"Surf's Up" is a song recorded by the American rock band the Beach Boys that was written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks.

The lyrics describe a man at a concert hall who experiences a spiritual awakening and resigns himself to God and the joy of divine illumination, the latter envisioned as a children's song.

There are three known recordings of Wilson performing the full song by himself, two of which were filmed for the 1967 documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, where it was described as "too complex" to comprehend on a first listen.

Several years after Smile was scrapped, the band added new vocals and synthesizer overdubs to Wilson's first piano performance as well as the original backing track.

[5] In a self-penned 1969 article, Wilson's former personal assistant Michael Vosse wrote that "Surf's Up" was to be the album's closing track, and that the song would have been followed by a "choral amen sort of thing.

"[6] Biographer Byron Preiss wrote that the song was envisioned as part of "The Elements" and was "briefly considered" to be paired with "Love to Say Dada".

He said he had witnessed Dennis Wilson complaining that the group's British audiences had ridiculed them for their striped-shirt stage outfits, which inspired him to write the last lines of the song and suggest to Brian that the piece be titled "Surf's Up".

[11] Lambert was unable to determine if the section ends in the key of F, G, or D.[10] During one bar, the horn players perform a melodic phrase that replicates the laugh of the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker.

[16] It quotes the titles of the short stories "The Diamond Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant and "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe.

[17] The lyrics also espouse themes related to childhood and God, similar to other songs written for Smile ("Wonderful" and "Child Is Father of the Man").

[19] In Jules Siegel's October 1967 memoir for Cheetah magazine, "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God", he quoted Wilson offering a lengthy explanation of the album's lyrics.

At the end, he finds hope and returns "to the tides, to the beach, to childhood" before experiencing "the joy of enlightenment, of seeing God", which manifests in a children's song.

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb interpreted the song as "a premonition of what was going to happen to our generation and ... to our music—that some great tragedy that we could absolutely not imagine was about to befall our world.

"[23] Academic Larry Starr wrote, "Van Dyke Parks’s poetic and allusive lyrics articulate the progression from a condition of disillusionment with a decadent and materialistic culture to the glimpse of a possibility for hope and renewal.

"[27] Artist Frank Holmes, who designed the Smile cover artwork, created two illustrations that were inspired by the song's lyrics, "Diamond necklace play the pawn" and "Two-step to lamp's light".

At Thanksgiving, we'd always get to draw the turkey and the Indians and the pilgrims — the feathers — so a lot of those things come from my childhood, ways of relating to the Americana concept for manifest destiny and the West as a basis for the Smile album.

[32] Between November 7 and 8, overdubs were recorded with Capp, Pellico, and a horn ensemble consisting of Arthur Brieglab, Roy Caton, David Duke, George Hyde, and Claude Sherry.

[9] The November 7 session was dedicated to experimenting with horn effects, including an exercise in which Wilson instructed his musicians to laugh and have conversations through their instruments.

[34][35] According to Badman, the December 15 session included vocal and piano overdubs onto the first movement backing track, as well as further recording on the song "Wonderful".

[37] That evening, Wilson had been filmed at Columbia Studio singing and performing "Surf's Up" on piano for use in David Oppenheim's CBS-commissioned documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution.

His performance that day, executed in one take with a candelabrum placed on his grand piano, was captured by three film cameras and deemed satisfactory for use in the documentary.

"[48] In late 1967, Wilson recorded several takes of another piano-vocal performance of "Surf's Up" at his home studio, presumably during sessions for the album Wild Honey.

The forgotten demo was rediscovered several decades later when archivists searched through the contents at the end of the multi-track reel for the Wild Honey track "Country Air".

'"[50] From mid-June to early July, Carl and Rieley retrieved the Smile multi-tracks from Capitol's vaults, primarily to locate the "Surf's Up" masters, and attempted to repair and splice the tapes.

"[58] To the surprise and glee of his associates, Brian emerged near the end of the sessions to aid Carl and engineer Stephen Desper in the completion of the coda.

[62] Rolling Stone's Arthur Schmidt judged the song to have lived up to its legend, although its placement on the record gave "something of the effect of Brian saying: 'Oh yeah, that’s our new album, but hey, you wanna hear something we had left over around here?

"[69] In 1995, the Wondermints – a band that included Sahanaja as a member – performed a live cover of "Surf's Up" at the Morgan-Wixon Theater in Los Angeles with Wilson in the audience, who was then quoted saying "If I'd had these guys back in '66, I could've taken Smile on the road.

[14] For the 2011 compilation The Smile Sessions, Mark Linett created a new mix of the song that mashed up the 1966 backing track to the vocals from Brian's contemporaneous piano demo.

[71] In 2000, Radio City Music Hall held the All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, a concert that included a performance of "Surf's Up" by Jimmy Webb, David Crosby, and Vince Gill.

"[12] Record Collector's Jamie Atkins said it was "so far ahead of the work of their contemporaries that it is not entirely surprising Wilson found himself recoiling from its sophistication and majesty; the songwriting equivalent of scaling Everest, only to find yourself thinking, 'Well, what now?