I Get Around

"I Get Around" is a song written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love for American rock band the Beach Boys. It was released as a single in May 1964 with "Don’t Worry Baby" as its B-side and became the group's first number-one charting song in the United States. In the United Kingdom, it charted at number seven and was the band's first top ten single there. It was included as the opening track on their studio album All Summer Long in July 1964.

An autobiographical narrative, "I Get Around" begins with a multi-part a cappella introduction that quickly shifts into rock-style verses sung by Mike Love and a pop chorus sung in falsetto by Brian Wilson, who also produced and arranged the song. During its recording session, Wilson's father Murry was relieved of his duties as the group's manager.

In 2004, it was ranked at #316 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Composition

The song was originally credited to Brian Wilson alone until Love v. Wilson, a 1994 lawsuit by Mike Love which amended the song's copyright to include him as a co-writer. In an interview with Goldmine, published September 18, 1992, Love insisted that he and not Wilson "came up with 'round round get around'".

Brian Wilson

Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer best known for being the multi-tasking leader and co-founder of the Beach Boys. After signing with Capitol Records in 1962, Wilson wrote or co-wrote more than two dozen Top 40 hits for the group. Because of his unorthodox approaches to song composition and arrangement and mastery of recording techniques, he is widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and influential creative forces in popular music by critics and musicians alike.

In the mid-1960s, Wilson composed, arranged and produced Pet Sounds (1966), considered one of the greatest albums ever made. The intended follow-up to Pet Sounds, Smile, was cancelled for various reasons, which included Wilson's deteriorating mental health. As he suffered through multiple nervous breakdowns, Wilson's contributions to the Beach Boys diminished, and his erratic behavior led to tensions with the band. After years of treatment and recuperation, he began performing and recording consistently as a solo artist. On the Beach Boys' 50th anniversary, Wilson briefly returned to record and perform with the group. He remains a member of their corporation, Brother Records Incorporated.

Around

Around may refer to:

The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and their friend Al Jardine. They emerged at the vanguard of the "California Sound", performing original surf songs that gained international popularity for their distinct vocal harmonies and lyrics exploring a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance. Influenced by jazz-based vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and doo-wop, Brian led the band in devising novel approaches to music production, arranging his compositions for studio orchestras, and experimenting with several genres ranging from pop ballads to psychedelic and baroque.

The group began as a garage band managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, with Brian's creative ambitions and sophisticated songwriting abilities dominating the group's musical direction. After 1964, their albums took a different stylistic path that featured more personal lyrics, multi-layered sounds, and recording experiments. In 1966, the Pet Sounds album and "Good Vibrations" single vaunted the group to the top level of rock innovators and established the band as symbols of the nascent counterculture era. Following the dissolution of Smile, Brian gradually ceded control to the rest of the band, reducing his input because of mental health and substance abuse issues. Though the more democratic incarnation of the Beach Boys recorded a string of albums in various music styles that garnered international critical success, the group struggled to reclaim their commercial momentum in America. Since the 1980s, much-publicized legal wrangling over royalties, songwriting credits and use of the band's name transpired.

Brian

Brian (sometimes spelled Bryan) is a male given name of Irish and Breton origin, as well as a surname of Occitan origin. It is common in the English-speaking world. It is possible that the name is derived from an Old Celtic word meaning "high" or "noble". For example, the element bre means "hill"; which could be transferred to mean "eminence" or "exalted one". The name is quite popular in Ireland, on account of Brian Boru, a 10th-century king of Ireland. The name was also quite popular in East Anglia during the Middle Ages. This is because the name was introduced to England by Bretons following the Norman Conquest. Bretons also settled in Ireland along with the Normans in the 12th century, and 'their' name was mingled with the 'Irish' version. Also, in the north-west of England, the 'Irish' name was introduced by Scandinavian settlers from Ireland. Within the Gaelic speaking areas of Scotland, the name was at first only used by professional families of Irish origin. It was the fourth most popular male name in England and Wales in 1934, but a sharp decline followed over the remainder of the 20th century and by 1994 it had fallen out of the top 100. It retained its popularity in the United States for longer; its most popular period there was from 1968–1979 when it consistently ranked between eighth and tenth.