Characterized for its easy-listening sound, the album was produced by Al Jardine and touring member Ron Altbach during one of the most acrimonious periods in the band's history.

It includes the songs "Hey Little Tomboy", the only track salvaged from Adult/Child, and "My Diane", written about Brian's affair with his sister-in-law, as well as cover versions of the 1950s hits "Peggy Sue" and "Come Go with Me".

[5] In Love's case, he had been ensconced at a six-month Transcendental Meditation retreat, called "the TM-Sidhi program", in Vittel, France and Leysin, Switzerland,[6] where he studied levitation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

[10][11] Band manager and business advisor Stephen Love arranged for the Beach Boys to sign an $8 million deal with CBS Records on March 1.

[12] Biographer Steven Gaines writes that Warner "knew of the CBS deal" and were "so disgusted with the band at this point" that the label refused to promote the group's forthcoming album, The Beach Boys Love You.

[15] Stephen's replacement was entertainment business owner Henry Lazarus, who arranged a major European tour for the Beach Boys starting in June.

[20][19] On September 1, the internal wrangling came to a head after a show at Central Park, when the band effectively split into two camps: Dennis and Carl on one side, Mike and Jardine on the other, with Brian remaining neutral.

[19][nb 4] On September 2, Mike, Jardine, and Brian met with Stephen at their hotel in New York and signed the documents necessary to officially appoint him as the Beach Boys' manager.

[19] The next day, after completing the final date of a northeastern tour, a confrontation between the "free-livers" and the "meditators" broke out on an airport tarmac during a stopover in Newark.

[26][nb 5] At MIU, the group and their family members took residence in the university's circular dorm rooms,[28] and attended meditation classes and meetings.

[9] AFM documentation indicates that Carl visited on two days,[9] while Dennis, who was busy promoting his solo album Pacific Ocean Blue,[31] played drums on an early session for "She's Got Rhythm".

[34] Carlin characterizes the record as having "a generic easy-listening sound, heavy on the tinkly keyboards and sweeping strings, with nary a trace of Brian's ear for quirky texture.

[36] Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys was the other album that the band produced at these sessions, consisting of reworkings of tracks that had dated from the early to mid-1970s, as well as alternate Christmas-themed versions of songs from M.I.U..[37] Biographer Timothy White reported that Winds of Change and California Feeling were both working titles for M.I.U..[38] According to music historian Andrew Doe, [F]or the longest time, it was accepted that the band recorded the seasonal set first and when that was (rightly) rejected, they reworked some of the tracks into another album, California Feeling (which evolved into M.I.U.

[39]On December 13, 1977, the band held a session – for the vocal to "My Diane" and a Toys for Tots PSA – at Kaye-Smiths Studios in Seattle that was filmed for the television special Our Team.

– specifically, for the tracks "My Diane", "Belles of Paris", and "Winds of Change" – continued at Brother Studios and Wally Heider Recording from February 22 to June 28, 1978.

The tracks strive to recapture the dreamy, adolescent innocence of the Beach Boys' earliest hits, and fail not so much because the concepts are dated but because the group can't infuse the new material with the same sense of grandeur that made the old songs such archetypal triumphs.

[...] Throughout, the lackluster playing and singing has a melancholy edge, almost as if the Beach Boys are fully aware that they've outgrown this kind of teen fantasy, but can't think of anyplace else to go.

[53]Vivien Goldman of Sounds found the album to be "magic" and added that she "played it non-stop, even if it seemed a baffling sconed adolescence" before concluding, "If there weren't some weirdo psychological reason, how could I get so involved with lyrics that one part of mind is consciously stating: this is moronic drivel?

"[45] Richard Williams, who had championed the Beach Boys' work in the 1960s, wrote a negative review which stated, in part, How tragic that Brian is saddled with other people's imagination, that he should be reduced to the role of a hack, setting his impassioned melodies and arrangements to laughably juvenile lyrics....those songs of which Brian has sole charge exemplify his dilemma: he is obviously encouraged to deliver the adolescent pap of "Hey Little Tomboy", so that the dark emotions and warm textures of "Diane" are thrown into even higher relief.

[42]In his 2006 biography of Wilson, Carlin referred to it as "the most cynical, spiritually void work the group ever produced", a "gruesome album", and perhaps "one of the worst records ever made by a great rock band.