Alan Scott in reply to Jaybird says:

@jaybird @jon-row @everyone-else-interested-in-beachboys-covers-and/or-bioshock :

the anachronistic covers are one of the best parts of that game.

Later on, it’s super obvious that there are anachronistic covers, but “God only knows” is the first one you come across. If you don’t know much about the history of the song (and I didn’t) the first thought that goes through your head is “huh, I didn’t realize the song was that old.”

It didn’t really stop at the barbershop quartet version, though. Because from the context of the game’s setting that’s been introduced so far, it makes perfect sense that the song is a barbershop quartet cover of an existing older song–and given that the game is set in 1910 and the prominent reference to god in the lyrics, my head imagined that there was an older traditional folk/christian version of the song that this was a barbershop cover of.

Which worked really well, and helps set up the story-thread of the anachronistic covers for an even better payoff that it would have had if I’d known at the beginning that God Only Knows was original to the Beach Boys.

Anyway, that song, that non-existent traditional version of God Only Knows that might have existed in the 19th century by actually only exists at the corners of my musically under-educated mind, that’s my favorite version of God Only Knows.Report