Adult/Child (sometimes typeset as Adult Child) is an unreleased studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys that was produced from February to June 1977. Similar to the release it was meant to follow, The Beach Boys Love You, the album is essentially a semi-autobiographical solo effort by the band's chief songwriter and producer, Brian Wilson. The title refers to a theory that one's personality can be split into "adult" and "child" modes of thinking.
The track listing consisted of seven new songs, four of which feature orchestral arrangements by Dick Reynolds, along with five older tracks recorded between 1969 and 1976. Some songs, including "It's Over Now" and "Still I Dream of It", were originally intended to be recorded by singers such as Frank Sinatra. Initially planned for issue in September 1977, the release was vetoed following the underwhelming sales of Love You. Instead, the group delivered M.I.U. Album, which shared only the song "Hey Little Tomboy", albeit in a rerecorded form.
Commentators have both praised Adult/Child for its humorous and idiosyncratic "outsider" quality and described it as a poignant reflection of Wilson's personal life. In later years, the full album circulated widely on bootlegs and unauthorized YouTube uploads, while four additional tracks saw an official release on the 1993 box set Good Vibrations. In February 2026, a majority of the album is set to be officially released in a box set entitled We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years, also containing session outtakes from both 15 Big Ones and Love You.[3]
Background
At the end of 1976, Brian Wilson produced The Beach Boys Love You (released in April 1977), after which he immediately moved onto the production of what became Adult/Child.[4] Music historian Keith Badman writes that Wilson "reportedly [started the new album] on the insistence of his former doctor", Eugene Landy, who had been relieved of his services in December 1976.[5] Wilson's 2016 memoir, I Am Brian Wilson, attributes the album's title to Landy. "He meant that there were always two parts of a personality, always an adult who wants to be in charge and a child who wants to be cared for, always an adult who thinks he knows the rules and a child who is learning and testing the rules."[6]
Adult/Child would have been the Beach Boys' final record on Reprise, a subsidiary of Warner Records.[4] Early in the year, band manager Stephen Love had arranged negotiations for the band to move to CBS Records once obligations to Warner had been fulfilled.[7] Issues related to the band's recording contracts and other areas of their management plagued the group for the rest of the year.[8]
Style and production
Adult/Child was largely recorded from February 9 to June 3, 1977 at the band's Brother Studios in Santa Monica.[9] The songs mostly feature Brian with his brothers Dennis and Carl; contributions from Al Jardine and Mike Love were limited to recordings from earlier sessions.[10] Dennis recorded his solo album Pacific Ocean Blue in between Adult/Child sessions at the same studio.[9] Love and Jardine were sequestered in Switzerland and Big Sur, respectively, and so were rarely present for the recording.[11]Earle Mankey, who had engineered 15 Big Ones and Love You, returned for Adult/Child.[12]
Some of the songs on Adult/Child were written with Frank Sinatra in mind.
Wilson commissioned Four Freshmen arranger Dick Reynolds, whom he had worked with on the Beach Boys' 1964 Christmas album, to orchestrate four tracks: "Life is for the Living", "It's Over Now", "Still I Dream of It", and "Deep Purple".[17] According to Stan Love, when his brother Mike heard them, Mike asked Brian, "What the fuck are you doing?"[18] Brian remembered, "He told me I was fucking around, that I wasn't serious. [...] I cut a track with swing music [...] and he got mad. He said 'What are you doing messing around for?' I said I'm just trying to do what I like, what I think is for now's times."[19][nb 1]
Musically, Adult/Child is keyboard-heavy, with Brian's cigarette-damaged voice providing most of the lead vocals. Lyrically, the subject matter ranges from healthy diets and exercise to ecology.[2] Mankey said, "[Brian]'s looking for a goal. Some of the new songs reflect his everyday situation, like 'Help Is On The Way'[sic]."[12] Music critic Matthew Weiner called it "Brian's Sinatra album" or "Brian's 'Food Album'", wherein "one song finds the recluse staring into the mirror at his blubbery naked body—in another, he yearns to drown his sorrows in a good meal, with the whole aesthetic basically encapsulated in a fantastically Moog-y rendition of the children's song, 'Shortenin' Bread'".[21]
The opening track, "Life Is for the Living", begins with the lines "Life is for the living / Don't sit around on your ass smoking grass / That stuff went out a long time ago!".[2] Frank Sinatra is directly referenced in the lyrics of "It's Over Now",[22] a song that, alongside "Still I Dream of It", was reportedly intended to be recorded by a singer such as Sinatra.[23][nb 2]
Adult/Child was mixed and assembled on June 27, 1977,[9] just days after the cancellation of a planned European summer tour by the group,[10] on which it would have performed songs from Adult/Child.[25] Other tracks the band recorded during these sessions were "New England Waltz" and a cover of the Spencer Davis Group's 1966 hit "Gimme Some Lovin'".[26][nb 3]
Cancellation
The Beach Boys performing in 1978
Adult/Child was widely publicized as the Beach Boys' next release[24] and planned for issue in September 1977.[12] Dennis told a reporter, "[It is the] strangest album I've ever heard. [Brian]'s vocals are the best I've ever heard him. I'm elated with the new album, it's really gonna be a surprise. I don't know where it's coming from, but it's positive, again."[28] Asked whether the album was a "contract pay-off", Carl replied, "Naah, Brian's writing great songs, more grandiose than Love You with more players."[29]
Badman speculated that the album might have been shelved because the group wanted to save the material for a later album or because it was vetoed by Warner–Reprise or Wilson's bandmates.[10] Brian's 2016 memoir says his bandmates and Warner did not feel confident about the album.[20] But according to Dave Berson, an executive at Warner, the band's record contract did not include a proviso that Warner could reject albums.[30]
Biographer Peter Ames Carlin, who is more certain in his explanation for the album's non-release, says that, after the commercial failure of Love You, Wilson's bandmates—particularly Mike Love and Al Jardine—"told Brian that his new songs were too weird, too out there, to appeal to the mass market [...] From now on they would record and release music that fans wanted to hear—and because they were the ones up in the front lines onstage every night, they would be the ones to judge what would appeal."[31]
Availability
Some of the unreleased songs on Adult/Child later were released on subsequent Beach Boys albums and compilations.[32]
A rerecorded version of "Hey Little Tomboy" appears on M.I.U. Album (1978).[33]
A rerecorded version of "Shortenin' Bread" appears on L.A. (Light Album) (1979).
An alternate mix of "It's Over Now" is included on the 2013 compilation Made In California.
The album itself circulates widely on bootlegs and unauthorized YouTube uploads.[1] "Life Is for the Living", "Deep Purple", "On Broadway", "It's Trying to Say", "Everybody Wants to Live", "Lines", and the original versions of "Hey Little Tomboy" and "Shortenin' Bread" remain officially unreleased.[26]
In his 1978 biography The Beach Boys and the California Myth, David Leaf was generally unfavorable about Love You and Adult/Child, though he enjoyed "It's Over Now" and "Still I Dream of It", calling them "the most personal tunes Brian has recorded since ''Til I Die.'"[36] Musicologist Philip Lambert wrote, "All of the songs from this collection are solid efforts, but 'Still I Dream of It' and 'It's Over Now' are particularly inspired and rank right up there with Brian's best work."[22] Carlin called "Hey Little Tomboy" "the worst" of the Adult/Child songs and "the most unsettling" of the Beach Boys' recording history.[33]
Billboard contributor Morgan Enos wrote, "A couple of the tunes stand up to any ballad on Pet Sounds, and others, like 'Hey! Little Tomboy''s[sic] creepy leering at a girl who throws out her skateboard and 'shaves her legs,' mostly reflect Wilson's declining mental state."[1] Music critic Robert Dayton deemed Adult/Child one of the Beach Boys' best 1970s albums, writing:
There are so-called Beach Boys fans who say anybody who applaud Love You and this album is being ironic. I say fuck those tight-arsed naysayers! Both of those albums showcase a truly original mix of humor and sadness. The original numbers always dance just a step away from the cliche, dealing with simple lyrical themes that make you wonder why they had never been explored before. [...] All of the songs are infectiously catchy, including the ballads, which are possibly the saddest ballads known to humankind. And there are a few classic covers, including an unhinged "Shortenin' Bread."[2]
In his 2008 book The Rough Guide to the Best Music You've Never Heard, Nigel Williamson praised Adult/Child's "quirky charm and goofy unpredictability".[24]Stylus Magazine included the album in a list titled "'Long Time Gone' – The Classic Rock Lost Album Archetypes" among other unreleased Beach Boys work such as Smile, Landlocked, and Bambu as "A Lost Album Category Unto Themselves". Contributor Matthew Weiner wrote:
If "legend" means "an unreleased masterwork from the genius who brought us Pet Sounds" then no. But for Brian fanatics, Adult Child is a must-hear, even if it does chronicle the decline of what was arguably pop's greatest talent [...] nearly every song reflects the sorry state in which the elder-Wilson found himself by the late-Seventies: a drug-addled, paranoid shut-in, weighing in at a none-too-svelte 300 lbs. As morbidly awful as that proposition sounds, however, Wilson's melodic sense, arranging skills and humor had not yet totally abandoned him by 1977—even if his choirboy voice, ravaged by a four-pack-a-day cigarette habit, had.[21]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Brian Wilson, except where noted.
Some bootlegs include bonus tracks that were recorded by the group between the 1960s and 1980s.[21]
We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years
On January 20, 2026, the band announced that the Adult/Child sessions would be officially released for the first time on February 13, 2026 as part of the We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years collection which will be released on vinyl and CD. The collection also features a remastered version of their The Beach Boys Love You which includes session outtakes and demos from that album along with session outtakes from 15 Big Ones.
We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years (Adult/Child) track listing
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Life Is for the Living"
2.
"Deep Purple"
3.
"It's Over Now"
4.
"Still I Dream of It"
5.
"Everybody Wants to Live"
6.
"Lines"
7.
"It's Trying to Say"
8.
"Shortenin' Bread"
9.
"New England Waltz"
10.
"Life Is for the Living (2025 backing track mix)"
11.
"Deep Purple (2025 backing track mix)"
12.
"It's Over Now (2025 backing track mix)"
13.
"Still I Dream of It (2025 backing track mix)"
Personnel
Partial credits from Badman, sessionographer Craig Slowinski, Phillip Lambert, and Stylus magazine.[10][37][38][39]
↑During the sessions for the 1972 album Spring, Wilson had recorded another version of "Gimme Some Lovin'" in medley with the Four Tops' "Baby I Need Your Loving". The track was never released.[27]
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