Following principal songwriter Brian Wilson's declaration that most of the original Smile tapes would be abandoned, the majority of the recording sessions lasted for six weeks at his makeshift home studio using radio broadcasting equipment, a detuned piano, electronic bass, melodica, found objects for percussion, and a Baldwin theater organ.

The unconventional recording process juxtaposed an experimental party-like atmosphere with short pieces of music edited together in a disjointed manner, combining the engineering methods of "Good Vibrations" (1966) with the loose feeling of Beach Boys' Party!

The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds, issued on May 16, 1966, was massively influential upon its release, containing lush and sophisticated orchestral arrangements that raised the band's prestige to the top level of rock innovators.

By then, an album titled Smile had been conceived as an extension of that song's recording approach, with Wilson composing music in collaboration with lyricist Van Dyke Parks.

"[21] By the end of the year, NME conducted an annual reader's poll that placed the Beach Boys as the world's top vocal group, ahead of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

On April 28, in an effort to promote the group's upcoming UK tour, EMI issued the single "Then I Kissed Her" to the chagrin of the band, who did not approve the release.

[32] For most of May, the touring group embarked on a run of shows in Europe while Brian resumed scheduling recording sessions at professional studios, some of which were cancelled on short notice.

That was Smiley Smile Throughout 1967, Wilson's public image was reduced to that of an "eccentric" figure as a multitude of revolutionary rock albums were released to an anxious and maturing youth market.

[5] Conversely, Stylus Magazine's Edwin Faust wrote in 2003 that the album "embraces the listener with a drugged out sincerity; a feat never accomplished by the more pretentious and heavy-handed psychedelia of that era.

[68] "Vegetables" was reworked as a kind of campfire song,[45] while "Wonderful" traded its harpsichord and trumpet for a haphazardly-played organ, high-pitched backing vocals, and a doo-wop sing-along section.

"She's Goin' Bald" borrows the verse melody from a Smile fragment known as "He Gives Speeches",[68] "With Me Tonight" is a variation on "Vegetables",[72] and "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter (W. Woodpecker Symphony)" lifts a recurring melodic hook from "Fire".

"[76] According to a contemporary Hullabaloo article, "The title, suggested by [Wilson's cousin] Barry Turnbull, reflects the album's happy concept, it is taken from the Indian aphorism, 'The smile that you send out returns to you.

[66] In addition, while the Beatles' Paul McCartney was present at an April 1967 session for "Vegetables", the recording where he had reportedly supplied celery crunching sounds was not used on Smiley Smile.

[81] Lockert detailed a unique and labor-intensive process for the final mixing session of the album that began at five o'clock one evening and concluded the following morning at Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood.

[85] At the last minute, the band announced that they could not appear at the festival for reasons pertaining to Carl's military draft and their commitments to finish "Heroes and Villains" for Capitol.

[84] Derek Taylor, who had terminated his employment with the group to focus on the festival's organization, remembered that dropping out of the program "undoubtedly set the band in a very bad light.

"[68] Detractors referred to the band as the "Bleach Boys" and "the California Hypes" as the media focus shifted from Los Angeles to the happenings in San Francisco.

[69] Smile was never delivered; instead, the group played two shows at an auditorium in Honolulu, which were filmed and recorded with the intention of releasing a live album, Lei'd in Hawaii.

[100] In a December interview, Mike Love acknowledged that Smiley Smile had "baffled and mystified" the public and that the band "had this feeling that we were going too far, losing touch I guess."

He felt that it contained better songs "on the whole" than Pet Sounds, as well as "extremely clever and insiduous ... production and arrangements [that] fall into the current psychedelic bag without being blatantly acidy.

"[110][nb 14] In his May 1968 column in Esquire, Robert Christgau praised the minimalism of Smiley Smile, characterizing the record as "slight" and calling the deliberately uncommercial sound of the album "unique and almost perfect".

"[120] Much of the group's subsequent recordings from 1967 to 1970 followed similar experimental traditions as Smiley Smile – namely, through sparse instrumentation, a more relaxed ensemble, and a seeming inattention to production quality.

"[4] Less favorably, Kent maintained that the album "undersold the worth" of Smile with "dumb pot-head skits, so-called healing chants and even some weird 'loony tunes' items straight out of a cut-rate Walt Disney soundtrack".

[135] Paste's Bryan Rolli ranked it at number 2 in a list of the "10 Most Disappointing Follow-Up Albums", calling it a "disjointed collection of minimalist recordings and a capella bits that are not so much songs as fragments of a shattered psyche".

Pepper, Clinton Heylin writes that the album "sounded like a [throwaway] contractual obligation" and, together with its commercial failure, confirmed "one of the most spectacular falls from grace of any sixties band".

"[140] In 2017, it was ranked number 118 on Pitchfork's list of greatest albums of the 1960s, where it was described as having "developed a small cult of its own, attracting those drawn to its stripped-down, highly spontaneous, and deeply stoned vibe.

[142][nb 18] Writing in 1971, Richard Williams felt that the album's disjointed and fragmentary approach had "all the epigrammatic, enigmatic power of Japanese haiku", containing 'passages written in the conditional tense (i.e. the songs move easily between reality and fantasy), a technique evolved by Godard in the cinema and which only Wilson, as far as I know, has picked up in pop.

[143] Pitchfork contributor Mark Richardson wrote that the record "basically invented the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop that would later propel Sebadoh, Animal Collective, and other characters.

"[7] The New York Observer's Ron Hart wrote that Smiley Smile had effectively presaged the work of Harry Nilsson, Elvis Costello, Stereolab, the High Llamas, the Olivia Tremor Control, and Father John Misty.

"[153] The credits for "Good Vibrations" are adapted from Slowinski's liner notes from The Smile Sessions box set,[154] as well as the website Bellagio 10452, maintained by music historian Andrew G.