"Season Cycle", in its basic form, came to Partridge while walking his dog. The song was prominently influenced by the Beach Boys, but was not initially planned as a pastiche of the band, he said, "in fact, it started out very much like a folk song, very strummy. And just to kind of tie things up, I tried to do some other things going on at the same time, 'cause we're cross-melody maniacs in this band, but I thought it would be fun. Then I thought, 'Shit, this really does sound like the Beach Boys. Yeah, I'll make it sound a bit more like the Beach Boys!'." He felt that the end result was "nearer to Harpers Bizarre than the Beach Boys personally." In another interview, he stated that he was consciously inspired by the Beach Boys album "Smiley Smile" (1967) to write a song that appeared to be made up of many disparate musical sections. Gregory took issue with the dissonance in the second bridge, but Rundgren sided with Partridge on the view that it made the harmonic development more interesting. Rundgren, however, taunted Partridge for the lyric "about the baby and the umbilical".