Search results
Aug 17, 2006 · The Sonics: “Strychnine” (1965) A song about drinking rat poison and liking it more than either water or wine. Garage-rock proto-punks the Sonics—without their raw fuzzed-buzz and Gerry ...
- Pitchfork
- Roger Miller – King of The Road
- Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames – Yeh, Yeh
- Jackie Wilson –
- Roy Orbison – Crying
- Russell Morris – The Real Thing
- Leonard Cohen – Suzanne
- Louis Armstrong – What A Wonderful World
- Tom Jones – It’S Not Unusual
- The Monkees – Daydream Believer
- Del Shannon – Runaway
Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” shines a light on the traveling man. The track, a delightful country-pop crossover, tells the story of a nomadic hobo, untethered from all obligations and material goods. The song’s most famous line, “I’m a man of means, by no means, king of the road” was bitingly cynical, reveling in the freedom of refusing to con...
Georgie Fame and his band, The Blue Flames, found the perfect intersection of pop, jazz, and R&B. Audiences agreed. The group’s version of “Yeh Yeh,” topped the Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” on the UK chart, ending a five-week run from the Liverpool chaps. Shortly after topping the UK charts, “Yeh, Yeh” reached #21 on the Billboard Pop charts, proving tha...
The instrumentation for Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” is as crisp as it gets. The bass sounds like it was recorded in a hermetically sealed vacuum, while the iconic conga groove pops without a crinkle or crack. All Wilson had to do was show up. And show up he did. The instrumental for the 1967 hit was written by G...
Roy Orbison had plenty of 60s hits to choose from, including “Oh, Pretty Woman” But we opted for “Crying,” which begins with a seminal line, familiar to those even who have never heard the song: “I was alright for a while, I could smile for a while.” The song is Orbison at his most vulnerable, admitting that the feelings hidden from a former partne...
Written by Johnny Young and produced by Ian “Molly” Meldrum, “The Real Thing” was initially envisioned as a soft-rock ballad in a similar vein as The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.” But the demo was superseded by Meldrum’s expansive vision, and “The Real Thing” became one of the first studio masterpieces of the modern era. Alongside engineer ...
Leonard Cohen drew a throughline straight from poetry to folk music. “Suzanne,” his stirring acoustic track from Songs of Leonard Cohen is one of the most powerful examples of this style, with Cohen’s lyrics first appearing as a poem in 1966. (Cohen ripped the poem for a second use because he was short of material for his forthcoming album.) The so...
“What a Wonderful World” is a lesson in perseverance. It’s also one of the best pop ballads ever recorded. Armstrongfirst started making records in 1923, but it was in February of 1968, when Amstrong was 66, that he released “What A Wonderful World,” which would become the biggest-selling song of his massively influential career. Armstrong made mus...
It’s hard to believe now, but Tom Jones was deemed far too sexy for the BBC when he first arrived in the 60s with this song. As such, it was the efforts of pirate radio station Radio Caroline that drove the initial success of Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual.” The upbeat tale of heartbreak was Jones’s second single for Decca Records and his first No.1. Ru...
John Stewart wrote “Daydream Believer” shortly before he left the Kingston Trio, the third track in a trilogy aimed at capturing the malaise and boredom of suburban life. In that respect, he was an innovator, bringing life to the lifeless suburbs in a cry for help – or, at least, a helicopter back to the city. The song was turned down by both We Fi...
“Runaway” almost never happened. Back in 1960, Charles Westover and keyboard player Max Crook earned a recording contract. The recording contract ended disastrously. Perhaps it was another tale of small-town kids intimidated by the Big Apple, but Crook and Westover (who had recently taken on the stage name Del Shannon) failed to impress the bosses ...
Apr 24, 2024 · Top 1960s Pop Songs. 1. The Beatles – “Hey Jude” (1968) “No discussion of 1960s pop music is complete without mentioning The Beatles,” is a statement that rings true to this day. “Hey Jude” stands as a testament to the band’s songwriting prowess and enduring appeal. Its uplifting melody, extended length, and anthemic sing-along ...
People also ask
What music styles were popular in the 1960s?
Who was the most popular music artist of the 1960s?
What was the most popular song in the 60s?
What was rock and roll like in the 1960s?
Aug 15, 2022 · The cultural clash of old and new philosophies created a music scene in an explosive decade that informed so many genres that we celebrate today. In this Top 50 Songs of the 1960s article, I cover the decade’s greatest songs, taking into consideration a few key ranking factors: The song’s power in capturing the culture of the 1960s.
Who was the most popular music artist in the 1960s? Determining the most popular music artist of the 1960s is challenging due to the era’s rich musical diversity. However, The Beatles are arguably the most influential 1960s music artists with unparalleled global impact. Their innovative approach to music and massive fan base position them at ...
From a classical point of view, the 1960s were also an important decade as they saw the development of electronic, experimental, jazz and contemporary classical music, notably minimalism and free improvisation. [9] In Asia, various trends marked the popular music of the 1960s. In Japan, the decade saw the rise in popularity of several Western ...
1960s: MusicThe 1960s saw a real flowering of popular music styles. Unlike the 1950s, in which the birth of rock and roll dominated the decade, jazz, pop, and folk music all gathered devoted listeners in the 1960s. Rock and roll continued to grow as a musical form, with a clear split between "hard," rebellious rock and lighter, "soft" rock ...
