The Beach Boys released a string of albums through the 1960s and at one point were even considered serious competition to The Beatles, but by the early 1970s they were in a serious dry spell and going nowhere.

That's when one of their founding members, Mike Love, and the band's former record label, Capitol, came up with the ingenious idea to release . It helped that they had a lot of songs to choose from and Love picked out some of the absolute best - , , and - as well as a few good ones that hadn't done so well the first time around, such as .

became an instant hit, soaring to No1 and hitting high on the charts for the next two summers. It got the attention of music buyers who hadn't heard the songs the first time around, spent 155 weeks on the album chart, and selling more than three million copies in the US.

The simple, sunny artwork on the cover fits with the music and the bearded Beach Boys are seen looking as they did in the 1970s, not the '60s when the tunes were first released. The album you buy on iTunes today is the same collection of songs, with the added bonus of which was added to the CD version in 1987.

With the release of The Beach Boys became a hugely popular touring band. Perhaps the only downside to the success of the album was that they got locked in a cycle of playing their old hits and didn't take their music any further.

In 1975, Capitol brought out another collection of Beach Boys hits, . This wasn't as good as which featured most of the best songs from their early days, but it still did well, selling more than a million copies and making them all even richer.

When The Beach Boys set out on their 50th anniversary tour last year they threw some of their lesser-known early cover songs into the mix, but it was the tunes that everyone had come to hear - and by which they will be remembered.