Trivia / Pet Sounds

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• Acclaimed Flop: At least in the United States, in comparison with the band's previous albums. However, it did very well in Britain and did spawn two Top 10 singles on both sides of the Atlantic. It would eventually go platinum in its home country.
• Cut Song:
  • Brian went to the studio with a 43-piece orchestra to record an instrumental piece entitled "Three Blind Mice", which bore no musical connection to the nursery rhyme of the same name. Another instrumental, called "Trombone Dixie", was recorded. According to Brian:
    Brian Wilson: I was just foolin' around one day, fuckin' around with the musicians, and I took that arrangement out of my briefcase and we did it in 20 minutes. It was nothing, there was really nothing in it.
  • The provisional track listing included "Good Vibrations". Brian eventually dropped the track from the list, wanting to work more on it.
• Executive Meddling: A long-standing misconception was that Capitol shoehorned "Sloop John B" into the album against Brian Wilson's wishes. In fact, a provisional track listing Brian sent to the label himself on February 23, 1966 listed the song.
• Follow the Leader: Brian Wilson was inspired by Rubber Soul to make an album that's all "good stuff, no filler". In turn, Paul McCartney and the rest of The Beatles used it as inspiration for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
• Nominal Coauthor: Following a legal dispute, Mike Love got a co-authorship credit for "Wouldn't It Be Nice?" (among many other Beach Boys songs), though by his own admission, his sole contribution to the track was the ending ad-lib of "goodnight baby, sleep tight baby."
• Referenced by...:
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Steel Ball Run: One of the racers in the competition is called Sloop John B and his horse, Catch a Wave, who are both named after songs from the album.
    • Crazy Diamond's Demonic Heartbreak: The parrot who belonged to Pet Shop's original owner is named Petsounds.
• Short Run in Peru: The album originally debuted on CD in Japan in 1987, three years before it reached the format in the band's native US. The Japanese CD ended up being pulled by the US branch of Capitol Records, who considered it unauthorized; it has since become a coveted collector's item as a result. To compensate for the CD's withdrawal, the Capitol-endorsed worldwide CD release in 1990 added "Trombone Dixie" as a third bonus track (alongside "Unreleased Bkgs" and "Hang On to Your Ego", which were carried over from the earlier issue).
• Throw It In!:
  • The title of "Caroline, No" is an example, and comes from a mondegreen. Tony Asher had written it as "Carol, I Know", but Brian misheard it as "Caroline, No". They both decided they liked that better, and it stuck.
  • The piano break in "God Only Knows" came from a suggestion by Don Randi, the session pianist. Brian liked the suggestion so much he used it in the final recording.
• Working Title:
  • The album was originally produced as Remember the Zoo.
  • "I Know There's an Answer" was originally titled "Hang On to Your Ego". An early version of the song with this title would later be included as a bonus track on CD reissues.

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