In January of 1967, Things were not looking to great.
Carl Wilson had recently recieved a draft notice from the U.S army and Brian had already started reducing his work on the album after missing his deadline. This whole time i've neglected to mention the fact that Brian had been experimenting with drugs (Specifically LSD) to an unhealthy extent, and already dealing with an undiagonsed schizoaffective disorder, started to basically lose his mind. After finishing sessions for the song "Fire" a Studio neared where brian was working, burnt down, and then another, and then another, and there were an unusual amount of fires in the area. Worried that he'd accidentaly created magic fire music, he shelved Fire, and wouldn't release the track in full until 2011.
The final nail in the coffin, was the departure of co-song writer Van Dyke Parks, after an argument with band member Mike Love about the lyrics for the song "Cabin Essence" and a record deal offer from Warner Bros. Van Dyke departed from the SMiLE Project, After this, Sessions for the album stopped, and the album was shelved.. BUT THEY STILL NEED AN ALBUM FOR 1967, so, with Brian's newly built Home Studio they took some of the smile tracks, and made a low-fidelity version of the album called "Smiley Smile". People were confused as this was a relatively weird album (and the SMiLE project was already weird) having songs that sounded like they only did one take and were lacking instrumental wise only having minimal percussion, a bass guitar, and a piano. As opposed to the smile sessions which had 40+ musicians at one time, after this SMiLE material would still appear on albums throughout the years (most notibly surf's up, which has a whole album named after it) but It wouldn't be until the 90s when we'd even think of SMiLE getting an offical release.
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