L.A. produced three singles: an 11-minute disco rerecording of "Here Comes the Night" from their 1967 album Wild Honey, the Brian and Carl Wilson collaboration "Good Timin'", and Al Jardine's "Lady Lynda".

In the late 1970s, the Beach Boys were in a state of professional and personal disarray, with the Wilson brothers struggling with drug abuse and, alongside Mike Love, each facing an imminent or ongoing divorce from their wives.

[4] The Beach Boys missed their CBS album deadline and, from February to March 1978, embarked on a three-week tour of Australia and New Zealand.

[12] After returning to Los Angeles, Brian ran away on a days-long drug binge and was later discovered lying under a tree at Balboa Park in San Diego without shoes, money, or a wallet.

[13] Biographer Steven Gaines writes that Brian was then admitted to a local hospital, and when discharged, immediately joined his bandmates at Criteria Studios in Miami, where they were recording their long-overdue first album for CBS.

[14] Peter Ames Carlin, another biographer, supports that sessions had already been underway in Miami,[15] but Mike's 2016 memoir, Good Vibrations, gives a different timeline: We had not delivered any music to CBS Records and were summoned to Black Rock, the company's headquarters in New York.

[17] Brian, who is barely present on L.A.,[22] was institutionalized at Brotzman Memorial Hospital from November 1978 to early 1979[23] following an incident in which he attacked his doctor during a visit.

[29] Among the newer songs, Carl contributed three – "Angel Come Home", "Full Sail", and "Goin' South" – that he wrote with songwriter Geoffrey Cushing-Murray, whom he had met through touring member Billy Hinsche.

[27] Love's "Sumahama" is lyrically inspired by his fiancé at the time, a woman named Sumako, and is "about a young girl who wants to go with her mother to a place called 'Sumahama' in search of her father."

[31] Al Jardine's "Lady Lynda" is a tribute to his then-wife that is based musically on Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".

[34][17] In the liner notes, it is explained that the L.A. (Light Album) title refers to the "awareness of, and the presence of, God here in this world as an ongoing loving reality".

[30] Carlin writes that the title "evoked both Los Angeles and the city's long-standing position as a capital of vaguely New Age religions".

[19] The sleeve design features an assortment of illustrations drawn individually by Gary Meyer ("The Beach Boys"), Jim Heimann ("Light Album"), Drew Struzan ("Sumahama"), Dave McMacken ("Lady Lynda"), Steve Carver ("Full Sail"), Nick Taggart ("Here Comes the Night"), Howard Carriker ("Angel Come Home"), Peter Green ("Good Timin'"), Neon Park ("Baby Blue"), Blue Beach ("Shortenin' Bread"), Mick Haggerty ("Here Comes the Night"), and William Stout ("Goin' South").

[36] Stebbins summarized this juncture in the band's career, Dennis's fans hated disco and thought Mike's songs were silly.

[37]In April, the group appeared on The Midnight Special, where they performed their past hits alongside "Baby Blue", "Here Comes the Night", and "Angel Come Home".

"[30] Stebbins praised the Wilson brothers' contributions and derided the songs by Love and Jardine, calling the album "an uneven and disappointing affair.

[19] Critic Richard Williams referred to "Angel Come Home" as "the most beautifully textured and exquisitely pain-racked white soul music ever made".