1I have the Wonder Years to blame almost entirely for my initial obsession with “God Only Knows”. As Kevin Arnold risked life and limb to get up on Winnie Cooper’s roof late one summer night, just to look in her window and check to make sure she was safe, Brian Wilson’s impossibly gorgeous song began to play on the soundtrack. And as much as I remembered loving that particular episode, I knew even then that I loved that song a thousand times more. And as that was nearly 20 years ago now, you can imagine how much my love for the song has grown.
In those days, back when you actually had to exert a whole lot of time and effort to track down music you overheard on TV (or anywhere else) - that is to say, pre-Spotify, pre-YouTube, pre-mp3, pre-Google - I began the long trek toward finding out just what it was I’d heard that fateful night. Armed only with a VHS-taped copy of the show (which I rewound and watched endlessly) and some vague idea that it sounded like the same type of harmonies I’d heard on songs like “I Get Around” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?”, I began a quest, followed some clues, and eventually figured out how to get a copy of the song on audio tape. Which I promptly wore out soon after.
All these years later, though, it’s still perhaps the single best love song I’ve ever heard. Somewhere among the melody and the harmonies, the lyrics and the chord changes, somewhere intangible in the middle of all of that, love is found. It’s not messy or complicated - though maybe it is or was, and love itself certainly can be at times - but instead here it’s all rather simple: without you, I’m nothing. Without you, why me?