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S**t Sounds.


God only knows how the BBC managed to make one of the most beautiful songs ever written sound so bland.




It starts promisingly, with a Sgt-Pepper-style orchestral tune-up making way for a pretty, understated celeste. Then standards start to slip. Singers line up one after the other to see who can mess with the phrasing of their allocated line the most; stretching them beyond recognition, in a desperate attempt to take up more than eight beats. Only Brian Wilson, Chris Martin and Kylie Minogue sing it straight. Just as things are looking up, Brian May strolls in with his scratchy pubic hairstyle and overly compressed guitar sound and you want to run for the hills. One of the world’s most searingly honest and sincere love songs has its heart and soul ripped out; a ballad that's reduced me to tears many times, does it again, but for all the wrong reasons.

These line-at-a-time celebrity sing-alongs seldom work. Everyone tries too hard. Each performer spends too long worrying about how to make a mark on proceedings, rather than letting the song speak for itself. They’re not going to improve it, so why try? The only person entitled to play with the structure is its composer Brian Wilson and he didn't. That says a lot.

If you’d like to hear a different version of God Only Knows, listen to The Beach Boys' demo. It knocks the socks off of the BBC version, without One Direction or Chrissie Hynde in sight.

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