Pacific Ocean Blue

Wilson recorded the bulk of the album in 1976 and 1977 at Brother Studios, the Beach Boys' own facility in Santa Monica. Some songs were first written with the Beach Boys in mind. The title track, Pacific Ocean Blues, was written with Mike Love, who is credited on it, and was meant for the group with Love on lead vocal. It was reportedly Wilson's only submission for the group's 1976 album 15 Big Ones, and the band turned it down. Love was not present at the sessions.

Jakobson, who co-wrote half of the twelve songs and shared the production credit, said the recording marked the time when Wilson fully accepted himself as an artist. Hanlon, the engineer, said Wilson would play a track back at double speed, add a Minimoog bass line, then slow it back to normal speed. Hinsche recalled that his own sessions were live recordings with the group, with River Song done in a few takes. For Dreamer, Figueroa said, a bed sheet was laid over his drums to make the fills more staccato.

Pitchfork's Mike Orme described Time as a piano-driven ballad and said Wilson's voice by then sounded like a grizzled blues or folk singer's on What's Wrong.

The album peaked at No. 96 in a twelve-week Billboard run and missed the UK chart on release. Two singles, River Song and You and I, did not chart. Wilson left a track, Holy Man, unfinished in 1977. On the 2008 expanded edition it appears in two versions, with a vocal recorded in Wilson's style by Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters, and a version with additions by Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen was released for Record Store Day 2019.

Legacy Recordings issued the 30th anniversary two-disc edition on June 17, 2008. It reached No. 16 on the UK album chart, No. 5 in Norway and No. 8 on Billboard's Top Pop Catalog Albums chart. Brian Wilson wrote in his 2016 memoir that his favorite song his brother ever made was You and I. Ken Sharp's book Dreamer: The Making of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue was published in 2017.