Word.ws English Dictionary

California Sound

California Sound proper noun: a popular music aesthetic engendered by 1960s pop and rock recording artists from the California area, associated with optimistic youth culture.

Proper noun (1)

the California Sound

  1. A popular music aesthetic engendered by 1960s pop and rock recording artists from the California area, associated with optimistic youth culture.
    • The Beach Boys struck gold with swoony choral harmonies, twangy surf-music guitars and beats cresting like waves on an eternally sunny Pacific shoreline: the “California sound”, as it was dubbed.2025 June 14, Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, “Obituary: Visionary who grew from Surfin’ to audacious experimenter”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 10

Proper noun (2) capitalized: California sound

the California sound

  1. Alternative letter-case form of California Sound.

Forms of California Sound

alternative formCalifornia sound

Questions about California Sound

What does California Sound mean?
California Sound means a popular music aesthetic engendered by 1960s pop and rock recording artists from the California area, associated with optimistic youth culture.
What part of speech is California Sound?
California Sound is a proper noun.

Words near California Sound in the dictionary

  1. California sea lions
  2. California sheephead
  3. California smoothtongue
  4. California smoothtongues
  5. California sober
  6. California Sound
  7. California Spangled Cat
  8. California Spangled Cats
  9. California State
  10. California stop
  11. California stops

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: California Sound (page history and authors); California sound (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “California Sound.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/california_sound. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.