The Beach Boys' 1968 album Stack-o-Tracks was an unusual release that stripped away the band's celebrated vocal harmonies, leaving only instrumental versions of 15 of their songs. Released on 19 August 1968 at the height of the band's ambition following Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations, it invited listeners to perform the songs themselves using an accompanying booklet of chords, bass lines and lyrics, a concept that closely resembles what later became known as karaoke, decades before the format existed commercially.

The album included backing tracks spanning early hits like In My Room and Little Saint Nick through to the then-recent single Do It Again, and became the first Beach Boys album to miss the US charts, a record it held until 1992. It was withdrawn from sale and swiftly followed by the more conventional 20/20 less than six months later, though a 1976 UK reissue found a new audience amid renewed interest in the band. Carl Wilson later said he liked stripping songs back to reveal "what was really behind" the vocals, and while the record did not invent karaoke, it is now seen as a remarkably early anticipation of it.