In December 2019, as part of their annual
copyright extension releases,
Capitol and
UMG issued ''1969: I'm Going Your Way
, an EP that consisted of three unreleased tracks drawn from the Sunflower'' sessions: "I'm Going Your Way", "
Slip On Through" (an alternate version), and "
Carnival (Over the Waves)". Jardine and Johnston told fans that the EP may soon be followed with a more extensive release dedicated to
Sunflower and ''Surf's Up''. In February 2020, Linett stated that he hoped the set would be released in the autumn. "We're waiting on a release date. It's a large project, so it takes a bit of finesse to get it all done and approved, but we're still working on it." The set was reported complete in July. According to reporter Joel Goldenberg, many fans speculated that Mike Love was responsible for stalling the compilation, and petitions that called for its release were posted online. At the time, the band were in the process of selling a majority stake in their intellectual property to
Irving Azoff and his new company Iconic Artists Group. In November 2020, a Beach Boys entry titled
1970 Release was uploaded to
AllMusic's website containing 64 30-second samples of unreleased material and alternate mixes from the band's 1969 to 1970 period. The page was removed, although fans quickly reuploaded the samples to
YouTube. On November 22, Jardine stated that the
Feel Flows project currently had a tentative release date of May or June 2021. In March 2021, engineer
Stephen Desper reported that the release date had been scheduled for July 2021. Love confirmed that the set would be released "pretty soon". On June 2, 2021, the track listing leaked.
Feel Flows was officially announced the next day, with a release date of July 30. "Big Sur" was issued in various formats to commemorate the announcement. ==Critical reception==