Endless Summer (The Beach Boys Album)

Endless Summer (The Beach Boys album)

Endless Summer is a compilation album by American rock band The Beach Boys, released on June 24, 1974 on Capitol. A collection of hits from the band's pre-Pet Sounds period, Endless Summer was compiled by their old label Capitol Records, while The Beach Boys were contracted with Reprise Records.

Initial pressings of this album contained a poster depicting an airplane flying a Beach Boys banner. While the album is limited entirely to the band's sixties material, the cover artwork reflected the Beach Boys' seventies appearance. With vegetation in the foreground, it also seems to evoke images of the band's late 1960s Smiley Smile album, although none of the songs on the original pressing are from Smiley Smile ("Good Vibrations" was added to the CD release of the album in 1987).

Endless Summer is notable, however, for reclaiming the band's commercial glory at home, spending 155 weeks on the Billboard album chart, and peaking at number 1, selling over three million copies. In 1992, Mike Love noted, "They were going to do a Best Of The Beach Boys Volume Three in 19-, whatever the hell it was, and I came in there and went, "Wait a second, call it Endless Summer, instead of being Volume Three which sound nauseating to me. Endless Summer has a whole other vibe to it and sold several million copies just with the switch of the title. But then I'm a title guy anyway."

Although released as a 'double album' (two LPs in a gatefold sleeve) in the USA, in the UK, the album was released on one LP with ten songs on each side.