The Beach Boys – God Only Knows (Tab)
There’s so much going on in this song: the complex chords, subtle key changes, that weird thing at the start of the bridge. If you want a breakdown of the theory, I recommend 8 Bit Music Theory’s discussion of the song. But I do want to call out the slick move from the bridge into the third verse. The bridge ends with the “God only knows…” bit from the verse transposed up 2 and a half steps (bars 33-35) then slips seamlessly back into the verse in the original key.
The toughest bit to play is the outro. The original has three different vocal lines going at once. Taking some pointers from what I learned playing two songs at once, I trimmed the parts down so only two lines are playing at once. It’s still tricky to keep track of.
