'Surfin' USA' (1963) 

"Surfin' USA" was the Beach Boys' first global hit, taken from their eponymous debut album. A youthful ode to sea, sun and girls, it became an anthem for the West Coast and beyond.

It demonstrated Brian Wilson's increasing songwriting prowess as well as the band's unique vocal sound achieved thanks to double tracking.

"We'll all be gone for the summer/ We're on safari to stay/ Tell the teacher we're surfin'/ Surfin' USA," it rang out.

Wilson intentionally set his lyrics to the music of "Sweet Little Sixteen," by Chuck Berry, leading Berry to take legal action.

'California Girls' (1965) 

On the big hit of the summer of 1965, Wilson's cousin Mike Love burst into song to celebrate the sun-tanned women of California.

"I wish they all could be California girls," the band members sang in seemless harmony.

It was also the first song written by Wilson under the influence of LSD, "which could explain why the accompaniment seems to move in a slow, steady daze at odds with the song's bright, major-key melody," Rolling Stone magazine wrote.

'God Only Knows' (1966) 

It took Wilson just 45 minutes to write "God Only Knows," the legendary eighth track on the album "Pet Sounds" which has gone down as one of the greatest love songs ever.

Sung by brother Carl Wilson, Brian's rival Paul McCartney declared it to be his favourite song of all time and said it reduced him to tears.

But the record company and other members of the group were wary at the new turn in style.

Though "Pet Sounds" included hits such as "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "Sloop John B" and "God Only Knows", it was not an immediate commercial success in the United States. There also was resistance to the album within the band, especially from singer Love, who wanted to stick with the proven money-making sound.

"Pet Sounds", which was released in 1966, later would come to be recognized as Wilson's magnum opus. Paul McCartney said it was an influence on the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." "No one's musical education is complete until they've heard 'Pet Sounds'," McCartney said.

In 2012 Rolling Stone magazine ranked it second only to "Sgt. Pepper" on its list of the 500 greatest rock albums.

"Hearing 'Pet Sounds' gave me the kind of feeling that raises the hairs on the back of your neck and you say, 'What is that? It's fantastic,'" George Martin, the Beatles' legendary producer, said in the liner notes of a reissued version of the album. "It's like falling in love."

'Good Vibrations'(1966) 

"Good Vibrations" was a massive commercial success, selling one million copies in the United States and topping charts there and in several other countries including the UK.

At the time the most expensive single ever made, the "pocket symphony" was recorded in four different studios, consumed over 90 hours of tape and included a complexity of keys, textures, moods and instrumentation.

The song was a far cry from the group's surf-and-sun origins and the enormity of the task brought Wilson to the brink. He was unable to go on and complete the album "Smile," of which the song was to have been the centerpiece.

'Til I die' (1971) 

On side B of the album "Surf's Up," "'Til I die" was composed in 1969 by a depressed Wilson worn down by mental illness and addiction.

He wrote in his 1991 autobiography that it was perhaps the most personal song he had written for the Beach Boys.