Brian Wilson Presents Smile

Wilson agreed to revisit Smile as a live concert for the Royal Festival Hall, a follow-up to his Pet Sounds shows. From October to November 2003 he worked with Sahanaja and Parks on a structure of three movements. Sahanaja had copied recordings from the Beach Boys vaults onto a laptop, and the pair went through them at Wilson's home. Parks supplied lyrics written in the 1960s and some new ones, and new orchestral links were written by Wilson, Parks, Sahanaja and Paul Mertens. Wilson said the 2004 version was "different, much different. Much more progressive, much happier, much more uplifting." The movement subtitles, Americana, Cycle of Life and Spiritual Rebirth, came from the music writer Peter Reum. "Do You Like Worms?" was renamed "Roll Plymouth Rock".

The concert premiered on 20 February 2004 and was repeated until 27 February, with the engineer Mark Linett recording every show. Recording of the album began on 13 April 2004 with Wilson's ten-piece band and ten string players. The basic tracks were cut at Sunset Sound in four days, and vocals, overdubs and mixing were done at Linett's Your Place or Mine studio. The vocals went down through a Universal Audio tube console like the one the Beach Boys used at United Western Recorders in the 1960s. Mixing finished in late July.

It debuted at number 13 on the Billboard 200, the highest position for an album by Wilson or the Beach Boys since 15 Big Ones in 1976, and reached number 7 in the UK. Estimated US sales passed 300,000 by February 2005. It won the 2005 Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow", and Linett was nominated for best engineered album. Dominique Leone of Pitchfork wrote that it is "no ghost record or bout of nostalgia". Robert Christgau, in Rolling Stone, called it "a triumph". The Guardian's Alexis Petridis concluded that only the hardest heart would not be gladdened by its contents, though he questioned the need for a new "Good Vibrations". Rolling Stone placed it at number 399 on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums, and it was listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.