I wonder who he's singing about?

There are the songs that pick me up and others that drag me back to a place I’d rather not be. In some cases, they’re the songs that remind me of someone and in rarer cases, there are the songs that I’d intentionally sacrificed as a single-use booster that I knew would forever burn them and doom them to be left behind. One of the ways I know I truly love a band is when they have a song that I can’t unstick from a particularly nasty memory but I still listen anyways.

Some songs are bigger than the moments we associate with them, though. I’m thinking of iconic songs and artists. Elvis, U2, the Rolling Stones, Pitbull… I have nothing but sincere compassion for anyone who has traumatic life disruptions that coincide with one of those artists. Those songs that can pop up literally anywhere, whether it’s a commercial, movie or elevator and there’s nothing the listener can do to neutralize them. An acquaintance in high school would recoil with revulsion when Love Roller Coaster by the Red Hot Chili Peppers would come on the radio after it was playing when she got into her first car accident. Once the single ran its course on the radio, I think it’s safe to assume she won’t be surprised by it any more, unless she watches the Beavis and Butthead movie, in which case, that’s on her.

Imagine the extreme misfortune it would take to get into a wreck while something like Hound Dog was playing. I’d only hope there’s a level of desensitization that happens with those songs if there’s any sense of justice in this world.

Intentionally left out of the hypothetically omnipotent artist playlist were the Beach Boys. I legitimately can’t think of many situations where the “music plays” cue is given and I’d be truly surprised to hear that band. Sure, there would be obviously jarring situations where a specific song wouldn’t mesh with the content, but I’m mainly thinking their early career pop sound wouldn’t fit well with lots of things. Then again the juxtaposition because of their unquestionable association with American pop culture would probably make them a better fit than most.

Without pulling up the track, I’d bet most people reading this could fill out a pretty full dossier on God Only Knows from memory. At the bare minimum, even non-music fans would tell you, “It’s a love song.” They can hum the melody in an instant, there’s not much mystery in the lyrics and it’s one of the best-known songs from an iconic album. A little digging also shows that it was the B-Side to Wouldn’t It Be Nice? so it’s certainly not a deep cut by any sense of the term.

At its heart, it’s a beautiful song. Full stop. They could change the lyrics to the electrical codes for rural Arkansas and I’d still listen to it, but it’s also a song that is made that much more memorable because of the words. This is odd to say because when you read the lyrics, it’s basically two-thirds of the sheet saying “God only knows / What I’d be without you” to round out the song.

I think that’s where the impact of the song really squares itself up. That simple and blunt repetition that you don’t know where you’d be without someone. And that holds, whether it’s been a codependent wail or a sheepish admission to myself as I realized I was in much deeper into a relationship than I’d thought. Superficial to deeply ingrained, that song applies and scales to wherever you’re at.

I knew the song could dodge and float, that it was pliable and fit any major relationship I was in and did so regardless of whether those relationships were good, bad or one-sided. In all that time, I’d never thought to look at it through the lens of a non-romantic relationship. In that fluidity came the most joyful musical surprise of my life when it slid sideways in my mind from being a song about my ex-wife to something else entirely.

The song popped up on a shuffle as I sat in traffic on an otherwise unremarkable day in the middle of a long stretch of unremarkable days except that they were all cloaked in feelings of uncertainty and being completely overwhelmed. It’s hard to mistake the instrumental intro for anything else and the emotional baggage unpacks itself before the vocals have a chance to start.

I’m not sure why I even kept listening, but I’d bet that, “I may not always love you…” was likely the kind of gallows humor I needed in the moment. As the song unfolded, the undeniable fact that I would be losing time with my sons was met directly with the repetition of the lyrics, “God only knows what I’d be without you…”

In those simple words was the idea that rewrote the song for me. Without those kids, I’d be lost. While I’d spent weeks wondering what the hell was happening, I’d failed to notice that I did have at least one through line that would carry forward - focus on the boys, no matter what else happened. While the day is lost - I couldn’t pinpoint the when or the where to any degree of detail - the idea was not. In that moment, the song rotated for me in a way that I can’t ever imagine it being a romantic sentiment ever again.

It’s an odd thought now, especially when I think about how any parent could see my interpretation pretty easily when they think about their kids. More than a hearing a gender switch when a singer covers a song about a guy or a girl, this song’s whole DNA changed for me as my perspective did. I think that’s what makes it so personal for me now - I’ve had plenty of songs that grew as I did, but those have all been gradual evolutions that were fine-tuned as I understood more about the world. The changes I see in God Only Knows are nothing short of massive.

Which is fitting, considering how world-changing the shift is emotionally when kids arrive in the picture. In the way that being a parent totally upends your views in a relative instant, it was that part of me that flipped the song in a sharp and irreversible way.

Tony Asher co-wrote the song with Brian WIlson and his thoughts on the lyrics that leave me where I am with the song today. “It's the simplicity,” he said. The inference that "I am who I am because of you. That makes it very personal and tender.”