Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)

"Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)" is a song by American rock band the Beach Boys from their 1966 album Pet Sounds.

Wilson sang lead and produced the track in early 1966 with the aid of 14 session musicians who variously played guitars, vibraphone, timpani, organ, piano, upright bass, a ride cymbal, and strings.

Acts who have covered the song include Linda Ronstadt, Fennesz, Anne Sofie von Otter with Elvis Costello, and Jeff Beck with Johnny Depp.

"Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)" was written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher about nonverbal communication between lovers.

[1][2] In the lyrics, the narrator observes of his lover, "I can hear so much in your sighs / and I can see so much in your eyes / There are words we both can say / But don't talk, put your head on my shoulder".

So I went in there, put some beautiful music on tape ... Wilson thought that "Don't Talk" had an overall mood similar to his 1963 song "Lonely Sea", explaining, "It's a different setting, but the emotion is the same.

"[8] Music journalist Geoffrey Himes describes the song as a "ballad that featured Brian singing in a devotional high tenor about the romantic moment when words fail.

"[9] Biographer Timothy White suggests that the lyrics can be interpreted as both "a peaceful meditation on romantic tranquility" and "a song of reunion for any loved ones.

"[10] Conversely, author Jim Fusilli felt that the lyrics suggest "the way you express your love for someone who is ready to go ... it's what you say when you know it's the last time you'll hold her in your arms.

[16] In White's description, the cymbal is struck "with clocklike rhythm"; the instrumentation, coupled with Wilson's "unrestrained" vocal, "invoked the milieu of a requiem".

[18][nb 2] Musicologist Philip Lambert identifies a stepwise motif in the call-and-response melodies – one which ascends before the other descends – heard on the line "there are words we both could say".

"[9][nb 3] Moreover, he writes, "A string [sextet] played the minor seventh chords at close intervals, while the tympani boomed and a fat-toned electric bass drifted from the expected root note to create harmonic tensions within the lush sound.

[23] In this song, he augmented the basic track with an overdubbed string sextet (four violins, one viola, and a cello) in pursuit of a "dark, expressive" effect that Granata compares to "the sound favored by Johannes Brahms".

[25] On October 13, 1965, the same day Wilson produced the backing track of "The Little Girl I Once Knew", he recorded an eight-part a cappella version of "Don't Talk" at Western Studios that was ultimately discarded.

[27] Weeks after he had begun writing with Asher, on February 11, 1966, Wilson recorded the basic track and vocal at Western Studios with assistance from eight session musicians, including drummer Hal Blaine, guitarists Glen Campbell and Billy Strange, percussionist Frank Capp, pianist Steve Douglas, and bassists Carol Kaye and Lyle Ritz.

In his self-described "unbiased" review of the album for Record Mirror, Norman Jopling described the song as having a "hymnal sound ... with a tremendous atmosphere ... of late night, very tired sitting on the rug at your girl's place.

"[35] Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda commented, "Brian Wilson’s chord progressions tell the most heartbreaking yet beautiful and silently intense story of the duality of life, all from a place of hope.