It took 37 years, but in 2004 former Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson finally released his masterwork, SMiLE. Since Wilson has been known to be every bit as cryptic in speech as the lyrics of his one-time songwriting partner Van Dyke Parks, we asked a few of his more creatively-inclined fans to pick their favorite tracks, as part of a belated tribute to the belated masterpiece while he’s in town for the final evening concert celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Pet Sound.

I got the Beach Boys boxed set because it had, like, six new SMiLE tracks. I had a couple crappy records and bootlegs, but god, when I brought that home, it fucking blew me away. I understood exactly what I had read so much about: you know, like super quiet, superminimal, and then blows you away. That’s why that’s one of my favorite tracks right there. When I first played it for [Neutral Milk Hotel’s] Jeff Mangum, he didn’t get it because it was the Beach Boys—I mean, “Kokomo”? It still turns [people] off because of the stupid fucking striped shirts.

Besides being such a phenomenal song musically, I prefer “Good Vibrations” to the rest of SMiLE because (a) It’s the only song on the record that rocks at all, and (b) It’s actually about something. The rest of the album’s lyrics are a bit too vague for my taste. They evoke nice imagery at times, but overall it gets to be a bit annoying—maddening, even. I wish Brian Wilson didn’t team up with Van Dyke Parks at that point in his career. Their collaboration is overrated, mainly because Parks is in so many ways the opposite of Mike Love.

[It] was the first song the Apples ever learned to play, and I have always said that it is the best rock song ever recorded. We reworked it to sound like Blue Cheer crossed with Spacemen 3 as we could barely play and sing at the same time. In recent years, I became disillusioned with big productions and all the bells and whistles and sought a much rawer sound. Hearing SMiLE completed totally made me do an about-face—now I believe in bells and whistles more than ever. To me SMiLE is a challenge to pursue your most far-fetched visions, even if they take a lifetime to achieve.

The main event in the song is a gorgeous melody against mysterious harmonic movement, as if the music were being directly injected into the emotional part of your brain. It’s so captivating that the first time you hear the song you can’t pay attention to Van Dyke Parks’ undecodable lyrics. If you force meaning on any single phrase, it slips away. I would suggest that everyone track down the performance Wilson gave on the 1966 Leonard Bernstein TV special.

What makes a song memorable is how often you find yourself humming its melody while you’re cooking dinner or driving or even trying to write a song yourself. “Wonderful” revisits standard Wilson thematic material: the break from innocence and childhood, with a romantic melancholy. As Wilson alludes to banishment from the garden through carnal sin, he seems to long for something much more personal—a return to his own innocence, sacrificed to fame, an abusive father and a complex relationship with drugs. The theme is universal. But the effortless and timeless melody is 100 percent Brian Wilson.

Nov. 22. Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway (at W. 74th St.), 212-496-7070; 8, $58.50-$128.50.