This was one of the first commercial songs to use the word "God" in its title, and it maintains a "cosmic" theme throughout:
I may not always love you--
But as long as there are stars above you--
You never need to doubt it.
I'll make you so sure about it.
God only knows what I'd be without you.
As long as we're thinking about stars, we might as well think (additionally) about one entire planet:
If you should ever leave me...
Though life would still go on....believe me:
The world could show nothing to me.
So what good would living do me?
God only knows what I'd be without you.
I always like to notice "the anxiety of influence": moments when one literary work "rewrites" an earlier literary work. Though I'm certain that Brian Wilson meant his own words to be read in a simple, direct way, the writer Dustin Lance Black had other ideas. Black used the Beach Boys for his Mormon drama--"Big Love"--perhaps because of that one word "God." But Black noticed something about the end of the song. "God only knows what I'd be without you" just happens again and again and again. Perhaps Lance's characters--trapped in a dysfunctional plural marriage--really would like to "be without" one another. They cannot admit this--in their daily lives--but the question can play (like music) again and again in their heads. One of my favorite openings in TV history.
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