Editor’s Note: This article is a review and contains subjective opinions, thoughts and critiques.

Here’s a story about bittersweet endings. On May 18, 1967, one of the masterpieces of modern music was all but cancelled. In the midst of his lifelong struggle with mental health, the genius behind the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, threw in the towel on his most experimental project, “SMiLE.” (Mind you, this followed what I might vote as the greatest album ever made, “Pet Sounds.”) The tapes for avant garde excursions like “Child is the Father of Man,” “Barnyard” and “I’m in Great Shape” were abandoned on some shelf in Southern California. Modal recordings more indebted to classical music, like “Heroes and Villains” and “Good Vibrations,” were released as mere pop songs, with only the latter seeing considerable success. Months later, “Smiley Smiley,” a paired-down and lo-fi rendering of the album was released. The album’s middling sales and confused critical reaction destroyed Wilson: “All of a sudden I just decided not to try to do such big musical things.”

But looking back at those initial Beach Boys albums, like 1962’s “Surfin’ Safari” or 1963’s “Surfin’ USA,” it is hard to find signs of the greatness to come. These were earnest efforts, sure, but they were marred by the all-too-common teenage boy tendency toward a suffocating emotional distance: vapid gestures towards “girls” and a love of (very fast) cars. At the end of the day, the Beach Boys were young men with Californian sensibilities and a set of wide-mouthed grins who had to maintain their clean image as one of the world’s preeminent “boy bands,” right alongside those four Liverpool kids with bowl cuts. Perhaps the greatest American band — or at least the most American band — began unassumingly, with incalculable room to grow.

I see far more of myself, and this column, in this unflattering latter description. Looking back on my past four years here at the Daily, I occasionally feel embarrassed that I put my development as a writer on public display, permanently cemented online and in Apple News feeds for the rest of my life. I have to resist the temptation to log into WordPress and re-write my articles, restructuring them if only for personal benefit. My early superlative-laden writing feels far more analogous to a cloying track like “Chug-A-Lug” than “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” or “Cabin Essence.”

At the same time, I realize that these two distinct periods of the Beach Boys are, ultimately, iterations of the same band separated by only four to five years, roughly the same length as my undergraduate experience. I would like to think that I have grown since publishing my first column, both as a listener and writer. I’ve discovered some of my favorite artists, hundreds — if not thousands — of new albums and countless friends with a shared passion for aural art. 

As an English major, it somewhat hurts to say this, but I think the importance of this experience has transcended the mere written words I produced. I had the experience to attend dozens of concerts, interview musical idols such as Alex G and Travis Morrison, confront Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner about his private jet usage and even receive incoherent hate mail for mildly criticizing James “Boomer God” Taylor. I wouldn’t trade any of that for all the embarrassment in the world.

I want to earnestly thank you for reading and supporting me as I have perambulated through the world of music. I had the great privilege to put words to sound and have it published; I cannot begin to express how much that means to me.

Shifting attention to the bureaucratic force known as The Stanford Daily, thank you to the editors who have put up with a continual stream of my nonsense: a loose adherence to due dates, a life-threatening allergy to their edits and a move from a weekly column to a biweekly column to a bi … yearly column.

I also thank the musicians whose work I have enjoyed and discussed. The past four years have seen (or heard, rather) the release of among my favorite albums: “The New Sound” by Geordie Greep, “3D Country” by Geese, “Only God Was Above Us” by Vampire Weekend and “Blue Rev” by Alvvays. They are so tremendous that their greatness persists even in the face of abominations like the Vultures Series, that Jelly Roll and Machine Gun Kelly song that spits on the grave of John Denver, that other Jelly Roll song that horrifically plunders “Drift Away,” anything else by Jelly Roll, “Father of All…” by Green Day, what Tom MacDonald calls “music” and Will Smith’s return to rap. 

I’ll throw out a last few recommendations: if you’re a fan of literary lyricism, check out the Mountain Goats (“The Coroner’s Gambit,” “Goths” and their masterpiece “All Hail West Texas”). If you want mind-altering pop music, listen to the Fiery Furnaces (“EP” and “Blueberry Boat”). Great records from this year? “Sinister Grift” by Panda Bear, “Goldstar” by Imperial Triumphant, “Lonely People with Power” by Deafheaven and “45 Pounds” by YHWH Nailgun. 

Some underrated albums? “Machina” by The Smashing Pumpkins unfairly gets a bad rap, Harvey Danger’s “King James Version” is 47 minutes of unsung and high strung brilliance and “Watertown” is the best Frank Sinatra album you’ve likely never heard.

There is one last underrated album: “Smiley Smile,” the aforementioned flop by the Beach Boys. It’s a goofy, prodigious exercise in psychedelic bliss with more unrestrained weirdness than any mainstream pop album of its time. Despite the critical and commercial failure of the album, and even its denunciation by Wilson himself, I still think it stands as one of their most outstanding and influential works. 

Maybe that’s a fitting last thought: the creators of these works will never understand what they mean to me as a listener. Likewise, I may never understand what my work has meant to you, or even if it meant anything at all. As I look back on my little corner of music journalism, I hope it had even an infinitesimally small fraction of the impact that these artworks continue to have on me.