"Brian Wilson is a genius" is a line that became part of a media campaign spearheaded in 1966 by the Beatles' former press officer Derek Taylor, who was then employed as the Beach Boys' publicist. Although there are earlier documented expressions of the statement, Taylor frequently called Brian Wilson a "genius" – a belief Taylor sincerely held – as part of an effort to rebrand the Beach Boys and further legitimize Wilson as a serious artist on a par with the Beatles and Bob Dylan.

With the aid of numerous associates in the music industry, Taylor's promotional efforts were integral to the success of the band's 1966 album Pet Sounds in England. By the end of the year, an NME reader's poll placed Wilson as the fourth-ranked "World Music Personality"—about 1,000 votes ahead of Bob Dylan and 500 behind John Lennon. However, the hype generated for the group's intended follow-up album, Smile, bore a number of unintended consequences for the Beach Boys' reputation and internal dynamic. Wilson ultimately scrapped Smile and reduced his involvement with the group.

Wilson later said that the "genius" branding intensified the pressures of his career and led him to become "a victim of the recording industry". As he shied away from the industry in the years afterward, his ensuing legend originated the trope of the "reclusive genius" among studio-oriented musical artists and later inspired comparisons to other musicians such as Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett and My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields.

Brian Wilson wrote the majority of the Beach Boys' hits and was one of the first recording artists allowed to act as an entrepreneurial producer, a position he attained thanks to his immediate success with the band after their signing to Capitol Records in 1962. Wilson's talents inspired a number of Los Angeles music industry figures to refer to him as a genius. By early 1966, he wanted to move the group beyond their surf and hot rod aesthetic, an image that he believed was outdated and distracting the public from his talents as a producer and songwriter. In Mike Love's description, Wilson sought recognition from the countercultural tastemakers, or the "hip intelligentsia". Wilson later reflected that "legends grew about ... our music ... and I was getting fascinated with the fact that I was becoming famous and there was an interest in my style of life."

In the meantime, the Beatles' former press agent Derek Taylor had left the UK and moved to California, where he started his own public relations company. By 1966, he had quickly assimilated into what was then an expanding coterie of Wilson's worldly-minded friends, musicians, mystics, and business advisers. In the description of music journalist Nick Kent, "Derek Taylor was at that time the single most prestigious figure with whom to have one's name linked in matters of promotion. ... he knew the Beatles and had actually worked with them and Brian Epstein. There could be no more spectacular recommendation."

Van Dyke Parks, Wilson's lyricist at the time, claimed to have introduced Taylor to Wilson, while biographer David Leaf wrote that it was Bruce Johnston who "set up a meeting for Derek with Brian." The Beach Boys began employing Taylor as their publicist in March 1966, two months before the release of their album Pet Sounds, with the group paying him a salary of $750 a month (equivalent to $7,440 in 2025). According to Carl Wilson, although the band were aware that trends and the music industry were shifting, "Capitol had a very set picture of us", and the band were unhappy with the way the label promoted them circa Pet Sounds.

According to Taylor, the "genius" promotion came from Brian discussing how "he thought he was better than most other people believed him to be". Taylor recalled one conversation with Brian and Dennis Wilson in which the brothers denied ever writing "surf music or songs about cars or that the Beach Boys had been involved in any way with the surf and drag fads ... they would not concede." In Taylor's view, the Beach Boys' clean-cut "all-American" image, instigated by former manager and the Wilsons' father Murry, had "done them a hell of a lot of damage. Brian, in particular, suffered." He said that the prevailing attitude was that "Brian Wilson was not supposed to be strange", even though that quality was seen as normal for Hollywood people.

Absolutely, Brian Wilson is certainly a genius. It was something I felt had to be established. ... despite his strangeness, how could you deny him when he was creating [songs like] "Surf's Up"?