Ben Yagoda’s new book The B Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song offers a fascinating tour of the American popular music of (roughly) the second quarter of the 20th century. It was only in the second half of that century, in the rock era, that American music came to dominate global musical culture, as it still does today (it is, I contend without a hint of irony, one of our country’s greatest gifts to the world); but the quality of the work done in the period Yagoda focuses on was so high that a remarkable amount of it remains beloved today. The key word reflecting this truth is that is many of its songs are still called “standards.”

But one of the book’s revelations for me had to with the rock era: I never knew that Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys’ wonderful song “The Warmth of the Sun” on the very day President Kennedy was assassinated. It’s one of the group’s masterpieces — a heartwarming, unaffected song about loss, longing, and consolation. (It is, for me, second only to “God Only Knows.”)