If you’ve not yet heard, Brian Wilson passed away today, June 11, 2025, just short of 83 years old.

If you don’t know who Brian Wilson is, he’s the heart, soul, and mind behind The Beach Boys. While The Beach Boys wouldn’t exist without Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, and, yes, even Mike Love, it was Brian who brought genius, emotional expression, and even mental health awareness to the band. His musical innovation was groundbreaking, pioneering “studio as instrument”, and bringing advanced harmonies, high compositional standards, and successful experimentations into rock ‘n’ roll music (have you heard of anyone else using bobby pins on piano wire? neither have I!).

Some may have called him eccentric — after all, it wasn’t common for someone to spend two to three years in bed. And that’s what made the driving force behind The Beach Boys so unique. Brian Wilson’s struggle with mental health brought a realness and rawness to the lyrics and the music that no one else could bring (not even his cousin, Mike Love, who wound up taking control of The Beach Boys’ name in later years). After being misdiagnosed a few times with paranoid schizophrenia, he was eventually (many years later) diagnosed more accurately with schizoaffective disorder.

Based on biographies and articles, Brian seemed to hear music in his head constantly, much like how we believe Mozart heard songs. Mozart was another young musical genius, and there are many theories about his abilities (auditory hallucinations? eidetic memory?). While Mozart wrote within the classical realm, Brain excelled within the boundaries of The Beach Boys. He knew what the boys were capable of, and he drew out their musical talents to the fullest extent.

But the band didn’t always agree with his songwriting choices. As portrayed in the biographical drama Love & Mercy, they were uncertain about his creative direction for the album Pet Sounds, especially his cousin and frequent co-writer Mike Love. And yet Pet Sounds, now being considered one of the greatest albums of all-time, pioneered the way for writing about vulnerability and mental health. The song You Still Believe in Me (my absolute favorite Beach Boys tune) starts with the line, “I know perfectly well I’m not where I should be“, a preeminent description of the struggle that we have when wrestling with mental illness. Other songs like Caroline, No; I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times; That’s Not Me; and I Know There’s an Answer speak with a level of compassion not often found in the music of the ’60s (or of modern times, for that matter).

Not to mention songs outside of Pet Sounds (or even The Beach Boys), like In My Room, Right Where I Belong, and Brian’s Back, the latter of which addressed Brian’s apparent comeback after his plunge in mental health that landed him in bed for two to three years. But ultimately, Brian’s message to the world seems summed up in his song Love and Mercy (yes, the name of the biographical film). After all he suffered through — and indeed, he suffered much — his heart didn’t harden. He continued to express a plea for us to show love and mercy to our friends, to the lonely people, because “that’s what we need tonight”.

If you’re able to, I highly recommend watching Love & Mercy. It was hard for me to watch the first time (films portraying a struggle with mental illness are always surreal in the first watching or two), but it’s now my favorite movie. You see Brian’s genius in the ’60s and his slow mental health decline, and we also jump into the ’80s to see how he suffered at the abusive hand of “psychologist” Eugene Landy, and was ultimately redeemed out of that situation, much to the credit of his now-late wife, Melinda Ledbetter. It’s a stunning portrait of mental illness, music, love, and everything in-between.

Pray for the Wilson family and all close to Brian, including his surviving bandmates. We’ve truly lost a legend today.

Love and Mercy