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The Beach Boys: The Harmony Is Endless After All

The Beach Boys' new album — the first collaboration in decades between founding members Brian Wilson (third from left) and Mike Love (second from right) — is called <em>That's Why God Made the Radio</em>.
Guy Webster
/
Courtesy of the artist
The Beach Boys' new album — the first collaboration in decades between founding members Brian Wilson (third from left) and Mike Love (second from right) — is called That's Why God Made the Radio.

The Beach Boys are in harmony again. The group is recording and performing together, after years of disputes and estrangement.

Brian Wilson and Mike Love tell Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that they're not surprised at the reunion.

"We've had 50 years' practice," Wilson says, "not just in music but in being guys."

Love says once they got back in the studio and started writing again, it felt like they had never left.

"It was nuts," Wilson says. "It was a nutbuster."

Though the Beach Boys' voices have matured, Love says at moments on their new album, That's Why God Made the Radio, they sound like it's still 1965. Their new songs celebrate how sweet it was back in the day. Wilson says he gets emotional onstage when the band plays along with videos of his brothers Carl and Dennis, who have died, singing.

"We do Dennis' song 'Forever' and Carl always does 'God Only Knows,' " he says. "It's a very sentimental experience."

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