The Beach Boys: 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' - Shampoo (1975) OST

'Shampoo' is a 1975 American satirical romantic comedy-drama film written by Robert Towne and directed by Hal Ashby. It stars Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn, with Lee Grant, Jack Warden, Tony Bill and in an early film appearance, Carrie Fisher.

The film is set on Election Day 1968, the day Richard Nixon was first elected as President of the United States, and was released soon after the Watergate scandal had reached its conclusion. The political atmosphere provides a source of dramatic irony, since the audience, but not the characters, are aware of the direction the Nixon presidency would eventually take.

"Shampoo’s ambitious intentions begin as the credits rise: a dark screen and the opening verse to the Beach Boys’ wistful ode to 1960s youth and exuberance, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” firmly establish the film’s project... Looking at the context within which this song is placed as well as the fact that we know, given a perspective that by 1975 includes the knowledge of a fallen Saigon, the murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and a crooked, exiled ex-President – the childlike wistfulness of the song acts instead as ironic commentary... By establishing the gap between the music we are hearing and the artificiality of the characters we are seeing at Shampoo’s outset, the filmakers cue the viewer as to the complex narrative power of the soundtrack."
"Say Goodbye to Hollywood": Popular Music and Mythic Deconstruction in Shampoo
Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present), Fall 2005, Volume 4, Issue 2