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Culprit The Beach Boys
Title Seasons In The Sun
Year 1973
Written by Jacques Brel and Rod McKuen
Submitted by Siegfried Baboon

This is just absurd. I've ended up listening to this as a result of working historically backwards from the versions by Westlife and Terry Jacks – you might want to do the same. It seems that as you travel backwards through the endless cover versions, the gear changes get progressively more ridiculous. I need to build up a significant amount of courage before I dare to track down even older versions such as that by Nana Mouskouri.

As I understand it, this weedy rendition by the Beach Boys never got a proper release, and it's easy to hear why. After the first of these two gear changes, "the Boys" seem to have already reached the top of their vocal range, and they duck out of the second, leaving the horns to pick up the pieces with all the pop appeal of a Salvation Army brass band. In fact the transition is so ham-fisted that it almost sounds as if the engineer sped the whole tape up... except that the timing is intact. I keep expecting the Chipmunks to chime in with a final chorus.

Listen to the MP3Listen!