The Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds' Receives The Dolby Atmos Treatment

The Beach Boys’ iconic 1966 album, Pet Sounds, is receiving the Dolby Atmos Mix treatment. Pet Sounds is the band’s eleventh studio album and features two of the most well-known Beach Boys tracks ever recorded: Wouldn’t It Be Nice and God Only Knows.

Beyond the musical calibre attached to the album, Pet Sounds has had a far-reaching influence on record producers, setting a new expectation for sound quality. The album is also canonised as one of the earliest, most influential releases for psychedelic rock music, opening the door for acts such as Jefferson Airplane to really experiment, and inspiring The Beatles when they were recording Sgt Peppers.

In 2016, The Beach Boys Brian Wilson brought his super-exclusive, 50th anniversary celebration of Pet Sounds to a few newly minted Bluesfest sideshows. Wilson confirmed that those shows would be the last time he’d perform the Pet Sounds set.

“Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys is a game-changing, iconic album that changed the face of popular music,” producer Giles Martin said in a press release about the new Dolby Atmos mix of Pet Sounds, via Pitchfork. “It influenced the Beatles to go and make Sgt. Pepper’s, Sgt. Pepper’s then influenced Pink Floyd to go and make The Dark Side of the Moon.

“It’s a fascinating record because it’s really the workings of a genius, Brian Wilson, that sort of had boundless enthusiasm for ideas and textures.” Martin also stated that Pet Sounds is “an album of so much color [sic] and texture and imagination and the imagination becomes realized [sic] much more in the spatial realm.”

Pulling from Wilson’s original 1966 original mono mix and from the 1997 stereo mix by Mark Linett, the 2023 Dolby Atmos mix of Pet Sounds continues to honour a musical achievement. You can listen to the new recordings below.

Earlier this year, music psychologist Dr Michael Bonshor from the University of Sheffield revealed the happiest song of all time, and to the thrill of Beach Boys fans, it’s Good Vibrations.

"We like high volume when it comes to how our happy songs are made, with notes played in a bright and bouncy way by instruments such as trumpets or electric guitars, instead of mellower instruments,” Dr Bonshor explained. “A repetitive rhythm or guitar riff that people can latch onto and becomes memorable is the cherry on the cake."