Mike Love claims he wrote "every word" of the Beach Boys' 'Good Vibrations'

11 August 2025, 13:24

Mike Love of The Beach Boys in conversation in London. Picture: Alamy

By Mayer Nissim

Brian Wilson wasn't the only Beach Boy.

Loading audio...

Brian Wilson is rightly credited as being the genius at the heart of The Beach Boys, but that's not to diminish the input of the rest of the band.

Unlike some other artists of the age, they played their own instruments from the very beginning and the group's tight harmonies were always essential to their sound.

And while Brian quickly took the mantle as the band's primary songwriter, sometimes working with external lyricists like Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks, the rest of the Beach Boys also pitched in with both words and music, including for some of their best-loved songs.

That included 'Good Vibrations', and in a new interview, Mike Love has reminded fans that he was the man responsible for the lyrics to the psychedelic masterpiece and even claimed to have contributed a key part of the tune.

Good Good Good Vibrations - March 1966 (First Version With Overdubs)

Early demo versions before Love's involvement feature half-snatched phrases and the phrase "Good Vibrations", which Asher says he came up with as a replacement for the "lightweight" Wilson original "Good Vibes", but Mike did completely overhaul the song.

"In 'Good Vibrations', I wrote every word of it," Love told The Los Angeles Times.

"I even came up with (sings) 'I’m thinking of good vibrations / She gave me excitations' with the chorus melody as well as all the lyrics."

The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations (Official Music Video)

Tony Asher, who worked with Brian on Pet Sounds, revealed that when Wilson brought the song to him he didn't have a title, but just the phrase "I get vibes, I get good vibes".

Asher started work on the lyrics but when Wilson was unhappy with them he passed the song over to Mike Love. Wilson did hand the finished words back to Asher in the hope of editing out the word "excitations", but Parks declined.

And in the same interview, Mike again denied the oft-repeated claim that he wasn't a fan of the Beach Boys' experimentation on Pet Sounds.

"There's a lot of misinformation given out over this early part of our careers that says I didn’t like the Pet Sounds album, which is bull—," Love said, "because I actually named it and Brian brought it to Capitol Records, who didn't know what to do with it."

The Beach Boys last studio album was 2012's That's Why God Made The Radio, which saw a reunion of Brian Wilson with Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, David Marks and Mike Love.

Of the possibility that the band could make a new record after Brian died earlier this year at the age of 82, Love said: "Anything’s possible. We don’t have immediate plans, but I do think of that kind of thing from time to time."