BRIAN WILSON (1942 - 2025)

Brian Wilson, the innovative creative force behind the Los Angeles surf-rock band, The Beach Boys, died on June 11th at the age of eighty-two. No cause of death has been revealed but he had struggled with mental illness and drug addiction for most of his life and recently been diagnosed with dementia. Besides his work with the band, Wilson is known for using the recording studio as an instrument where he demonstrated an exceptional mastery of layering beautiful harmonies and intricate, musical textures to create the Beach Boys' unique sound. 

Wilson, playing the bass and his brothers, Dennis, on drums and Carl who was on lead guitar; their cousin, Mike Love who sang lead vocals and friend, Al Jardine on rhythm guitar first began playing together in high school, calling themselves, "The Pendletones". After receiving a reel-to-reel tape recorder for his birthday, Wilson learned how to overdub vocals, He would begin writing songs and with surfing beginning to become popular in Southern California, Wilson wrote a tune called "Surfin'". The boys recorded a demo of the song and it got in the hands of Herb Newman, owner of Candix Records, signing the group in 1961. Renamed "The Beach Boys" by the label, the single became a local hit as well as charting on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching only number seventy-five.

This success lead the Beach Boys to seek out a major label and signed with Capitol Records. Their debut album, "Surfin' Safari" was released in 1962 and featured largely original songs written by Wilson, Love and friend, Gary Usher which was not common at this time for artists to write their own material. The title track reached number fourteen on the US pop chart. But it was their follow-up single, "Surfin' USA" in 1963 that took this teenage band to the next level, reaching number three on the Billboard pop chart. More big hits followed: "Surfer Girl", "Fun, Fun, Fun", "I Get Around", "Help Me, Rhonda", "Good Vibrations", "California Girls". During a concert at the end of 1964, Wilson suffered a panic attack which prompted him to quit going on the road with the band, focusing only on songwriting and record production. Glen Campbell, at the time a session musician, was the first to replace Wilson on tour. 

Inspired by the music being created by Phil Spector and The Beatles, Wilson began to explore even further with sound, deciding to make the Beach Boys' music more expansive and bold. In 1966, Wilson put together (along with writer, Tony Asher) the Beach Boys' eleventh studio album, "Pet Sounds".  This record offered sophisticated yet experimental rock songs, leaving even the band members slightly perplexed by this new direction. But "Pet Sounds", with the hit singles, "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "Sloop John B" and "God Only Knows", changed the perception of The Beach Boys as a lightweight pop band and this early concept album would go on to become a highly influential collection of music. The band's subsequent music would continue deeper down this explorative path, alienating some fans who missed their earlier wholesome pop and unable to connect with their newer, more esoteric rock sound. 

By the late 1960's, the music by the Beach Boys was not selling well, they had an unfortunate, brief involvement with Charles Manson, who was an aspiring musician, recording some of his music and filed a lawsuit against Capitol Records for unpaid royalties. In between being admitted into hospitals and stints in rehab for years, Wilson would manage to create music with the Beach Boys, for himself as a solo artist (recording eleven studio albums) and even finding his way to get back on stage to tour on several occasions. Wilson's last time in concert was in July 2022 on tour with Chicago and he struggled during the performance, cancelling the rest of the tour the next day.

Wilson is survived by two daughters, Carnie and Wendy from his first marriage to singer Marilyn Rovell (they married in 1964), who both later had musical success as two-thirds of the pop group, Wilson Phillips along with Chynna Phillips, the daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the band,The Mamas & The Papas. After his marriage to Rovell ended in 1978, Wilson would marry Melinda Ledbetter in 1995 and later she would became his manager. Ledbetter passed away in 2024.

RANDOM SIGHTS + SOUNDS

When Miley Cyrus approached the recording of her latest album, "Something Beautiful", she was inspired by the win of her first Grammy Award last year for Best Pop Solo performance for "Flowers". It's not that she placed that much importance in awards but it did give Cyrus even more confidence that she was moving creatively in the right direction. A performer since she was thirteen when cast in the Disney Channel television series "Hannah Montana", the now thirty-two year old Cyrus has conceived her ninth studio album as a visual concept record centered around the theme of "healing". She continues to take control of her sound, co-writing and co-producing the album, with this collection utilizing alt-r&b, jazz and disco-pop to express her thoughts on discovering beauty and light following trauma and heartbreak. "Something Beautiful" also features guest appearances by Brittany Howard, Danielle Haim, Flea of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Super Model, Naomi Campbell. A musical film that is a companion to the album called "Something Beautiful", directed by Cyrus along with Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter, made its premiere on June 6th at the Beacon Theatre during the Tribeca Festival and will be released theatrically on June 12th.







June is Pride month and to help kick off the celebration here are some recent songs by artists who are either queer or strong allies: The latest song from David Archuleta is a sensual ballad, "Can I Call You"; the French musical stylist, Christine and the Queens has an upcoming EP collaborating with legendary disco producer, Cerrone and their lead single is the throbbing dance track, "Catching Feelings"; Sam Williams, the grandson of the influential country music pioneer, Hank Williams and son of Hank Williams Jr., is continuing in the family tradition yet in his own way with a country-pop love song that is unabashedly queer; German producer, Toby Gad has released "Run", a track from Donna Summer that was unreleased from the recording sessions for her final studio album, "Crayons" back in 2008; and the performer who first found fame in musical theater before soaring on to the big screen (in the adaptation of hit musical, "Wicked") and this year's Tony Awards host, Cynthia Erivo has managed to find time to record her second studio album, "I Forgive You", a collection of contemporary r&b.











And to close, here is a classic one-hit wonder from 1969 that I love from Spiral Starecase, a Northern California based band, and their big hit, "More Today Than Yesterday". Beginning as an instrumental group called the Fydallions, they managed to get signed to Columbia Records but the label insisted they change their name. Taking it from a 1946 psychological horror film but slightly altering the spelling, Spiral Starecase charted with "More Today Than Yesterday" with the soulful pop song reaching number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. None of their follow-up music managed to find much success and the band actually disbanded a little over a year after their charting hit due to in-fighting amongst the members and poor management.

TAKE TWO: CHICAGO

Self-described as a "rock and roll band with horns,", Chicago has been creating their unique and dazzling blend of jazz, soul and pop-rock music for almost sixty years. Formed in 1967 from several Chicago area bands whose members decided to join forces and play together. The original line-up was Peter Cetera on bass, Terry Kath on guitar, Robert Lamm on keyboards, Lee Loughnane on trumpet, James Pankow on trombone, Walter Parazaider on woodwinds, and Danny Seraphine on drums with Cetera, Kath and Lamm sharing lead vocals. First working as a local cover band called The Big Thing, the group began creating original material which was well received when they performed them.

After getting signed to Columbia Records in 1968, they changed their name to the Chicago Transit Authority. Their self-titled debut was released the following year and was a double album which was highly unusual for a band's very first record. But that showed how much faith the label had for Chicago Transit Authority and they were proven to be right. The album would go on to sell over a million copies by 1970 on the strength of the hit singles, "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", "Beginnings", "Questions 67 and 68", and "I'm a Man". Following this rapid success, the band dropped "Transit Authority" from their name to avoid any potential legal action from the actual transit company. 

Chicago quickly went back into the studio for their next album, "Chicago II" that became another big hit in 1970 that featured the top ten songs, "Make Me Smile", "Colour My World" and "25 or 6 to 4". "Chicago III" was out the next year and became another gold album. The rest of Chicago's subsequent six albums were Roman-numeral titled and would include plenty more popular hit singles: "Saturday in the Park", "Just You 'n' Me", "Feelin' Stronger Every Day", "(I've Been) Searchin' So Long", "Wishing You Were Here", "Old Days" and "If You Leave Me Now" which became the group's first number one US pop single in 1976 and won Chicago their only Grammy Award to date. With the 1977 release, "Chicago XI", "Baby, What a Big Surprise" was a number four U.S. hit that would become the group's last top 10 hit of the decade. 

Tragedy would strike the group when on January 23, 1978, Kath died from a freak accident: a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a gun he thought was unloaded. The band was unsure they would be able to continue as they also were beginning to have serious concerns about their long-time producer, James William Guercio who they began to suspect had been cheating the band financially. 

Chicago decided to continue on as a band, hiring guitarist and singer-songwriter Donnie Dacus to replace Kath and Phil Ramone to co-produce with the band on their tenth studio album, "Hot Streets" which was their first without a numbered title. The singles, "Alive Again" and "No Tell Lover" became top-twenty hits and proved Chicago was still able to achieve success despite the changes. However their next album, "Chicago 13" in 1979 was not nearly as successful and Dacus would leave the band at the end of the tour supporting the record. By 1980, the band released "Chicago XIV" with a new producer, Tom Dowd. With a radical change in sound, this album was a critical and financial failure with Columbia, no longer feeling the band was commercially viable, dropping the band from the label.

Two years later, Chicago signed with Warner Bros. Records, added keyboardist, guitarist, and singer Bill Champlin and brought in a new producer, David Foster to work on "Chicago 16". The ballad from the album, "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" (written by Foster and Cetera) became the band's second number one US pop single. More hits with Cetera on lead vocals followed with "You're the Inspiration" and "Hard Habit to Break", and soon he was requesting an opportunity to go off as a solo performer while remaining with Chicago. The band declined this offer and in 1985, Cetera would leave Chicago, enjoying a solid career with several of his own top ten hits.

Chicago has continued on as a group ever since, largely as a touring band with a constant change of backing members over the years. But they have also still been recording with twenty-six career studio albums to date and their most recent, "Chicago XXXVIII: Born for This Moment" released in 2022 with Lamm, Loughnane and Pankow still performing with the band they helped form. Chicago was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016 and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. It was extremely difficult to narrow down to just two songs by Chicago but I managed to select a couple of my all-time favorites:

NEW SOUNDS

MAREN MORRIS

Maren Morris broke through back in 2016 with her song "My Church" which was her first to reach the top ten of the US country singles charts. A recording contract with Columbia Nashville followed and she achieved more hit country singles. Morris dabbled in dance music a couple of years later, teaming with German record producer and DJ, Zedd and having their collaboration, "The Middle" become a smash international hit. After a few more successful albums, Morris has taken a page from Taylor Swift's playbook, moving away from pure country and has just released "Dreamsicle", a collection of modern pop that showcases another side of her impressive talent. Teaming up with a large number of the top producers in contemporary pop which includes Greg Kurstin and Jack Antonoff (who helped Swift on her journey into pop music), the politically outspoken Morris has delivered songs that express where she currently is in her life right now after recently ending her marriage to musician, Ryan Hurd and coming out as bisexual. She has planned to embark on her "Dreamsicle World Tour" to support the record with dates set across North America and Europe.





BARBRA STREISAND

With "The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Two", Barbra Streisand offers a sequel to her popular 2014 duets album, "Partners". This collection, due out in June, has the legendary performer teaming-up with some of her musical contemporaries (Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Bob Dylan), pop music successors (Josh Groban, Sting, Mariah Carey, Tim McGraw) and current artists (Sam Smith, Laufey, Ariana Grande). The songs they perform range from pop standards to songs written by some of her duet partners. The first two songs released feature Streisand with the Irish rocker, Hoizer on a cover of Ewan MacColl's 1957 love ballad, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". And the former Beatle performs with Streisand, "My Valentine", a love song he had written for his album, "Kisses on the Bottom" back in 2011.

WHAT WAS THAT?

It's been about four years since Lorde released her third studio album, "Solar Power", a collection of psychedelic pop, which was meet with a largely mixed reaction. The New Zealand based artist had laid low since then but recently has returned to the scene with new music. With "What Was That", the singer has returned to form with more of the synth-pop sound that first brought her attention. Teaming with new collaborators, Jim-E Stack and Daniel Nigro, the song has Lorde haunted by memories of a relationship that has ended, trying to understand what it was all about. And the music video for the song has the singer moving through New York City, on foot and by bike, before ending up at Washington Square Park, surrounded by a swarm of her fans who were waiting after being notified she was going to make an appearance. This seems to be a good indicator that a collection of new music is on the horizon from Lorde but in the meantime, have a listen to her latest:

SLY LIVES (AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS)

The question is asked in "Sly Lives", the follow-up to musician-turned-filmmaker, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's Oscar-winning documentary feature, "Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)" on the legendary musical creator, Sly Stone; "Is there a burden on Black Genius?". It is answered by many artists who appear in this riveting film like Chaka Khan, George Clinton, D'Angelo, Andre 3000, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who all tend to agree that when you put art out into the world, there is an intense pressure by success which can be even more stifling than a fear of failure. They also agreed that Stone, a free-spirited prodigy, was an important and highly influential visionary who kicked down the racial, gender and musical barriers that had been long held-up in society. He would go on to pay a heavy price for his rewarding sonic disruption, although some of the trauma may have been self-inflicted through his struggles with lingering drug addiction. Yet his profound musical legacy has continued to endure and thrive.

Born Sylvester Stewart, he first got into music performing with his family as a gospel group in church after migrating to the Bay area from Texas. As a child, he became proficient at playing several instruments, effortlessly mastering the keyboards, guitar, bass, and drums. Stewart went on to become involved in a mixed-race, doo-wop singing group, the Viscaynes in the early 1960's, finding some local success. After later becoming a DJ in San Francisco at KSOL where he played soul records while occasionally mixing in some British rock, Stewart got the opportunity to produce for Autumn Records, making records with San Francisco-area rock bands such as The Beau Brummels, The Mojo Men and The Great Society that featured Grace Slick in her first band.

This lead to the forming of Sly and the Family Stone, a racially integrated, mixed-gender band who performed what would become known as Psychedelic soul, a merging of funk, rock and r&b. After an indifferent reaction to their debut album, Sly and the Family Stone broke through with their follow-up release, "Dance to the Music" in 1968 with the title track reaching the top-ten on the pop charts. More hits followed; "Everyday People", "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)", "Everybody Is a Star", "I Want to Take You Higher", "Family Affair" with a highlight being an electrifying live appearance during the summer of love at Woodstock.

This sudden success brought problems to the band with creative and personal friction between the musicians and far more prevalent drug usage. But it was Stone's increasingly erratic behavior that would eventually drive some band members to leave the group. And while they would usually be replaced, largely for touring purposes, Stone began to perform most of the instruments and vocals himself during the recording of new music.

Fast-paced and visually arresting, "Sly Lives" reminds us of what a musical anomaly Stone was as an artist at the time. Fearlessly challenging the convention of genres, he was unmotivated by chasing fame, only making music that truly inspired him. Sly and his band were officially together for about seventeen years but really only had almost a decade where they were productive creatively as a musical outfit. But what they were able to accomplish during that explosive period was absolutely innovative and breathtaking.

RANDOM SIGHTS + SOUNDS

David Archuleta had seemed to be happy during his time pursuing a music career and getting a jump start by becoming runner-up during the seventh season of "American Idol" back in 2008. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, his faith was very important to Archuleta, even putting his rising career as a pop singer on hold while he spent two years as a missionary. But he had also been keeping a secret that he had been struggling with for many years: he was gay. This created a problem for him with the Mormon Church when he finally came out in 2021, eventually feeling he had to leave it behind. Archuleta has continued with his music career, more recently with a desire to perform freely whatever kind of music that personally motivates him and he can have fun with. His latest single, "Crème Brulée" is exactly that, clearly inspired by Sabrina Carpenter's catchy hit, "Espresso" which he had performed live in concert. The music video for this playful song has Archuleta dancing with smooth choreography interchangeably locked with male and female dancers.



Here is a spotlight on some new music: Kendrick Lamar and SZA team up on the single, "Luther" from his album, "GNX" with the video as a short film; "Tonight", the latest from British pop artist, PinkPantheress that is a part of her upcoming mixtape; Lucy Dacus, member of the indie supergroup, Boygenius, has just released her fourth solo album, "Forever is a Feeling" and this is a single from the collection and Kesha is back with new music from her upcoming album, a country/hip-hop hybrid that features T-Pain.

It's not really a great surprise that the romantic relationship between actress/pop singer, Selena Gomez and producer/songwriter, benny blanco would lead to a musical connection between these two. Beginning their love affair a little over two years ago, although they first met working together on music for her second solo album, "Revival" in 2015, this couple, who are engaged, has just released their recent collaboration, "I Said I Love You First", an album filled with songs that focuses on the ending of one relationship and finally finding true love in a new one. Gomez, who stars in the popular series, "Only Murders in the Building" and recently co-starred in the provocative, Oscar-nominated big-screen musical, "Emilia Pérez" and blanco, the pop music creator who has probably worked at some point with every contemporary artist you may know, has brought on board Gracie Abrams, The Marías and J Balvin to appear on their project. Here are a few of my favorite tracks from the album: