(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Tue 30 December 2025 20:15, UK
Amid Beatlemania’s dizzying peaks across 1964, only The Beach Boys were able to stem the Fab Four’s Billboard-conquering tide.
Somehow, sunny California’s surfer exclave was able to somewhat buffer The Beatles’ pop impact, enjoying a mythic idyl of the era’s optimistic youth and leisurely abundance befitting its own rock and pop soundtrack, perusing the beaches and driving their hot rods in a world Liverpool’s finest knew nothing of. This essential soundtrack was virtually dominated by The Beach Boys, penning ‘fun in the sun’ hits with astonishing pace and prolificacy rivalling even the original rock and roll hit factories.
Yet, five albums in across barely three years, primary songwriter and chief creative force Brian Wilson was fatigued of the tried-and-tested pop formulas beloved by the surf fans. The times were changing. While not apparent on the sandy ground of the sunny teen hangouts, Wilson’s antenna was picking up the impending counterculture’s faint whispers in the wind, eager to expand his songcraft to more sophisticated and mature lyrical realms.
“We needed to grow,” Wilson remarked in Keith Badman’s 2004 book on The Beach Boys. “Up to this point, we had milked every idea dry. We milked it fucking dry. We had done every possible angle about surfing and then we did the car routine. But we needed to grow artistically.”
Wilson was a seasoned in-house producer for the band, growing in confidence with his ballooning pop ambitions and complex arrangements matching the restless need to explore new subject matter. Released in July 1964, All Summer Long would both celebrate the California sound while also looking beyond the blue waves, Wilson pushing their pop craft toward a more arresting pop craft than had been heard yet. The road to Pet Sounds would be paved here, All Summer Long nudging the album toward conceptual cohesiveness with its narrative arc of a typical West Coast kid’s day in the Golden State’s mythic landscape.
Wilson didn’t waste time expressing his wandering artistic eye, however, opening All Summer Long with the album’s only single, ‘I Get Around’, a Beach Boys classic that hides a subtle weariness underneath its gleaming pop harmonies.
So what did “I get around” mean?
Despite all playing the surfer chic and hot rod aficionado, it was the middle brother, Dennis, on drums, who actually participated in both. Lyrically sketching out half-reportage of his athletic sibling’s exploits around town along with Mike Love, ‘I Get Around’ would dare to touch on the low-key existentialism the band had found themselves wandering among the massive tsunami of fame threatening to wipe out The Beach Boys during their prime.
Such dimensions play out over the narrator’s monologue. He’s bored “driving up and down the same old strip”, hungry for new cultural and creative vistas “where the kids are hip”, frustratingly out of reach in the typical haunts of sunny Southern California. “I get around” works as both a literal driver, cruising around the town where he and his “buddies” try to pick up girls, but also signalling to the listener “I know what’s up,” indicating that while fun is keenly indulged in, he knows there’s something greater beckoning around the corner.
It’s a line unmistakably Wilson’s, glowing with a fierce diary confessional amid the ostensible character-led pop number. He certainly knew what was “around”, going on to be considered one of pop’s most visionary pioneers once the surf shackles were truly shaken off for Pet Sounds’ celestial masterstroke two short years later.
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