section_path: Artistry/Lyrics
section_name: Lyrics
paragraph_text: Lyrics
  
  I don't carry a notebook or use a tape player. I like to tell a story in the songs with as few words as possible. I sort of tend to write what I've been through and look inside myself. Some of the songs are messages.
  
  Wilson generally collaborated with another lyricist, although he occasionally composed both words and music alone. Most of his songs explore introspective themes, and several portray the male object or narrator as a "loser", evident on " She Knows Me Too Well ", " Don't Hurt My Little Sister ", " Merry Christmas, Baby ", and " All Dressed Up for School ". Other recurring themes in Wilson's songs include feminine objectification, youthful innocence, slice of life stories, and health and fitness.
  
  Although the Beach Boys became known for surfing imagery, his compositions with collaborators outside the band typically avoided this subject matter. Unlike his contemporaries, social issues were never referenced in his lyrics. In his 2008 book Dark Mirror: The Pathology of the Singer-Songwriter, Donald Brackett identifies Wilson as "the Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost of popular music—deceptively simple, colloquial in phrasing, with a spare and evocative lyrical style embedded in the culture that created it". Brackett opined that Wilson expressed "intense fragility" and "emotional vulnerability" to degrees that few other singer-songwriters had.
  
  I don't carry a notebook or use a tape player. I like to tell a story in the songs with as few words as possible. I sort of tend to write what I've been through and look inside myself. Some of the songs are messages.
  
  Wilson generally collaborated with another lyricist, although he occasionally composed both words and music alone. Most of his songs explore introspective themes, and several portray the male object or narrator as a "loser", evident on " She Knows Me Too Well ", " Don't Hurt My Little Sister ", " Merry Christmas, Baby ", and " All Dressed Up for School ". Other recurring themes in Wilson's songs include feminine objectification, youthful innocence, slice of life stories, and health and fitness.
  
  Although the Beach Boys became known for surfing imagery, his compositions with collaborators outside the band typically avoided this subject matter. Unlike his contemporaries, social issues were never referenced in his lyrics. In his 2008 book Dark Mirror: The Pathology of the Singer-Songwriter, Donald Brackett identifies Wilson as "the Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost of popular music—deceptively simple, colloquial in phrasing, with a spare and evocative lyrical style embedded in the culture that created it". Brackett opined that Wilson expressed "intense fragility" and "emotional vulnerability" to degrees that few other singer-songwriters had.