Music

Paul McCartney once called The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’ “the greatest song ever written” – and fans agree

Jun 12, 2025 - 05:40
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Paul McCartney once called The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’ “the greatest song ever written” – and fans agree

Paul McCartney has long been vocal about his admiration for The Beach Boys‘ Brian Wilson – some of his quotes about the legendary pop innovator and ‘God Only Knows’ are now resurfacing following Wilson’s death.

Wilson’s death was announced yesterday (June 11) via his family – he was 82. In the hours since the announcement, fans of The Beatles and The Beach Boys have been reliving pleasantries shared between Macca and Wilson on social media.

Despite being engaged in a light-hearted feud shaped around sportsmanship and admiration throughout their careers The Beatles and The Beach Boys never fostered any bad blood between them. Rather, they were fans of each other and were thrilled at the idea of friendly competition.

Paul McCartney has very publicly voiced his admiration for Wilson in the past, and Wilson returned the favour multiple times over, even performing The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’ together at a benefit show in 2002.

McCartney inducted Wilson into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000, where the pair traded anecdotes of their “rivalry”.

Macca said at that induction ceremony: “In the ’60s, particularly, he wrote some music that when I played it, it made me cry and I don’t quite know why. It wasn’t necessarily the words or the music, it’s just something so deep in it, that there’s only certain pieces of music that can do this to me… I think it’s a sign of great genius to be able to do that with a bunch of music and a bunch of notes. And this man, he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, that’s for sure.

“So thank you, sir, for making me cry. For having that thing you can do with your music – you just put those notes, those harmonies together, stick a couple of words over the top and you’ve got me, any day.”

McCartney famously hailed Wilson and The Beach Boys’ classic ‘God Only Knows’ as “the greatest song ever written” in the ’90s, and in 2003 echoed the sentiment again for the Charles Granata book Wouldn’t it Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.

In 2004, Wilson released the solo album ‘Gettin’ In Over My Head’, which included the McCartney collaboration ‘A Friend Like You’.

In 2007, Macca doubled down on the praise, saying during a BBC Radio 1 interview: “’God Only Knows’ is one of the few songs that reduces me to tears every time I hear it. It’s really just a love song, but it’s brilliantly done. It shows the genius of Brian. I’ve actually performed it with him, and I’m afraid to say that during the soundcheck, I broke down. It was just too much to stand there singing this song that does my head in and to stand there singing it with Brian. So all it is, it’s little vibrations reaching your music, it’s only little vibrations, little words, and little things. There is this powerful effect, you know.”

In 2012, McCartney spoke of Wilson and the Beach Boys in a chat with The Rolling Stones‘ Ronnie Wood, where he reflected on performing ‘God Only Knows’ with the late singer in 2002: “I got to sing it with Brian once when we did a benefit together. I was okay at the actual performance, I held it together. But at the rehearsal, at the soundcheck, I lost it, because it’s very emotional, this song, I find it… ‘Oh my god, I’m singing with Brian,’ it just got me, I couldn’t.

“So all it is, it’s little vibrations reaching your music, it’s only little vibrations, little words, and little things. There is this powerful effect, you know.” Check out a clip of his chat with Wood below.

As recently as 2021, McCartney joined Rick Rubin for a life-spanning chat, where he once again spoke of Wilson and The Beach Boys’ impact on The Beatles: “Beach Boys, I think was a big influence on our harmony. There was a little intercontinental rivalry – mainly Brian, his writing. I think he’d heard one of our albums and thought ‘I’ve got to do better’, and that was ‘Pet Sounds’, which I love and it’s still one of my big albums. So atmospheric and different, and yet it was the Beach Boys still. And we heard ‘Pet Sounds’ and thought ‘We gotta do something better than that.’ And so we did ‘Sgt. Pepper…'”.

You can check out a couple more instances of McCartney praising Wilson below.

Fans of Wilson have since taken to social media to echo McCartney’s sentiment around ‘God Only Knows’. Piers Morgan wrote: RIP Brian Wilson, 82. Co-creator of the Beach Boys, and the man who wrote one of the greatest pop songs in history, ‘God Only Knows’, when he was just 23.”

A number of figures have since paid tribute to Wilson – Ringo Starr wrote a simple message: “God bless Brian Wilson. Peace and love to all his family.”

John Lennon and Yoko Ono‘s son and acclaimed solo artist Sean Ono Lennon wrote: “Anyone who really knows me knows how heart broken I am about Brian Wilson passing. Not many people influenced me as much as he did. I feel very lucky that I was able to meet him and spend some time with him. He was always very kind and generous. He was our American Mozart. A one of a kind genius from another world.”

You can find more tributes from other musical greats here.

The post Paul McCartney once called The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’ “the greatest song ever written” – and fans agree appeared first on NME.

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