[2][3] The album was produced and almost entirely composed by Brian Wilson with guest lyricist and assistant arranger Van Dyke Parks, both of whom conceived the project as a riposte to the British sensibilities that had dominated popular music of the era.

It was a concept album that was planned to feature word paintings, tape manipulation, more elaborate vocal arrangements, experiments with musical acoustics, themes of youth and innocence, and comedic interludes, with influences drawn from mysticism, pre-rock and roll pop, doo-wop, jazz, ragtime, musique concrète, classical, American history, poetry, spirituality, and cartoons.

[19][nb 4] Parks had moved to Los Angeles a few years earlier, hoping to compose the scores to Disney films, but instead lent his services to the Byrds and MGM pop groups the Mojo Men and Harper's Bizarre.

"[48] Commenting on the reliability of figures such as Anderle, Siegel, and Vosse, journalist Nick Kent wrote that their claims are oftentimes "so lavish [that] one can be forgiven, if only momentarily, for believing that Brian Wilson had, at that time orbited out to the furthermost reaches of the celestial stratosphere for the duration of this starcrossed project.

"[24] In examining many books, documentaries, and articles about the subject, music journalist Andrew Sacher states that Wilson himself "never seems to mention Revolver", possibly because his "main goal in late 1966 was topping his own Pet Sounds".

[...] the guttural chanting of cartoon-esque cavemen [...] a group of french horns "talking" and "laughing" with each other [...][18]The music itself carried on the "harmonic ingenuity" of Pet Sounds,[121] and in the belief of academic Dave Carter, "it makes little point to distinguish between the two albums in terms of their differential impact.

Psychedelic musical characteristics distinguished the Beach Boys' mid-1960s work, particularly through the group's invocation of "greater fluidity, elaboration, and formal complexity", "a cultivation of sonic textures", "the introduction of new (combinations of) instruments, multiple keys, and/or floating tonal centers", and the occasional use of "slower, more hypnotic tempos".

[69] Guardian critic Alexis Petridis wrote that until the negative effects of LSD surfaced in rock music via Skip Spence's Oar (1969) and Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs (1970), "artists tactfully ignored the dark side of the psychedelic experience".

"[133] Among the many "contradictory templates" Toop felt were "buried within Smile's music legacy" were Frank Sinatra, the Lettermen, the Four Freshmen, Martin Denny, Patti Page, Chuck Berry, Spike Jones, Nelson Riddle, Jackie Gleason, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Penguins, and the Mills Brothers.

[107] He wrote that collaborations between Miles Davis and Gil Evans "haunt SMiLE tracks like 'Look (Song for Children)' and 'Child Is Father of the Man'", and compared the project's "explorations of acoustic phenomena" to "similar tendencies by Charles Ives, Les Baxter's thematic LPs, and Richard Maxfield's electronic experiments with insect sounds or instruments played underwater".

[148] Biographer Jon Stebbins deemed the song "some of the most haunting, manic, evil-sounding music the Beach Boys ever made" with its waltz chorus replete with "demonic chanting, buzzing cellos, and rail-spike pounding".

[190] In September, Capitol began production on a lavish gatefold cover with a 12-page booklet containing featuring color photographs of the group (ultimately selected from a November 7 photoshoot in Boston conducted by Guy Webster as well as Holmes' illustrations).

[201] Having attended some of the sessions circa January 1967, journalist Tracy Thomas reported in the NME that Brian's "dedication to perfection does not always endear him to his fellow Beach Boys, nor their wives, nor their next door neighbours, with whom they were to have dinner [...] But when the finished product is 'Good Vibrations' or Pet Sounds or Smile they hold back their complaints.

"[221][40] The only sober participant, Al Jardine, likened the experience to "being trapped in an insane asylum", referring to such incidents as a "Heroes and Villains" session where Brian instructed his bandmates to crawl around the studio space and make pig-snorting noises.

[248] Unusual for rock journalism of the era, Nolan's article devoted minimal attention to the group's music, and instead focused on the band's internal dynamics and history, especially the events surrounding the Smile sessions.

[286] On March 18, KMEM in San Bernardino conducted a radio survey that reported that Wilson was busy preparing "Heroes and Villains" and Smile, "and he's informed the Capitol bosses that he doesn't intend to 'hold back' on these projects.

"[300] That same day, a Taylor-penned press release, published in Record Mirror and NME, revealed that "Heroes and Villains" was delayed due to "technical difficulties" and that the forthcoming lead single would be "Vegetables" backed with "Wonderful".

[326] Carlin added, "And if Van Dyke felt guilty about abandoning his Smile partner just as the going was getting tough, he was also a hardworking professional who believed that Brian's surrender, followed by decades of near-withdrawal, mounted to another kind of betrayal.

[338] From mid-June to early July 1971, Carl and band manager Jack 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.

"[360] In the late 1980s, Domenic Priore collaborated with musicians Darian Sahanaja and Nick Walusko on a punk-style fanzine called The Dumb Angel Gazette, the most comprehensive attempt to document information regarding the album.

[191] Since the mid-1980s, CDs had supplanted vinyl as the predominant medium for bootlegs, and, following the Linett tape leak, dozens of different Smile CD releases were traded and sold commercially by mail order, independent record stores, and head shops.

[360] In response to the 1992 appearance of a new three-disc vinyl bootleg, which contained uncirculated versions of "Wonderful", "Love to Say Dada" and "Barnyard",[380] Capitol then issued over 40 minutes of original Smile recordings on the career-spanning box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys (1993).

[395] Following Wilson's early 2000s live performances of the Pet Sounds album, Sahanaja began suggesting Smile songs at band rehearsals, which led to plans for concerts that comprised a Smile-themed setlist.

[406] The album has been one of the most discussed and dissected unreleased records ever made [...] Multiple theories abound concerning what Smile might actually have been if it had been completed, and many mysteries are contained even within Brian's semi-official tracklist, not to mention the scores of unfinished takes, brief instrumentals, and experiments that were attempted during the sessions.

"[423] Brian Boyd of The Irish Times rued that Wilson's desire to match the Beatles had contributed to the project's collapse, but also commented that since this competitive instinct was shared by his rivals, the release of Smile may have prolonged the group's break-up.

Pepper, Clinton Heylin criticized Parks' lyrics as "little more than columns of non sequiturs from a man who once swallowed a thesaurus" and decreed that much of the surviving Smile recordings "confirm that Wilson was nowhere near completing an album to rival Revolver let alone its psychedelic successor.

[434] Priore wrote that Wilson "manipulated sound effects in a way that would later be extremely successful when Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, the best-selling album of the entire progressive rock period".

[435] Ed Masley of AZ Central wrote that Smile "doesn't sound like" many other pop albums that were considered to be the vanguard of the "psychedelic revolution [...] but it clearly shares their spirit of adventure in a way that would have been unthinkable just two years earlier.

The Elephant 6 Recording Company, a collective of bands that includes Apples in Stereo, the Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Beulah, Elf Power, and of Montreal, was founded through a mutual admiration of 1960s pop music, with Smile being "their Holy Grail".

[443] Priore believed that the Smile recordings influenced albums such as XTC's Oranges & Lemons (1989), the High Llamas' Gideon Gaye (1994) and Hawaii (1996), the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin (1999), Mercury Rev's All Is Dream (2001), the Apples in Stereo's Her Wallpaper Reverie (1999), Heavy Blinkers' 2000 eponymous LP, and the Thrills' So Much for the City (2003).