10 Iconic Beach Boys Needle Drops in Film and TV

Perhaps Brian Wilson’s magnum opus, “God Only Knows” plays prominently in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 classic toward the end of the film to put a bow on many of the characters’ storylines as “Roller Girl” decides to go back to school, Buck opens up a stereo store and Reed becomes a new type of performer, swapping porn for magic.

The most iconic on-camera use of the all-time yacht rock tune is from the classic Tom Cruise film Cocktail (1988). OK, so it’s a cult classic at best, and Brian Wilson wasn’t featured on this track. Cocktail stars Cruise as a bartender who recites poetry to large crowds of drunks — first in New York City and later in Jamaica. (“Jamaica” happens to be the second word in “Kokomo.”) “Kokomo” was written specifically for Cocktail and was nominated for a Grammy and a Golden Globe. It lost both, but the song was the band’s first number-one hit in 22 years, and is their final top 40 hit to this day.

T.G.I.F. staple Full House was chock full of Beach Boys music — and even a few appearances. The show had a secret weapon for all of those clearances: Uncle Jesse. John Stamos, who played Jesse Katsopolis on the ABC series, met the Beach Boys in 1983. By the time Full House premiered in 1987, he had been playing select shows with them (as a drummer) for two years; he still does today. When Jesse and Becky (Lori Loughlin) married in a 1991 episode, Stamos performed the Beach Boys song  “Forever” on the piano to his TV bride.

Wes Anderson’s long been known for his use of music in his films, and The Beach Boys got a prominent spot in 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, with “Heroes and Villains” featured in the film’s opening scene as we watch our vulpine protagonists try to rob a squab farm. The upbeat song playing as the foxes sneak around for their prey is a perfect example of Anderson’s classic whimsy.

In The Big Bang Theory’s season nine episode The Earworm Reverberation, Sheldon spends the episode trying to get an unnamable earworm out of his head, humming it repeatedly and going as far to play it on a tuba in the middle of the night. In a passing conversation where he brings up Brian Wilson’s name, he finally realized that song was none other than the Beach Boys’ “Darlin,’” and in a sweet twist, it was stuck in Sheldon’s head because he associated the song with Amy’s impact on his life.

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” was a particularly fitting choice for Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore’s 2004 romantic comedy, given the beachy vibe of the film set in Hawaii. It’s an even better fit given the film is about falling for a woman who loses her memory when she goes to bed each night, adding some cruel, funny irony as Sandler torturously sings the song through tears during one scene.

A song that became ubiquitous as the centerpiece of the Sunkist soda campaign of the late ‘70s  and early ‘80s also found its way into two memorable movie scenes. In 2001’s Vanilla Sky, the song plays as Tom Cruise’s character David Aames realizes reality as he knows it is actually a lucid dream implanted by a tech company called Life Extension. The upbeat song shows up ironically once again in Jordan Peele’s Us (2019), in a gruesome scene where the Wilson family (the parents are played by Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker) are murdered by their doppelgängers in a vacation home.

In David O. Russell’s 1999 war satire, a group of U.S. soldiers deployed in the Gulf War (George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonze) attempt a heist of gold looted by Saddam Hussein. The 1964 hit plays as the boys stumble upon a bunker filled with civilian hostages and luxury goods. Once again, the dissonance of the Beach Boys’ carefree tunes set against dark imagery makes for sharp satire.

George Lucas’s breakthrough film features not one but two Beach Boys songs between “Surfin’ Safari” and “All Summer Long,” a nice choice given how synonymous the Beach Boys were with the sound of youth during the time period. “All Summer Long” lines the credits for American Graffiti, and that served as a reference in an episode of The Simpsons over 20 years later. (The Simpsons, for their part, have featured numerous Beach Boys parodies and needle drops in their decades-long run as well.)