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Beach Boy Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin

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Brian Wilson
'Match made in heaven': Brian Wilson and George Gershwin. Brian Wilson says he chose the George Gershwin songs “that I thought I could do justice to."

The album title alone is enough to make pop-music pundits drool, pairing two of the 20th century's most celebrated tunesmiths: Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin.

The recording itself, which arrives Aug. 17, was a “labor of love" for Wilson, 68, who was a George Gershwin fan long before he was a Beach Boy or had even discovered the piano. “Before I could play music, I could hear it," Wilson says, and Gershwin became a hero when he first heard Rhapsody in Blue at about age 4.

Gershwin begins and concludes with truncated versions of that instrumental classic, with Wilson vocalizing the melody line in the layered harmonies that are part of his own signature sound. In between, the veteran singer/songwriter revisits 10 beloved Gershwin songs, among them Summertime, I've Got Rhythm, Our Love Is Here to Stay and They Can't Take That Away From Me.

“I chose the ones that I thought I could do justice to," Wilson says. “And I tried to sing them the way I thought he'd want me to, if he were alive." At the same time, the arrangements incorporate other Wilson-esque flourishes, nodding texturally to genres from classical to doo-wop to soft rock. “We tried to make it sound like Gershwin and Wilson combined."

The album also has two new tunes co-written by Wilson: Nothing But Love, built on the 1929 rarity Say My Say; and The Like in I Love You, based on the 1924 composition Will You Remember Me, written for (but not used in) the musical Lady Be Good! (the latter can be streamed at brianwilson.com).

Adam Gershwin, the great-nephew of George and his brother/lyricist Ira, notes that this is the first time the family has authorized “derivative works of George and Ira Gershwin songs with new lyrics." Once the estate found out Wilson was planning a tribute, he was granted access to more than 100 obscure and unfinished songs.

Gershwin sees “a great similarity" between Wilson and his great-uncles. “Brian also is a musical visionary and refuses to be pigeonholed within a musical genre. It seemed to me a match made in heaven."

Wilson insists he “can't believe that anyone would compare" him to his childhood idol. Yet in describing his enduring attraction to Gershwin's music, Wilson cites qualities that many rock critics have attributed to his own lush, harmonically intricate work. “I love the melodies, and the way (Gershwin) orchestrated the chords around them," Wilson says. So in the studio, “my band members and I recorded the background orchestration first, then the background vocals, then the leads."

Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis expects that the result will be “a great meeting of musical minds. Brian Wilson has as clear an aesthetic as Gershwin did, but they both make the best kind of pop music, the kind that isn't disposable. It's a marriage that makes sense."

Certainly, Wilson couldn't sound more rhapsodic about the union. “Every note I sang here, I sang in Gershwin's shadow," he says. “I'll always look up to him."

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