Remember When The Beach Boys Remade Their Classic Hits With A Bunch Of ’90s Country Stars?
on Jun 11, 2025
The Beach Boys’ Stars And Stripes: Vol. 1 Featured 12 Different Country Artists
Country music was on another level in the ’90s, which The Beach Boys fully recognized. This led the harmony-driven pop and rock group to enlist the help of some ’90s country stars for a new album.
That album, Stars and Stripes: Vol. 1, was released in 1996. The project included 12 fully reimagined versions of the Beach Boys’ signature songs, such as “I Get Around” and “Help Me, Rhonda.”
Each song featured a ’90s country star, with the complete tracklist being:
- “Don’t Worry Baby” – Featuring Lorrie Morgan
- “Little Deuce Coupe” – Featuring James House
- “409” – Featuring Junior Brown
- “Long, Tall Texan” – Featuring Doug Supernaw
- “I Get Around” – Featuring Sawyer Brown
- “Be True to Your School” – Featuring Toby Keith
- “Fun, Fun, Fun” – Featuring Ricky Van Shelton
- Help Me, Rhonda” – Featuring T. Graham Brown
- “The Warmth of the Sun” – Featuring Willie Nelson
- “Sloop John B” – Featuring Collin Raye
- “I Can Hear Music” – Featuring Kathy Troccoli
- “Caroline, No” – Featuring Timothy B. Schmit
Listen to a couple of those tracks below.
The Beach Boys who sang on the record included Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, Mike Love, Brian Wilson, and Carl Wilson.
Co-founder Brian Wilson also co-produced Stars and Stripes: Vol. 1 with Joe Thomas. The album reached the 12th spot on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart.
However, there was some drama behind the making of the album. In his book Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, author Peter Ames quotes Brian Wilson’s wife, Melinda, as saying:
“They [the Beach Boys] treated [Brian] like an invalid [while working on the album], all the time saying, ‘Do this, don’t do that, are you okay?'”
The album also underperformed in the pop market, peaking at #101 on the all-genre Hot 100 chart. There had been plans for a second Stars and Stripes album, but those never came to fruition.
Sadly, Stars and Stripes was also the last Beach Boys album to feature Carl Wilson, who passed away two years later in 1998.
Brian Wilson Also Had A Long-Lost Country Album
Brian Wilson had been interested in country music long before the Beach Boys released their ’90s country album. Rolling Stone reports that he started working on a country album in the 1970s.
But there’s a twist…Brian didn’t want to sing on the album himself. He simply wanted to produce it and asked the Beach Boys’ manager, Fred Vail, to record the vocals.
Fred was shocked that Brian asked him to do so, since he had no singing experience. Despite this, he followed along with the plan, and they recorded the bare-bones vocals for 14 country tracks.
However, Brian eventually lost interest in the project, and the plans were shelved.
“There was a lot of things going on with him personally, and he didn’t have any interest in finishing it at that point, so the tapes went into the vault at the Beach Boy office,” Fred told Rolling Stone.
As the years flew by, the long-lost country album became a little-known piece of Beach Boys trivia. Hardcore fans called the record Cows in the Pasture, although it never had a title when Brian and Fred worked on it.
Decades later, Cows in the Pasture is finally slated to be released. Rolling Stone reported the album would come out “at some point” in 2025, but an exact release date has not been announced.
Unfortunately, Brian did not live to see the album’s release. He passed away on June 11, 2025, at the age of 82.
Until Cows in the Pasture finally sees the light of day, please enjoy another of the standout songs from the Beach Boys’ ’90s country album, Stars and Stripes: Vol. 1, in the clip below.
