Sail On, Sailor

"Sail On, Sailor"
Single by the Beach Boys
from the album Holland
B-side	"Only with You"
Released	February 1973
Recorded	November 28, 1972
Studio	Village, Los Angeles
Genre	Rock
Length	3:22
Label	Brother/Reprise
Composer(s)	Brian Wilson Tandyn Almer Van Dyke Parks
Lyricist(s)	Ray Kennedy Jack Rieley
Producer(s)	The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys singles chronology
"Marcella" (1972) "Sail On, Sailor" (1973) "California Saga/California" (1973)
Official audio
"Sail On, Sailor (Remastered 2000)" on YouTube
Audio sample
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"Sail On, Sailor" (mislabeled "Sail On Sailor" on original pressings) is a song by American rock band the Beach Boys from their 1973 album Holland. It was written primarily by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson with Ray Kennedy, Tandyn Almer, and Jack Rieley. The lead singer on the song is Blondie Chaplin, making this one of the band's few well-known songs not sung by Mike Love, Brian Wilson or Carl Wilson. The song was released as a single in 1973, backed with "Only with You", and peaked at No. 79 on the Billboard singles chart. A 1975 reissue (also backed with "Only with You") charted higher, at No. 49.

Brian Wilson himself later stated, "It's the only song that we did that I absolutely do not like at all. I never liked 'Sail On, Sailor'."^[1] However, Wilson personally selected the song as one of 19 track selections for the compilation Classics Selected by Brian Wilson, saying, "I love how this song rocks." According to biographer Jon Stebbins, the song "is perhaps the only perennial Beach Boys favorite to still thrive in the classic rock and album rock FM radio formats of the present."^[2]