Beach Boys leader and pop artist Brian Wilson passes away at age 82.

As the Beach Boys' frontman and principal songwriter, Brian Wilson became rock's poet laureate of surf-and-sun innocence. However, because of his battles with drugs and mental illness, Wilson also embodied broken creativity. He was eighty-two.

His family posted a notice of his passing on Instagram, but they did not specify the cause of death or the location or time of his passing. A California state judge granted Mr. Wilson's business representatives conservatorship in early 2024 following the death of his wife, Melinda Wilson, on the grounds that he had been diagnosed with dementia and suffered from "a severe neurocognitive disease."

The Beach Boys produced a musical counterpoint to the idea of Southern California as a paradise with mid-1960s singles like "Surfin' U.S.A.," "California Girls," and "Fun, Fun, Fun." It featured upbeat harmonies and a boogie tempo to go along with a carefree, young lifestyle. The only worries were surging waves, cars, and sex.

Mr. Wilson's crystal-clear vocal arrangements helped realize that vision, which contributed to the Beach Boys being the quintessential American band of the time. The group had 13 singles in the Billboard Top 10 during its brief peak, which lasted from 1962 to 1966. "I Get Around," "Help Me, Rhonda," and "Good Vibrations" were the three that made it to the top.

At the same time, the soft-spoken, round-faced Mr. Wilson, who did not surf, emerged as one of pop's most talented and unique studio auteurs, creating intricate and avant-garde creations that amazed his contemporaries.

Bob Dylan once said, "That ear." "Jesus, he really needs to will it to the Smithsonian."

The 1966 album "Pet Sounds," a melancholy song cycle that Mr. Wilson oversaw during intricate recording sessions, was his masterpiece. It combined the sound of a rock band with classical instrumentation and oddities like the Electro-Theremin, whose unearthly whistle Mr. Wilson would use once more on "Good Vibrations."

Although "Pet Sounds" was a commercial failure when it was first released, critics and other musicians later recognized it as an epochal accomplishment due to the technical mastery and profound melancholy of songs like "God Only Knows" and "I Just Was not Made for These Times." Rolling Stone named "Pet Sounds" the second-greatest album of all time in both 2003 and 2020. (The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" from 2003 and Marvin Gaye's "What is Going On" from 2020 were ranked first.)

Mr. Wilson's masterwork, "Pet Sounds," was a commercial failure when it came out in 1966.Capitol Records is credited.

The LP was a single shot in the well-known creative competition between the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Later, producer George Martin testified that without "Pet Sounds," the Beatles' historic 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" "would never have happened."

Paul McCartney famously remarked, "'Pet Sounds' was what really blew me away." "I believe that unless someone hears the record, they are not musically informed."

In his early twenties, Mr. Wilson was hailed as a brilliant hitmaker, but he quickly displayed signs of instability. Some of his actions, such as setting his piano in a huge sandbox inside his house in the Hollywood Hills, may have appeared to be the whims of a pampered star.

However, he made a mistake when he followed up on "Pet Sounds." Mr. Wilson indulged all of his eccentricities, no matter how costly or pointless, over months of recording sessions for an album he planned to call "Smile," and his developing drug habit stoked delusion and anxiety. He dressed studio musicians in toy firefighter helmets and set a flaming bucket in the middle of them while they recorded a song called "Fire." He abandoned the track after learning that a nearby building had burned down at the same time as that session, terrified that his studio's "witchcraft" was to blame.

Mr. Wilson left "Smile" behind, and it became a forgotten record of a bright but tormented mind that became part of rock history. Mr. Wilson's longtime rival and Beach Boys singer Mike Love described it as "a whole album of Brian's lunacy." It was left undone for almost 40 years.