My Favorite Beach Boys Needle Drops

Brian Wilson died in his sleep on June 11, 2025 at the age of 82. With him, The Beach Boys died too. I mean, yes, The Beach Boys are still active, technically, under the stewardship of Mike Love, but in spirit, they are gone. And though I have a soft spot for “Cocktail” (1988), not as a guilty pleasure but as something like a bizarrely fascinating artistic bomb, it’s always been unfortunate that it might be the preeminent movie associated with The Beach Boys. That’s courtesy of “Kokomo,” the #1 hit about a fictional tropical island created and written and recorded sans Brian Wilson. A perfect “Cocktail” song, undoubtedly, but also nowhere near the apex of Beach Boys songs in movies. (Unless you want to argue, as the invaluable culture writer Molly Lambert convincingly has, its “poisoned wholesomeness” makes it the key to unlocking “Cocktail” in the first place.) No, when it comes to The Beach Boys in movies, these are the needle drops that spring to mind.

(Note: for reasons of fair play, the 2014 Brian Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy” is not eligible for this list.) 

My Favorite Beach Boys Needle Drops

Don’t Worry Baby in Never Been Kissed (1999). “Really,” readers all over the interweb are saying, “‘Never Been Kissed?’” Yes, really. Because even if “Never Been Kissed” is harmless, well, it’s also nothing special, or even close to it. But that’s the thing, cuing up my personal favorite Beach Boys tune can briefly elevate the climax of even the most middling rom com. 

Ol’ Man River in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). This song appears near the end of Wes Anderson’s animated opus, and it’s a happy ending. But even happy endings are, in a way, melancholic, as the sequence scored to this Beach Boys version of the 1927 Kern and Hammerstein show tune goes to show, demonstrating how life in all its banalities and difficulties, even for foxes and an opossum, just keeps rolling along.

Feel Flows in Almost Famous (2000). This is a Carl Wilson Beach Boys track start to finish that Brian only sang backup on, but still, it’s too memorable to leave off this list. I wasn’t familiar with this song until “Almost Famous,” in fact, and, honestly, to this day I can’t even say I know what it’s about which works in its favor. After all, Cameron Crowe places it over the moment backstage at the concert where the young scribe William Miller (Patrick Fugit) has ended up and the groupie, nay, band-aid Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) who in the previous sequence had promised to get him a backstage pass shows up, sure enough, with that backstage pass in tow whether or not he still needs it. It’s a moment, frankly, for all the dweebies like William and me – the cool girl remembers us! You can’t put that feeling into words, not ones that make any real sense, just a Beach Boys melody and vocal. Indeed, in some ineffable manner, the way Kate Hudson says, “The truth just sounds different,” she manages to harmonize with the song itself. 

Wouldn’t It Be Nice? in Roger & Me (1989). This song has been used so many times and in so many movies, from the Nixon Era classic “Shampoo” up through “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” apparently, and many points in-between, even on TV, including one of my 122 favorite “Seinfeld” episodes. Michael Moore utilized the lead track of “Pet Sounds” as an effective counterpoint to a montage of the ruins of Flint, Michigan, though I liked the monologue lead-in to this montage even more. It’s a former autoworker explaining that as he suffered a panic attack in his car after being laid off for the fifth time in five years, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” came on the radio, an irony so cruel it could make you believe in Providence to a certainty or not believe in Providence at all. 

Wouldn’t It Be Nice? in One Crazy Summer (1986). A song about wishing you could grow up already scoring one of the recurring bits in Savage Steve Holland’s off the wall comedy in which Joel Murray’s George Calamari is buried in the sand becomes a reminder to be careful what you wish. Buried in sand? Ha! Someday, George, you’re gonna grow up and be buried in life’s menial tasks! 

All Summer Long in American Graffiti (1973). In the wake of Wilson’s death, Bruce Springsteen said his single greatest car song “Racing in the Street” wouldn’t have existed without The Beach Boys, and “Racing in the Street” and “American Graffiti” go hand in hand, and when you need to summarize a movie via the closing credits in which cars and music are integral, well, who else are you gonna call? And that “All Summer Long,” as so many Neil deGrasse Tyson -types have pointed out over the years, was released two years after “American Graffiti” is set, hey, that only works to remind us that some pop songs are eternal.

God Only Knows in Boogie Nights (1997). The majestically sprawling “Boogie Nights” was one helluva hard movie to tie together come closing time and, yet, by employing what is frequently considered Wilson’s magnum opus, those astonishing vocal rounds seeming to stand in for the film’s own infinite layers, Paul Thomas Anderson did it.

I Get Around in Three Kings (1999). The only diegetic deployment of The Beach Boys on this list, marked in the cassette tape we see in the armored vehicle of four American soldiers cum treasure hunters, “I Get Around” provides a nifty counterpoint to the endless swath of desert through which they race, California Dreaming on such a Middle East day. It’s made all the more potent by how director David O. Russell and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel use long shots to make it seem as if they are surfing in the sand.