Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!)

Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) is the ninth studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on July 5, 1965, on Capitol. The band's previous album, The Beach Boys Today! (released March 1965), represented a departure for the group through its abandonment of themes related to surfing, cars, and teenage love, but it sold below Capitol's expectations. In response, the label pressured the group to produce bigger hits. Summer Days thus returned the band's music to simpler themes for one last album, with Brian Wilson combining Capitol's commercial demands with his artistic calling. Produced by Wilson, Summer Days reached number two on the US Billboard 200 and number four on the UK Albums Chart. Two singles were issued from the album: "Help Me, Rhonda", which became the group's second chart-topper in the US, and "California Girls", which peaked at number three. Background Carl Wilson reflected of Summer Days, "There was a time when it was uncool to be into the Beach Boys, and when we did that album, it started to bother us, doing this same stuff, because we thought we were trapped into having to sing about a certain thing." Unreleased material One outtake from the album's sessions is known as "Sandy" or "Sherry She Needs Me", and was written by Brian Wilson with Russ Titelman. "Sherry She Needs Me" was revisited by the Beach Boys during 1976's The Beach Boys Love You sessions. The composition remained dormant until 1998, when it was finally finished by Wilson as "She Says That She Needs Me" for his 1998 Imagination solo album. The Beach Boys' version of "Sherry She Needs Me" was released in 2013 for the Made in California box set.