Length 2:34 Writer(s) Brian Wilson
Mike Love | Label Brother/Reprise | |
Released August 31, 1970 (1970-08-31) Recorded March 19, 1969
Gold Star Studios, Hollywood Genre Chillwave
proto-shoegaze | ||
"All I Wanna Do" is a song written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love for the American rock band the Beach Boys, released as the eighth track on the group's sixteenth studio album Sunflower on August 31, 1970. It is considered the earliest example of chillwave and a precursor to the shoegazing genre.
Contents
Composition
In 2015, Love commented that "All I Wanna Do" was "totally poetic and quite heartfelt". The song was characterized by music review site Pitchfork as "proto-shoegaze". According to academic Philip Lambert,
In "All I Wanna Do" the lush backing chorus grows in intensity along with the love expressed in the lyric. By the time the chorus arrives, the depth and complexity of the singer's feelings are captured by an intricate layering of a main tune repeating the song title, a midrange non-texted countermelody in response, a "doot-doot-doot" line reaffirming the mellow beat, and a foundational bass line. It's the next step beyond the elegantly transparent layered endings of "Fun, Fun, Fun" and "God Only Knows" and so many others.
Talking about the song in 1995, Brian expressed: "That was one of those songs that had a nice chord pattern, but I think it was a boring song, and I thought it wasn't done right. I thought it should have been softer, with boxed guitars." In 2000, he called the song "a real nice one".
Recording
On June 8, 1968, following the main recording sessions for Friends an unreleased version of the song was demoed at Brian Wilson's home studio featuring use of a sitar, a classical Indian stringed instrument. The song's arrangement was revised and the recording which ultimately ended up on Sunflower took place nine months later on March 19, 1969 at Gold Star Studios. Instead of a sitar, the final arrangement opted for a guitar line which Mathew Greenwald of AllMusic describes as "Byrds-like".
Critical reception
In 1970, Jim Miller of Rolling Stone noted production elements made the listening experience "mind-wrenching". Matthew Greenwald called the song a lost classic, writing: "Possibly one of the most beautiful and unusual songs and recordings on the Sunflower album... Mike Love deserves high marks for his vocal and lyric contributions, which may be his most tasteful in the scope of the entire Beach Boys canon. Brian Wilson's haunting, minor-key melody and ghostly arrangement is truly bittersweet evidence that he had certainly not lost his artistic grasp." Greenwald went on to give accolades to the song's arrangement, citing the effectiveness of the piccolo's snare drum and the interesting, well-executed harmonies.