Trivia / Sunflower

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• Better Export for You: The rerecorded single version of "Cottonfields" was added as the first track on the original UK and European versions.
• Colbert Bump: "Forever" received a major boost in popularity after being featured on Full House, leading to its popularity skyrocketing after ages of only being known among hardcore Beach Boys fans (like Full House co-star John Stamos).
• Cut Song: This was the composite of two albums— a final Capitol album Reverberation and an intended first Brother/Reprise album Add Some Music — so there's an entire album's worth of cut songs from it. Some appeared on later albums or compilations, and some have been leaked. At the time, the non-album single "Break Away"/"Celebrate the News" had been intended for Reverberation and the B-side "Susie Cincinnati" had been intended for Add Some Music (the same recording, for some reason, later appeared on 15 Big Ones).
• Executive Meddling: This was the group's first album for Reprise Records, who were very meticulous about what they wanted. The group's first three attempts at a tracklisting were rejected by the label, who felt that there wasn't enough strong single material and not enough Brian Wilson compositions. There was a reason for this — the group was concurrently working on a final Capitol album to get out of their contract, and thus had saved a number of good songs for it. This record wasn't completed, so to create the fourth and final tracklisting, the best songs were moved onto Sunflower, replacing the ones the label disliked.
• Referenced by...:
  • A sample of the opening A Capella chord of "Deirdre" was later used for the Cave of the Past theme in EarthBound; this same sample would later be reused for the track "Amalgam" in Undertale, which incidentally released just three months after the 20th anniversary of EarthBound's American release.
  • "Forever" was used twice in Full House, as both the song Jessie sings at his wedding and the track Jessie and the Rippers cover for their first hit. The latter version would be reused as the closing track of the Beach Boys' Summer in Paradise, with its music video attributing it to Jessie and the Rippers.
• Refitted for Sequel: A few outtakes from the Sunflower sessions were later included on Surf's Up (which started life as an outtakes compilation), while various others were reworked on future releases.
• What Could Have Been: The band had so much material left over from the recording sessions that they planned to follow up Sunflower with an outtakes album called Landlocked; this ended up evolving into Surf's Up, with only a few of the outtakes included.
  • "Deirdre"'s original title was "Bob".

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