Vegetables (song)

"Vegetables" (early versions titled "Vega-Tables") is a song by the American rock band the Beach Boys from their 1967 album Smiley Smile and their unfinished Smile project. Written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, the song is a tongue-in-cheek promotion of organic food that was inspired by radio evangelist Curtis Howe Springer. It was one of the last songs recorded for Smile, with most of the original sessions held in April 1967. Paul McCartney of the Beatles is often reported to have contributed celery crunching sounds at an April session, however, it remains unclear if his performance was retained on any existing recording.

Wilson had declared that he would issue "Vegetables", rather than "Heroes and Villains", as the lead single from Smile, which exacerbated tensions with Parks, who had felt that the song was one of their least representative efforts. Parks soon withdrew from the project, and Smile was scrapped. The Smiley Smile version was then largely rerecorded in June with an arrangement consisting of the group's vocals, electric bass, organ, chomped vegetables, and air blown into water bottles. Months later, the band reworked one of its outtakes into a new a cappella song, "Mama Says", that was released as the closing track on their 1967 album Wild Honey.

Wilson rerecorded "Vegetables" with an arrangement closer to what he had originally envisioned for the song on his 2004 album Brian Wilson Presents Smile. New edits of the song that approximate the original Smile version were also created for the compilations Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys (1993) and The Smile Sessions (2011).