River Song

Wilson wrote the music himself and the lyrics with his brother Carl. The opening piano part began in the early 1970s as Ecology, in sessions with Daryl Dragon. Wilson said the piano riff stood for the flowing of a river, and told an interviewer he had been walking in the High Sierras by a stream that kept getting bigger. The music, he said, came from the river.

By 1973 the Beach Boys were performing it live, with Blondie Chaplin on lead vocal. The album version, finished in 1977, adds the Double Rock Baptist Church Voices of Inspiration Choir. The choir idea had first been intended for Holy Man, and Jakobson said the choir took a good song and made it an awesome recording. Uncut's Peter Paphides wrote of rising torrents of gospel harmonies. River Song was issued as a single in Europe with Farewell My Friend as the B-side and did not chart. The Beach Boys included Wilson's solo version on their 1981 compilation Ten Years of Harmony.