State Champ Radio Greatest Pop Stars Podcast
Trending on Billboard As the charts have remained dominated all November by Taylor Swift — now in her second month of pop-world eclipsing — a number of long-beloved underground stars who’ve never quite played on her commercial level have made their return. Within the space of eight days, we received new releases from Rosalía, Charli xcx, Robyn […]
Trending on Billboard The Brothers Gibb had already enjoyed two fairly full career arcs as hitmakers by the time the Bee Gees surfaced for a third time in the mid-’70s — this time as Miami-dwelling disco dons. They got off to a pretty good start with a pair of Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits, […]
Trending on Billboard In 2012, popular music was at a point of major transition. Rock was fading from the mainstream, R&B was getting weird, rap was entering its middle age, and EDM was suddenly at the center of everything. All of these trends were reflected at that spring’s Coachella, where some of the defining artists […]
Trending on Billboard As expected, it was a total eclipse of Taylor Swift on the charts and in the conversation for October — with the pop ultrasupermegastar topping both the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot 100 for essentially the entire month with her The Life of a Showgirl and its lead single “The Fate of […]
Trending on Billboard D’Angelo had already proven a transformative R&B figure as a 21-year-old with his 1995 debut LP Brown Sugar, scoring hits and winning awards and growing the movement that would ultimately be known as neo-soul. And when his sophomore album Voodoo arrived in 2000, it topped the Billboard 200 — helped by the […]
Trending on Billboard Justin Vernon was a near-immediate critical sensation upon his late-’00s emergence with his first album as Bon Iver, the alt-folk opus For Emma, Forever Ago. With his unique falsetto, emotional delivery and irresistible backstory — retreating to a cabin in the woods following a pair of personal and professional breakups to record […]
Last week (June 11), the brilliant writer, producer, composer and singer Brian Wilson died at age 82. Wilson leaves behind a singular catalog of pop and rock music, which is of course headlined by his work in the ’60s and ’70s with The Beach Boys, alongside his brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. The Beach Boys cruised to pop stardom from 1963 to 1965 with a string of smash hits about surfing, cars and girls that grew increasingly complex as Brian rapidly developed as a songwriter and studio wizard. In 1966, all the group’s artistic ambitions were realized, with perhaps both the Boys’ most beloved album and most beloved single — though it all came at a tremendous cost to Wilson, and to the band’s long-term future.
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On this week’s Vintage Pop Stardom episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard executive digital director, west coast Katie Atkinson, to talk about the greatest year by the ultimate west coast pop band. We talk about everything that led up to the Beach Boys’ singular legacy year in 1966 — which ultimately resulted in the LP masterwork Pet Sounds and the unanimously acclaimed pop smash “Good Vibrations” — as well as why the group was ultimately unable to reach those commercial or artistic heights again.
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And of course, along the way, we ask all the big questions about the Beach Boys’ greatest (and in many ways last) year in the sun: Why did Brian Wilson enlist an ad man he barely knew as his primary collaborator on Pet Sounds (and why did that guy end up hating working with him so much)? Is “Sloop John B.” secretly the album’s perfect thematic centerpiece? Is “Good Vibrations” really more head than it is heart? Would 1966 Brian have dealt with f–kboy or industry plant allegations in 2025? And of course: Is this the greatest year in pop music that any American band has ever had?
Check it out above — along with a YouTube playlist of some of the most important moments from The Beach Boys’ 1966, all of which are discussed in the podcast — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!
And as we say in every one of these GPS podcast posts — if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:
Transgender Law Center
Trans Lifeline
Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe
Also, please consider giving your local congresspeople a call in support of trans rights, with contact information you can find on 5Calls.org — and if you’re in the D.C. area this weekend (May 30-31), definitely check out Liberation Weekend, a music festival supporting trans rights with an incredible lineup of trans artists and allies.
It’s been a week of “Weird Al” on Billboard.com. Our recent cover star and indie spirit award recipient comes to us at a fascinating place in his career, where despite having recorded only sporadically over the past decade, he’s in many ways at a career peak — culturally ubiquitous, about to embark upon the biggest […]
This May, only a handful of pop stars made major movement on the charts — including one with a historically huge Hot 100 album bomb, and one with a rare runaway breakout smash for 2025 — but we still saw some big names making big waves, with massive new tours and game-changing news announcements. And […]
It would’ve been a big-enough weekend for Morgan Wallen simply from the release of his fourth album Friday’s (May 16) I’m the Problem — his third album this decade to consist of 30+ tracks, this time with six of them already ranking as pre-release Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits. But the biggest star in […]
