Beach Boys co-founder, singer and songwriter, Brian Wilson has passed away.
He was 82.
“We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. We are at a loss for words right now. Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world,” Brian Wilson’s family said on Instagram.
Wilson’s family did not disclose a cause of death. Wilson reportedly suffered from dementia.
Variety reported:
From 1962 to 1966, the Beach Boys racked up 10 top-10 hits and seven more top-40 chart entries for Capitol Records, most of them written or co-written and produced by Wilson; their popularity during this period was rivaled only by that of their English labelmates the Beatles, whom Wilson came to view as his artistic rivals.
A sensitive and ambitious talent, Wilson went on to push the boundaries of rock’s possibilities with a string of mid-’60s feats with his band: the lush and affecting 1966 song cycle “Pet Sounds,” the dazzling, complex 1966 single “Good Vibrations” and the long-mythical, tragically scrapped magnum opus “Smile.”
Encapsulating the group’s import in “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll,” critic Jim Miller wrote, “In the ’60s, when they were at the height of their original popularity, the Beach Boys propagated their own variant on the American Dream, painting a dazzling picture of beaches, parties and endless summer, a paradise of escape into private as often as shared pleasures. Yet by the late ’60s, the band was articulating…a disenchantment with the suburban ethos, and a search for transcendence.”
Listen to the best songs of the Beach Boys:
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