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| Length = | Label = Capitol | Writer = | Producer = Brian Wilson | Last single = "Sloop John B" (1966) | This single = "Wouldn't It Be Nice" (1966) | Next single = "Good Vibrations" (1966) | Misc = }} "God Only Knows" is a song written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher for American rock band The Beach Boys, released in May 1966 as the eighth track on the group's album ''Pet Sounds''. Two months later, it was released as the B-side of "Wouldn't It Be Nice" in the United States. In other countries, "God Only Knows" was the single's A-side. According to historian John Robert Greene, "God Only Knows" would later go on to reinvent the ideal of the popular love song. The song names God in its title and lyrics, unusual for a pop single of its time, as Asher recalled: "Unless you were Kate Smith and you were singing 'God Bless America', no one thought you could say 'God' in a song (1966 )." The sentiments expressed in its lyric were not specific to any God, and could be addressed to any higher force, being a song about moving forward after loss. Wilson later explained that his and Asher's intention was to create the feeling of "being blind but in being blind, you can see more." Sung by Carl Wilson, the Beach Boys' recording was produced and arranged by Brian using many unorthodox instruments, including French horn, accordions, and a quartet of violas and cellos heard throughout the piece in counterpoint.〔 The musical structure has been variously cited for its harmonic complexity, evoking tension through its disuse of authentic cadences and a definite key signature. Its closing section features perpetual rounds, a device which wasn't normally heard in popular music in the 1960s. The song was voted 25 in ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, the second of seven Beach Boys' songs to feature (the first being "Good Vibrations" at 6) and was ranked by Pitchfork Media as the greatest song of the 1960s.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s )〕 The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included it as one of "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=https://rockhall.com/exhibits/one-hit-wonders-songs-that-shaped-rock-and-roll/ )〕 ==Musical structure== The song is known for its harmonic sophistication and extensive use of inverted chords, including third inversions such as B7/A. The first chord of the verse (D major/A) is a non-diatonic chord. The tonic chord (E major) usually only appears with the major 3rd or the 5th in the bass. The entire verse progression sounds restless and ambiguous, until the line "''God only knows what I'd be without you''" when the chord progression finally reaches a clear goal (A–E/G#–F#m7–E). This has been cited by musicologists as a good example of how lyrical meaning can be supported and enhanced by a chord progression—along with the melody hook which also provides an example of "a sense of increasing melodic energy that comes by way of the gradually ascending line."〔(Gary Ewer, from "''The Essential Secrets of Songwriting''" )〕 Stephen Downes similarly named the song's "tonal plasticity" emphasized by the disuse of authentic cadences and root-position tonics as the reason for its "expansiveness". In musicologist Philip Lambert's opinion, the song's vocal counterpoint evokes the sacred traditions of a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach or an oratorio by George Frideric Handel. The key gravitates between A major and E major, while the bass-line was written in a different key from the rest of the song. Music theorist Daniel Harrison compared the song to an earlier Brian Wilson composition, "California Girls", as it both avoids a root-position tonic and suppresses a cadential drive. It also contains a step-wise descending bass-line like Wilson's other compositions on ''Pet Sounds''. Dominic King believed the barbershop flat seventh gave the song "excessive sentimentality".〔 After its instrumental linking passage, the key ascends to its fourth interval. According to author Jim Fusilli: "Brian came pretty close to writing himself into a dead end. There's really nowhere to go coming out of the bridge, which modulates to G major from D major but ends with a D major–A major–B minor pattern. Thus, when the song returns to D Major, it must do so from B minor, which is kind of a static change, particularly when the next chord is a B minor with only a slight variation in the bass." Along with the 8+4 measure verse/chorus scheme, Downes called the idea of a "bridge section in a related key" standard for rock/pop music, but adds: "What is different here, however, is how the move to the subdominant in the bridge conditions the tonal behavior of the entire song, which, though nominally in E Major, is characterized throughout by a tension between it and A major." The "choral fantasy" during this key change eventually concludes that "a clear sense has eluded us for the entire experience–that in fact, the idea of 'key' has itself been challenged and subverted," in Lambert's feeling. The song closes with perpetual rounds, a centuries-old technique which wasn't normally heard in pop music of its time. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「God Only Knows」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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