Still in the Signal: The Enduring Genius of Brian Wilson (1942–2025)
How Brian Wilson Turned Breakdown Into Beauty and Changed the Way We Hear the World.
Brian Wilson died yesterday.
I took my four kids to see him perform Pet Sounds on its 50th anniversary, in 2017.
He was frail.
Slower.
But when the first notes of Wouldn’t It Be Nice hit, they felt it.
So did I.
They weren’t watching nostalgia.
They were watching a man who mastered destruction and creation.
He broke, publicly, repeatedly.
And still built Pet Sounds, an album so beautiful it forced the Beatles to reorient.
Paul McCartney called God Only Knows the greatest song ever written.
He was right.
Wilson didn’t just make music. He changed how music means.
He didn’t chase the spotlight. He became the medium.
Harmony was his weapon. Structure was his gift.
He showed us how to rebuild from fracture.
He proved that what breaks you can become what transmits through you.
That’s not art. That’s legacy.
Passed from my parents to me. From me to my kids. And on it will go.
He reorientated the World.
And he’s still doing it.
BRIAN WILSON
June 20, 1942 – June 11, 2025
Brian Wilson was a genius, and I grew up with their music (byproduct of boomer parent music lovers). There is a point where where you stop breaking the rules and just break the game. I agree: God Only Knows is one of the very best. I sang it to my son all the way thru his childhood and its a memory for us too now.
I find it interesting that there were so many clues to Wilson's mental torture and struggles with value and identity, even in the earlier music. If only it was noticed earlier.