Is This Album Better Than the Beatles Sgt. Pepper?

In 1966 the Beach Boys released Pet Sounds, considered to be an all-time classic rock album. Brian Wilson went back into the studio, completed Good Vibrations over the course of a few months and $50,000 (reportedly) and then, as the Beach Boys went back out on the road, Brian stayed home to work on the next album, Smile. As on Pet Sounds, he took a modular approach and recorded symphonic, elaborate pieces of music to be joined together. Brian also began delving heavily in drugs and signs of an undiagnosed schizoaffective disorder began to surface.

Brian previewed the tracks to the "touring" Beach Boys upon their return and Mike Love objected to the recordings stating the lyrics would not be acceptable to fans. In addition, Wilson claims he lost interest and faith in the project. He subsequently shelved it and the Beach Boys went on to record Smiley Smile which included a handful of less ambitious, scaled down versions of Brian's tracks. The Beatles meanwhile released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, their effort to top Pet Sounds.

Thirty-seven years later, after many "leaked," bootleg compilations of the "what could have been" Smile album, with the help of Darian Sahanaja, Wilson completed the tracks for Smile, performed a number of concerts and released a CD.

The question now is ... if Smile had been released in 1967, would it have been superior to Sgt. Pepper's? I encourage you to listen to both the reconstructed Smile and the 2004 release before weighing in.

You can vote in the poll to the right and comments are greatly appreciated.

The cover to the unreleased Beach Boys Smile. Over 400,000 stored warehouse copies existed until the late 80s when they were destroyed. Reportedly, fewer than a dozen exist today.