The Beach Boys Today!

The eighth studio album was produced and arranged by Brian Wilson and written mostly by him, with extra lyrics from Mike Love. Most of it was recorded between 7 and 19 January 1965 at Western Studio in Hollywood, with over 25 studio musicians. A few songs came earlier: She Knows Me Too Well and Don't Hurt My Little Sister in June 1964, When I Grow Up (To Be a Man) in August, Dance, Dance, Dance in October, and the backing track for Kiss Me, Baby in December. Gold Star was used for Do You Wanna Dance? and RCA Victor for Dance, Dance, Dance. None of the songs relied only on rock instrumentation. Seven of the eleven tracks had orchestral-style arrangements, and the others added accordion, autoharp, English horn, oboe, electric mandolin and French horn. Side one is uptempo and side two is mostly ballads. Dennis Wilson sang lead on the first and last songs, because Brian felt Dennis had been underused. It was mixed in mono, and a complete stereo mix was not released until 2012.

Wilson had suffered a breakdown on a flight to Houston in December 1964 and told his bandmates he would stop touring. The lyrics are all in the first person and leave out cars and surfing. The album reached number 4 in the US over a 50-week chart stay and yielded three top 20 singles: When I Grow Up (To Be a Man) at number 9, Dance, Dance, Dance at number 8 and Do You Wanna Dance? at number 12. A rerecorded Help Me, Rhonda, released in April, became the band's second US number 1. The RIAA certified it gold on 1 October 1965. In Britain it came out in April 1966 and peaked at number 6.

Richie Unterberger of AllMusic found it strong almost from start to finish. Scott Schinder pointed to its suite-like structure as an early case of a rock album making a cohesive artistic statement. Most attention has gone to the ballad side, which writers often call a precursor to Pet Sounds. Rolling Stone placed it at number 271 in 2012 and at 466 in 2020, and it is in the 1001 Albums book. The spoken closer, Bull Session with the Big Daddy, is a spoof interview of the band by the journalist Earl Leaf, cut to two minutes from a recording that ran for over 20. Schinder wrote that the album would have been their first to be sublime from beginning to end without it.