Brian Wilson túlértékelt! Ez már hivatalos, a BBC munkatársa írta. Jó tudni, hogy még Britanniában is vannak emberek, akik lemaradtak 25-30 évvel

IS BRIAN WILSON OVERRATED?

Brian Wilson's series of Smile gigs are about to begin at London's Royal Festival Hall and that can only mean one thing. Hard-bitten music journalists will queue up to tell the "world" how they cried when he launched into Heroes And Villains or Surf's Up, and the myth that Brian Wilson is some sort of Untouchable Pop Genius will be yet more laughably enhanced.

Now, true, Brian Wilson has written some pretty damn good pop songs. Some of them were even on Smile, the legendary "lost" album that was never actually released. The myth-makers maintain that this is because The Beatles released their own experimental concept album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, before Smile could hit the racks, tormenting Wilson into scrapping the project. Wilson, rather more prosaically, insists it was because he thought it was too weird for anyone to actually buy.

And that's the trouble with Brian - the reality never quite measures up to what other people have told you. Because, while there is a charming pop purity to Wilson's best song-writing, it is not the work of genius. Beach Boys songs were the stuff of immediacy, of radio-friendly hit singles, they were - to be blunt - the boyband of their day. That this band - welcomed with open arms by naff Golden Oldies radio stations everywhere - should be heralded as making The Greatest Album Of All Time (as they often are for Pet Sounds) is, frankly, a conceit almost as ludicrous as heralding Take That as the Best Group Of The Nineties.

But then Gary Barlow never installed a sandpit or dope tent in his studio, or allowed himself to become a gibbering freak show for music snobs. Wilson's personal difficulties lend an enticing whiff of madness, and therefore authentic creative genius, to what was, at the end of the day, nothing more or less than some rather good pop music. Other, far more talented song-writers - from Paul McCartney down - remain relatively unheralded, simply because they never tried to record at the bottom of a swimming pool.

And that, my fellow critics, is really something to weep about.

Mark Sutherland, Features Journalist