	The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys singles chronology
"Student Demonstration Time" (1971) "Surf's Up" (1971) "You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone" (1972)
Licensed audio
"Surf's Up" on YouTube
Audio sample
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"Surf's Up" is a song recorded by the American rock band the Beach Boys that was written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. It was originally intended for Smile, an unfinished Beach Boys album that was scrapped in 1967. The song was later completed by Brian and Carl Wilson as the closing track of the band's 1971 album Surf's Up.

Nothing in the song relates to surfing; the title is a play-on-words referring to the group shedding their image. The lyrics describe a man at a concert hall who experiences a spiritual awakening and resigns himself to God and the joy of divine illumination, the latter envisioned as a children's song. Musically, the song was composed as a two-movement piece that modulates key several times and avoids conventional harmonic resolution. It features a coda based on another Smile track, "Child Is Father of the Man".

The only surviving full-band recording of "Surf's Up" from the 1960s is the basic backing track of the first movement. There are three known recordings of Wilson performing the full song by himself, two of which were filmed for the 1967 documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, where it was described as "too complex" to comprehend on a first listen. Several years after Smile was scrapped, the band added new vocals and synthesizer overdubs to Wilson's first piano performance as well as the original backing track. Another recording from 1967 was found decades later and released for the 2011 compilation The Smile Sessions.

"Surf's Up" failed to chart when issued as a single in November 1971 with the B-side "Don't Go Near the Water". In 2004, Wilson rerecorded it for his solo version of Smile with new string orchestrations that he had originally intended to include in the piece. Pitchfork later included the song in separate rankings of the 200 finest songs of the 1960s and 1970s, and in 2011, Mojo staff members voted it the greatest Beach Boys song.