The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s

It was the decade of Dylan and Aretha, the Beach Boys and the Beatles, Hendrix and Zeppelin. But that’s not all it was. The 1960s also included the slyly political pop of Brazil’s Os Mutantes, the early electronic experiments of Silver Apples, and the free jazz exhalations of Albert Ayler. It was a single-oriented era—a startlingly inventive period following the initial explosion of rock’n’roll but before the album became dominant—when entire new genres seemed to bubble up every few months. The ’60s marked a time when pop music became more than a teenage fad, turning into an important art form in its own right as it soundtracked the civil rights movement, the hippie heyday, and the Vietnam War.

In an effort to highlight less iconic artists and properly showcase the variety of sounds the ’60s had to offer, this list features no more than five entries by any given artist. These are the 200 songs that most resonate with a generation too young to have experienced the decade firsthand, but old enough to know it had more to offer than “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

The Kinks: “Sunny Afternoon” (1966)

While already rightly revered as bratty garage rockers by the time of this track’s release, the Kinks truly excelled when singer Ray Davies took a more observational, wry approach to songwriting—and “Sunny Afternoon” is one of his wriest on record. As the song’s ground-down, sadsack narrator, Davies sounds utterly exhausted by the task of telling his miserable tale, backed by a descending chromatic bassline that nearly flatlines by song’s end. –Adam Moerder

Listen: The Kinks: “Sunny Afternoon”

Nina Simone: “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” (1964)

The famous Celtic ballad begins with a lustful list of physical attributes—a true love’s hair, face, eyes, and hands—but Nina Simone’s voice is less than interested in the material world. She emits a spectral trill, as confident and crestfallen as a death-row inmate. Even the skeletal piano feels too heavy for Simone’s vaporous devotion. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: Nina Simone: “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair”

Dionne Warwick: “Walk on By” (1964)

People talk about “perfect pop” and I generally have no idea what they’re talking about. “Walk on By” is perfect pop, though, in the strictest sense: not a hair is out of place, no smudged eyeliner, nothing to taint its inherent loveliness. Any Bacharach/Warwick collaboration is a pick hit to click, but this is the most famous for a reason. Poised to the brink of formality, the song moves with the utterly unhurried grace of a woman in a ball gown. Perfect composure is one way to keep the tears inside, after all. –Jess Harvell

Listen: Dionne Warwick: “Walk on By”

Charles Mingus: “Solo Dancer” (1963)

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is regularly cited as a masterpiece of jazz orchestration, but that hardly accounts for the sheer fury of Mingus’ creativity. “Solo Dancer” is like a jazz diagram of the psyche or a chronology of the 20th century: a swarming assembly of neon alto, cracked trumpets, chromatic discord, and prolonged lyricism. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: Charles Mingus: “Solo Dancer”

Irma Thomas: “Time Is on My Side” (1964)

Though Thomas is widely acknowledged as the Soul Queen of Nola, I’ve always thought she never got a fair shake (e.g. neither “Ruler of My Heart” nor “Don’t Mess With My Man” made this list). The Rolling Stones eventually made this song a smash, but all they did was jack Thomas’ steez in full, changing nary a note, save one small thing: They could never belt like her. –Sean Fennessey

Listen: Irma Thomas: “Time Is on My Side”

James Brown: “Night Train (Live at the Apollo)” (1963)

Sure, the official version (released in 1962) moves and grooves just fine, especially with Brown doing double duty on the mic and on the drums. But compared to what’s on Live at the Apollo, it’s doing the standing still. On the greatest stage in the world, Mr. Star Time goes up and down the eastern seaboard in record time, shouting out the stops the train ain’t stopping at, while the band throws more and more coal into the engine. –David Raposa

Listen: James Brown: “Night Train (Live at the Apollo)”

The Foundations: “Build Me Up Buttercup” (1968)

This is the stuff mixtapes are made of: an infectiously catchy melody that sugarcoats a protagonist’s romantic plight, and lyrics that instantaneously connect with red-blooded love birds. The Foundations’ career may have burned short and hot, but their pop chops and puppy-dog pathos remain timeless. –Adam Moerder

Listen: The Foundations: “Build Me Up Buttercup”

Johnny and June Carter Cash: “Jackson” (1967)

About a haranguing wife that, in the fourth verse, transforms into a creature far more badass than her “big talkin’” husband, “Jackson” puts to song the time-honored tradition of doing crazy things to fix a crazy relationship. The story is almost as romantic as that of the two lovers who sing it. –Zach Baron

Listen: Johnny and June Carter Cash: “Jackson”

Alton Ellis: “I’m Still in Love With You” (1967)

With Alton Ellis crying eternal affection above a gentle, stuttering riddim, this is the perfect starry-eyed Jamaican wedding song, right? Not quite. "You don’t know how to love me, not even how to kiss me—I just don’t know why…" he sneaks in, slyly mixing tragedy in with the love-drunk refrain. Unrequited love has rarely seemed so tantalizing. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Alton Ellis: “I’m Still in Love With You”

The Cannonball Adderley Quintet: “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” (1966)

It wasn’t really recorded at “The Club”—that was just a trick to get some publicity for a new venue on Chicago’s South Side. Instead, Adderley got some friends together in the studio and plied them with drinks while the band cut this bit of surging, euphoric gospel. Every whoop, though, is true and from the heart. –Mark Richardson

Listen: The Cannonball Adderley Quintet: “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”

Leonard Cohen: “So Long, Marianne” (1968)

“So Long, Marianne”’s acoustic strum and weepy concertina crank up once Cohen weighs his conflicting desires for shelter and freedom, establishing a recursive loop of lamentation and joy. Love is a filament of web binding him to a ledge—stronger than its fragile appearance would imply; it’s easier stretched than severed. –Brian Howe

Listen: Leonard Cohen: “So Long, Marianne”

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 Roslie’s roll’n’roll howl—played rock that couldn’t help but shock and awe. –Zach Baron

Listen: The Sonics: “Strychnine”

Tyrannosaurus Rex: “Debora” (1968)

Pre-glam, pre–T. Rex Marc Bolan recorded this hand-drummed Lord of the Rings Brit folk spasmodica. Among other things, it’s another great example of Bolan’s unmistakable influence on Devendra Banhart and the Hairy Fairy crew. The jumpy verbal string of “Dug a re dug n dug a re dug re dug” and lines like “O Debora, always dress like a conjurer/It’s fine to see your young face hiding/’Neath the stallion that I’m riding” confirm why Bolan named his book of poetry a very Danzig-sounding The Warlock of Love. But really, he’s Donovan with chops. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: Tyrannosaurus Rex: “Debora”

The Walker Brothers: “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” (1966)

Before Scott Walker was a shivery avant-gardist, he was a shivery crooner pinup, and this spaghetti Western anthem was his band’s biggest hit. Like the Righteous Brothers by way of the Free Design and Ennio Morricone, this was light years away from his current coordinates, but no less cinematic. –Mark Pytlik

Listen: The Walker Brothers: “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”

The Hollies: “Bus Stop” (1966)

Never mind that “Bus Stop” evokes a gentler counterculture in which the youth of the nation enacted mating rituals—attraction, pairing, commitment—underneath a pedestrian umbrella. From the first sprinkles of acoustic guitar to the stormcloud minor chords, from the desperate harmonies of the chorus to the sweet idea of falling in love out of the rain, this Hollies hit is all hook. –Stephen M. Deusner

Listen: The Hollies: “Bus Stop”

The Temptations: “Get Ready” (1966)

On the verses, “Get Ready” is a tense and unforgiving stomper, but the chorus turns the song into a sweeping drama, a transcendent whoop of joy—and throughout it all, Eddie Kendricks’ angelic falsetto floats overhead like a balloon caught in a gust of wind. –Tom Breihan

Listen: The Temptations: “Get Ready”

James Brown: “Mother Popcorn (You Got to Have a Mother for Me)” (1969)

No words can describe this song’s throbbing physicality better than the singer’s own “Jump back baby, James Brown’s gonna do his thing.” That “thing” involves a hysterical performance that switches from a sexualized grunt to a bizarre, high-pitched whine without warning. And with a horn chart snaking around a squirmy guitar line, Brown’s band does its thing, too. –Stephen M. Deusner

Listen: James Brown: “Mother Popcorn (You Got to Have a Mother for Me)”

Bobby Darin: “Beyond the Sea” (1960)

The aural definition of “wistful,” the lyrics to “Beyond the Sea” scan as if there should be doubt that the song’s distant lovers will meet again. In his reading of the song, Darin doesn’t sound so sure; even when his band gets raucous, he sits it out and comes back as melancholy as ever. –Joe Tangari

Listen: Bobby Darin: “Beyond the Sea”

Patsy Cline: “She’s Got You” (1962)

Money can’t buy love, but roving hands can steal it, and on this countrypolitan waltz, Cline sounds irrevocably bereaved, running through possessions she has, and the precious one that no longer belongs to her. I think there’s a piano in my beer. –Marc Hogan

Listen: Patsy Cline: “She’s Got You”

France Gall: “Laisse Tomber les Filles” (1964)

In 1964, Gall was a 17-year-old ingénue, but her mentor—a promising 36-year-old lecher named Serge Gainsbourg—turned garish jailbait euphemisms into an art form. Accompanied by swooning trumpets and speakeasy bass, Gall makes her way through a tawdry jukebox-slapping cabaret populated by alcoholics and nymphettes. If pop music is supposed to combine virginity and carnality, “Laisse Tomber les Filles” might well be the pinnacle of yé-yé ecstasy. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: France Gall: “Laisse Tomber les Filles”

The Barbarians: “Moulty” (1965)

This song is best known for being the inspirational tale of the band’s hook-handed drummer, but I’ll put up the chorus of “Moulty” against any other from the decade—“Louie Louie,” “Mony Mony,” anything—as being the biggest, loudest, and most unintelligible, made all the more dynamically triumphant by the aw-shucks verses. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: The Barbarians: “Moulty”

Bembeya Jazz National: “Armée Guinéenne” (1969)

Updating an old folk song honoring warriors and dedicating it to Guinea’s then-fledgling armed forces, Bembeya Jazz created a hypnotic masterpiece. Balafon and percussion underpin Cuban-influenced horns and vocals, but Sekou Diabate’s lead guitar steals the show as the fluid lifeblood of the song. –Joe Tangari

Listen: Bembeya Jazz National: “Armée Guinéenne”

Otis Redding: “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)” (1965)

Few performer/musician combos have enjoyed better, tighter dynamics than the ones forged between Redding and the Stax house band. The players follow his lead at every note, offsetting his soul-wrenching performance with austere horn ascensions and demonstrative punches. Redding makes the climax massive, but the band downplays it sweetly, internalizing his proclamation and making it an intimate exchange as much between the singer and band as between a man and a woman. –Stephen M. Deusner

Listen: Otis Redding: “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)”

The Tammys: “Egyptian Shumba” (1963)

It’s not just that this girl group’s gone wilder than any garage band on the list—it’s that they’re possessed. The Tammys bop hard and bratty, but by the chorus they’re literally growling, barking, and squealing like sexed-up hyenas; in the bridge you can hear them shudder and jerk their way into a frenzy. It’s their party and they’ll scream if they want to. –Nitsuh Abebe

Listen: The Tammys: “Egyptian Shumba”

MC5: “Kick Out the Jams” (1969)

This one’s a classic before it even starts, thanks to Rob Tyner’s still-startling introduction (take the title, add “muthafuckahhhs!”). Though punk more in intent (“Let me be who I am!”) than action (essentially, post-Who/Jimi Hendrix blooze-rock, but sloppier), this remains an eternal rallying cry for anarchy in the USA. –Stuart Berman

Listen: MC5: “Kick Out the Jams”

Loretta Lynn: “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” (1967)

Loretta Lynn hates drunk sex (or something). Loves the Iraq War, though. She said as much at a pre–Jack White Taste of Chicago. But “Liquor and love, they just don’t mix,” teases Lynn on 1967’s “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’”, with honky-tonk pedal steel and juke-joint piano. See, lady is crazy! –Marc Hogan

Listen: Loretta Lynn: “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)”

Darlene Love: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” (1963)

Love’s woe-steeped holiday ballad is the best Xmas present Phil Spector ever gave. The track features all of the producer’s trademarks and his dense arrangement provides the perfect backdrop for Love’s rich voice, making it easy to understand why this has become an integral part of the Christmas music canon. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: Darlene Love: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”

Phil Ochs: “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” (1965)

Of all the protest songs Ochs penned, “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” is the strongest. Ochs’ narrow tenor and staccato guitar propel this anthem about a soldier who up and stops killing. It’s an urgent rebuke against the war in Vietnam, but Ochs also takes the high road: He doesn’t rip into the old men who start the wars that get young men killed—he just puts down his gun and walks away. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: Phil Ochs: “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”

Archie Bell & the Drells: “Here I Go Again” (1969)

Whether it be “Tighten Up,” “I Can’t Stop Dancing,” “Dancing to Your Music,” “Dance Your Troubles Away,” or “Dancin’ Man,” these dudes sure liked to dance. But with this Gamble & Huff swift-string strut, Bell and Co. took on a different kind of hustle. “I should have learned my lesson, you hurt me before/But every time I see ya, I keep running back for more,” blows Bell, breaking down romance’s inexplicable two-step with a purposeful stride. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Archie Bell & the Drells: “Here I Go Again”

Neil Diamond: “Sweet Caroline” (1969)

When I was little, my best friend’s mom—who’d seen Neil Diamond in concert a dozen times—told me he had “a nice tush.” It was a strange moment—almost traumatic. I was just a kid for chrissakes, and this was an authority figure. But Neil had that kind of power over women and this single is one reason why. It also explains why 12 Songs was a bad idea. –Mark Richardson

Listen: Neil Diamond: “Sweet Caroline”

Françoise Hardy: “Tous Les Garcons et Les Filles” (1964)

The beat sways, Hardy sings, you swoon. The space between the guitar, bass, drums, and vocals—and that’s all there is on this song—is palpable, and Hardy’s vocal is a nonchalantly solitary midnight waltz through swinging Paris. Makes me want to learn French. –Joe Tangari

Listen: Françoise Hardy: “Tous Les Garcons et Les Filles”

Stevie Wonder: “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” (1966)

After two years without a major hit—an eternity in the Motown days—and with his voice making the troublesome transition from “Little” to big, 15-year-old Stevie Wonder (with help from a cavalcade of horns) literally laughs through his woes on this No. 3 smash. It’s all in this rich girl/poor boy tale: the freakish optimism, opulent funk, and sneaky sociology. Here, the full breadth of Wonder’s talent starts to come into full view. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Stevie Wonder: “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”

Albert Ayler: “Ghosts” (1964)

Ayler first recorded his signature piece “Ghosts” in 1964, and it eventually became his most frequently played composition. The shortened version that appears on his 1967 Impulse album Love Cry is perhaps the purest distillation of Ayler’s ecstatic marching-band mode, as he and his brother Donald volley the theme’s simple fanfare back and forth with a joyous, Pentecostal fervor. –Matthew Murphy

Listen: Albert Ayler: “Ghosts”

Stone Poneys: “Different Drum” (1967)

It’s not you, it’s Linda Rondstadt. Only in her 1967 Stone Poneys version of Monkees guitarist Mike Nesmith’s “Different Drum”, the country-pop diva would never put it so blandly. “I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty/All I’m sayin’ is I’m not ready,” she avers, standing proud with Nashville strings and “In My Life”–like harpsichord. So… can we stay friends? –Marc Hogan

Listen: Stone Poneys: “Different Drum”

The Flirtations: “Nothing But a Heartache” (1969)

This is girl-group pop with all the swoony drama that the genre demanded, but it’s also tense and brittle: The horn stabs and string whooshes anticipate the funk and disco that were in their embryonic stages in 1969, and the group sings about heartache like they’re sharpening their teeth. Northern Soul kids picked up on this one for very good reasons. –Tom Breihan

Listen: The Flirtations: “Nothing But a Heartache”

The Monks: “Monk Time” (1966)

It’s beat time, it’s hop time, it’s Monk time! It’s American punk GIs in Germany destroying everything in sight with overdriven organ, guitar feedback, and electrified banjo. This was not your rank-and-file Army beat group, raging against Vietnam, the Bomb, and complacency. –Joe Tangari

Listen: The Monks: “Monk Time”

Frank Sinatra: “It Was a Very Good Year” (1965)

Frank walks the same balancing act as Jay-Z, somehow pulling off the aging Don Juan character and even making himself sympathetic. Strings weep and oboes hum while Sinatra looks back on all the girls he’s fucked with a fond, eloquent melancholy, never dropping his swagger but still letting weariness seep in. Masterful. –Tom Breihan

Listen: Frank Sinatra: “It Was a Very Good Year”

Cromagnon: “Caledonia” (1969)

A stately funereal march for a whole army of whispering maniacs, “Caledonia”—with its pre-industrial stomp and pre-modern bagpipery—evokes nothing so much as the distant and terrifying future. Like pretty much everything else on the ESP-Disk label, Cromagnon made songs so far ahead of their time we’ve yet to catch up. –Zach Baron

Listen: Cromagnon: “Caledonia”

The Who: “I Can See For Miles” (1967)

At the time of this song’s release, the Who weren’t pleased with its chart success—it only reached No. 10 in the UK. But while it found them stretching out a bit, it’s really classic Who, with loose, airy verses, tight, catchy choruses, and plenty of wailing from both Pete Townshend and Keith Moon. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: The Who: “I Can See For Miles”

The Zombies: “She’s Not There” (1964)

It’s counterintuitively groovy, with its minor-key darkness and halting drum part, but “She’s Not There” is as arresting and mysterious as the girl it describes. Singer Colin Blunstone exudes cool on the verses, obeys the frenzy of the chorus, and lets Rod Argent unload on one of rock’s best electric piano solos. –Joe Tangari

Listen: The Zombies: “She’s Not There”

Os Mutantes: “A Minha Menina” (1968)

In 1968 Brazil, it constituted a political statement for Os Mutantes to perform their brash and radical form of Tropicália. But you’d never guess it from the playful, sunny bounce of “A Minha Menina,” which combines propulsive Latin rhythms, delirious doo-wop choruses, and trebly fuzz guitar to frame a near-perfect slice of carefree boy-meets-girl pop. –Matthew Murphy

Listen: Os Mutantes: “A Minha Menina”

Pink Floyd: “Astronomy Domine” (1967)

In a pre–Dark Side of the Moon world, “Astronomy Domine” was Pink Floyd’s calling card, single-handedly generating every space-rock cliché and exposing rock’s true psychedelic potential. Forget Jerry Garcia and Jefferson Airplane: According to Syd Barrett’s brilliantly warped songwriting, mind expansion and intergalactic research could only be conducted through NASA morse code, academic electronics, time-rippling guitar echoes, and tabernacle vocals about Saturnian staircases. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: Pink Floyd: “Astronomy Domine”

P.P. Arnold: “The First Cut Is the Deepest” (1967)

Everyone from Rod Stewart to Sheryl Crow has covered this Cat Stevens–penned number, but no one has owned it like Arnold, whose delivery suggests a lively mix of brassy self-possession and courageous vulnerability. Her devastating interpretation outshines the fussily Spector-ian orchestration, making the song a massive monument to a profoundly broken heart. –Stephen M. Deusner

Listen: P.P. Arnold: “The First Cut Is the Deepest”

Aretha Franklin: “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” (1967)

Fuck Dr. Phil. Fuck Oprah. Fuck “Lovelines” and Dr. Drew. The blueprint to how to treat a woman is delivered by the woman with the voice we all want to educate us. Aretha opens plainly with “Take me to heart and I’ll always love you.” Is there any better way to explain this? –Sean Fennessey

Listen: Aretha Franklin: “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man”

Loretta Lynn: “Fist City” (1968)

The greatest catfight song of all time would be just another sad attempt by a done-wrong woman to stick up for her no-good man if it wasn’t for the vicious glee with which Lynn delivers her threats. It’s almost as if she encourages him to cheat, just so she can get off on beating up the bitch afterward. –Amy Phillips

Listen: Loretta Lynn: “Fist City”

Creedence Clearwater Revival: “Bad Moon Rising” (1969)

“Bad Moon Rising” remains the apotheosis of midnight dread: sly rockabilly, cheery resignation, and stab-your-friends paranoia. For all of Fogerty’s lyrical simplicity (“I hear the voice of rage and ruin”), he manages to unite Cambodian monsoons, tear-gassed riots, postdiluvian Apollo missions, and bayou homicide under one ominous eclipse. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: Creedence Clearwater Revival: “Bad Moon Rising”

The Kingsmen: “Louie Louie” (1963)

You can blear the words and miss your cues. You can play it in a marching band, with the tubas bobbing up and down, farting the hook. You can even, like radio station KFJC, spin 823 different versions by different bands for a straight 63 hours. Go ahead, try anything—because you can’t fuck up “Louie, Louie.” –Chris Dahlen

Listen: The Kingsmen: “Louie Louie”

Lorraine Ellison: “Stay With Me” (1969)

“Stay With Me” starts with a slow-rotating piano line and a whisper-coo vocal, before it wells up and explodes into one of the great scenery-chewing choruses of all time. An orchestra drops bombs, and Ellison’s voice abandons all restraint, clawing and rasping and howling at the man who’s about to leave her. –Tom Breihan

Listen: Lorraine Ellison: “Stay With Me”

The Association: “Never My Love” (1967)

While the Association’s happy-together harmonies might make them seem like just another chirpy pop group aching to be hoisted upon Charles Manson’s petard, there’s a wispy melancholy to “Never My Love” that lifts it above the rabble. This reassuring affirmation of amour is a California dream that knows the alarm could go off at any time, which, in a world of silly love songs, makes all the difference. –David Raposa

Listen: The Association: “Never My Love”

David Axelrod: “The Human Abstract” (1969)

This is the kind of primary-source material that lets DJ Shadow records get described as “cinematic”—a bottomless piano figure that ramps up through funk bass, guitar shards, and what we’d now call “breakbeats” to hit a string-drenched climax. This, you know, is the kind of stuff the cool kids listened to. –Nitsuh Abebe

Listen: David Axelrod: “The Human Abstract”

Bob Dylan: “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” (1965)

In many respects, “It’s Alright, Ma” was Dylan’s last word on overt protest music, and he channeled this comprehensive social diatribe with such otherworldly fury that it seemed to awe even himself. “I don’t know how I got to write those songs,” he told Ed Bradley in a 2004 “60 Minutes” interview. “Try and sit down and write something like that.” –Matthew Murphy

Listen: Bob Dylan: “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding”

Archie Bell & the Drells: “Tighten Up” (1968)

Prozac on wax—one of the simplest, most joyous soul-shouting dance numbers of the decade, built on the only chords that matter. The Drells send their major sevenths strutting and scratching back and forth like they know they’ve found the perfect groove, and the whole thing just beams; you’d be hard pressed to find someone who can hear it without smiling back. –Nitsuh Abebe

Listen: Archie Bell & the Drells: “Tighten Up”

The Velvet Underground: “Sister Ray” (1967)

It may clock in at 17 minutes, but “Sister Ray” is rock’n’roll debased to it purest, most puerile form: blow jobs, smack, and a ceaseless riff that sounds like “96 Tears” getting cooked in a spoon. Some 26 years later, Jon Spencer would claim, “My father was Sister Ray!” He’s just one of a million garage-rock deviants with a claim to child support. –Stuart Berman

Listen: The Velvet Underground: “Sister Ray”

Nina Simone: “Sinnerman” (1964)

It’s the end of the world and whoever sings this spiritual is trying to find a way out. Simone, raised in church, understands the scriptural underpinnings and sounds like she’s riding her piano into town with a column of flame trailing 10 feet behind her. “Urgent” doesn’t begin to describe it. –Mark Richardson

Listen: Nina Simone: “Sinnerman”

Terry Riley: “In C” (1968)

Where Steve Reich’s 1974 modern classical piece “Music for 18 Musicians” throws up a wall of sound that even a packing Phil Spector would have trouble penetrating, Terry Riley’s “In C” hangs like a beaded curtain. Here, minimalism isn’t some totalizing force but a loose scrim dividing sound from silence, music from chaos, and chance from design, as the players attack cell-based arrangements like tipsy bingo players throwing chips to the wind. –Philip Sherburne

Listen: Terry Riley: “In C”

Tammy Wynette: “Stand by Your Man” (1968)

Listening to Tammy Wynette’s hit song now, it’s tough to decide who’s being insulted more—the wife who should forgive her philandering husband, or the husband who, being “just a man,” apparently can’t keep his libido in check. Regardless, the track’s hallmarks—swinging rhythm, teary steel guitar, and aching vocals—are definitive, making it one of the most popular and best-loved songs country music has yet produced. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: Tammy Wynette: “Stand by Your Man”

Bobbie Gentry: “Ode to Billie Joe” (1967)

Our “Law & Order”–corroded minds can all-too-easily guess what the singer and Billie Joe tossed off the bridge that night, but this Southern Gothic story-song is still a creeping horror for the way Gentry teases out each character’s reactions to a tragedy—and for the dread that sinks in with every revelation. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: Bobbie Gentry: “Ode to Billie Joe”

Scott Walker: “Big Louise” (1969)

With his trembling baritone croon and God’s string section by his side, Scott Walker skillfully straddles the line between true pathos and nauseating bathos. With the weight he imparts to lyrics that are both clumsy scraps of poesy and poignant images (“She’s a haunted house/And her windows are broken”), it doesn’t matter if the song is about an aging prostitute or his favorite soup spoon—he sings this sad tale as if it’s escaping upon his very last breath. –David Raposa

Listen: Scott Walker: “Big Louise”

Procol Harum: “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (1967)

This song, given a bit more than its fair share of exposure via high school dances and movie previews, is nevertheless a pristine example of how far a great melody and chord progression will take you. It doesn’t matter that it’s a Bach rip, or that nobody really knows what Gary Brooker is singing about. –Dominique Leone

Listen: Procol Harum: “A Whiter Shade of Pale”

The Supremes: “Baby Love” (1964)

The four-bar intro, the ponying piano rhythms, a young Diana Ross’ naifish vocals, the sugary vocal callbacks, the key change; simple economy of songwriting was one of Motown’s defining characteristics, but few tracks from the label’s golden era came as perfectly packaged as this one. –Mark Pytlik

Listen: The Supremes: “Baby Love”

Donovan: “Season of the Witch” (1966)

Better known as a dippy, soft-spoken mystic, Donovan’s claws came out for “Season of the Witch.” This psych-pop seether indicts the singer’s own folkie utopia (“Beatniks are out to make it rich,” he growls) with toothy licks and an organ sheen that may or may not have been courtesy of Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. –Brian Howe

Listen: Donovan: “Season of the Witch”

The Impressions: “People Get Ready” (1965)

This song’s sense of strained optimism, of hope in the face of overwhelming sadness, is almost impossibly gorgeous. Everything floats: Curtis Mayfield’s coo, the bluesy guitar, the lighter-than-air strings. When I die and I’m walking toward a faraway glimmer of light, I want this to be the soundtrack. –Tom Breihan

Listen: The Impressions: “People Get Ready”

The Righteous Brothers: “Unchained Melody” (1968)

“Unchained Melody” is an unparalled slow dance song. It keeps turning and unfolding, like an endless, ever-growing love... and yeah, it’s sappy, and deathly sincere. But it’s also stately, and undeniable. Like a great bridge that’s been shot in front of too many sunsets, it can still get to you—depending on your date. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: The Righteous Brothers: “Unchained Melody”

The Dixie Cups: “Iko Iko” (1965)

Part schoolyard taunt, part Mardi Gras chant, part found-sound experiment, “Iko Iko” was allegedly born when New Orleans’ Dixie Cups started singing a hometown melody during downtime in the studio, accompanying themselves by hitting an ashtray, a bottle, and a chair for percussion. Not until the reign of the Neptunes would anything this weirdly minimal again reach the top of the charts. –Amy Phillips

Listen: The Dixie Cups: “Iko Iko”

Jimi Hendrix: “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” (1968)

The stock of the Legendary Rock Titans is taking a dip as idols of the 1960s are replaced on classic rock radio playlists by various Sammy Hagar projects, but I refuse to live in a world where “Voodoo Child” is left behind. This rocks God even when He’s playing hard to get. –Dominique Leone

Listen: Jimi Hendrix: “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”

The Kinks: “Shangri-La” (1969)

“Shangri-La” makes the quotidian epic, blowing up the fireside rocking chair ride of the pensioner and the commute of the indebted laborer into a cinemascope portrait of the British middle class. It’s not all tea and sympathy: Check the charging middle eight, as vicious a smackdown of the complacent life as any. –Joe Tangari

Listen: The Kinks: “Shangri-La”

Brian Wilson: “Surf’s Up (solo piano version)” (1966)

The lonely boy in his room finally gets the baroque and puzzling lyrics his most complex music deserves. For all the Phil Spector worship and industry cash lavished on fireman’s hats—and once you get past the cutesy intro—“Surf’s Up” shows all Brian needed was a piano to knock you on your can. –Mark Richardson

Listen: Brian Wilson: “Surf’s Up (solo piano version)”

The Monkees: “I’m a Believer” (1966)

With some of the most recognizable opening notes in pop music, this Neil Diamond–penned gem showcases everything the Monkees had to offer: The melody is infectious, the chorus begs for a sing-along, and by the end, Mickey Dolenz’ vocals are as impassioned as anyone’s. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: The Monkees: “I’m a Believer”

Louis Armstrong: “What a Wonderful World” (1968)

There’s a battle in here. Without that C# major chord—the one that hits on “and I think to myself”—you might never know it. But in that teetering moment before the chord’s resolution, “What a Wonderful World” makes a subtle heartbreaking gesture to all the darkness rapping at its door (bigotry, weariness, defeat), in turn making it just hard enough for you, the listener, to entirely dismiss its optimism, at which moment the battle becomes yours. –Mark Pytlik

Listen: Louis Armstrong: “What a Wonderful World”

The Byrds: “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” (1965)

Of all the songwriters who rose with the Byrds—Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Gram Parsons—Gene Clark is the least decorated. But that’s OK—in just 2:35 he basically invents modern power-pop, showing a generation of underdogs (from Big Star to Tom Petty to Teenage Fanclub) how to hide their spite in a joyous, jangly Rickenbacker chord. –Stuart Berman

Listen: The Byrds: “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”

John Coltrane: “My Favorite Things” (1960)

John Coltrane never stopped finding new things in this song. By Live in Japan it was going on for an hour with blistering solos that could peel paint. But this first take is delicate and lyrical, soft but never frail. And the key change after the chorus is among the most joyous sounds in recorded music. –Mark Richardson

Listen: John Coltrane: “My Favorite Things”

Harry Nilsson: “Everybody’s Talkin’” (1968)

It’s still shocking to me that Nilsson didn’t write the harrowing “Everybody’s Talkin.’” A notoriously conflicted guy, Nilsson recorded the Fred Neil song for his 1968 album Aerial Ballet, but it didn’t blow until it became the theme for the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. It remains one of the truest recordings of emotional distress ever recorded. Too bad Forrest Gump screwed it up for everyone. –Sean Fennessey

Listen: Harry Nilsson: “Everybody’s Talkin’”

Buffalo Springfield: “For What It’s Worth” (1967)

Originally a Stephen Stills track about a club closing in West Hollywood, “For What It’s Worth”—like Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”—ended up more symbol than song. Neil Young’s insistent, single-note echoes are the sound of a conflict begun; the sides are forgotten—only the flavor of dissatisfaction and dissent remains. –Zach Baron

Listen: Buffalo Springfield: “For What It’s Worth”

George Jones: “She Thinks I Still Care” (1962)

Elvis Presley and the Flying Burrito Brothers have recorded this masterpiece of self-delusion, but it forever belongs to Jones. Not only is he able to wring out every drop of sad-sack pathos but he’s able to do so with enough natural charisma for listeners to fully sympathize with the song’s vaguely creepy proto-stalker narrator. –Matthew Murphy

Listen: George Jones: “She Thinks I Still Care”

Led Zeppelin: “What Is and What Should Never Be” (1969)

Skip the circular medieval hippie-isms, the coital dynamics, the pinging flytrap slide solo, and Plant’s underwater sound effects for a moment. Skip to the 3:33 mark, right when it seems about to disembark. At that exact point, just try not to flail off Page’s staccato sucker punch. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Led Zeppelin: “What Is and What Should Never Be”

Miles Davis: “Shhh/Peaceful” (1969)

From Davis’ cosmic In a Silent Way, “Shhh/Peaceful” forecasted a time when only the blur of motion and pulsating waves of rhythm could describe what was happening outside one’s window (or through one’s monitor). Musically, it’s colored with blue ambience and the electric ghosts of drone. But is it jazz? Nobody cares. –Dominique Leone

Listen: Miles Davis: “Shhh/Peaceful”

The Velvet Underground: “Venus in Furs” (1967)

John Cale’s screechy viola buzzes like a beeline through trebled guitars and Maureen Tucker’s slow-plod drums. Lou Reed’s lyrics reference Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 19th century novel, Venus in Furs, in language and imagery that matches (and then laps) that book’s late-romanticism: “Whiplash girl child in the dark/Clubs and bells, your servant, don’t forsake him/Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart.” The sound is lusciously decadent. The march itself feels so perversely languorous—a parade for fur-wearing women and those who desire to submit to them. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: The Velvet Underground: “Venus in Furs”

The Supremes: “I Hear a Symphony” (1965)

You can’t blame Holland-Dozier-Holland if this sounds like “Where Did Our Love Go?”—after a rare lackluster performance by a Supremes single, Berry Gordy released an inter-Motown memo telling his staff that this group will release nothing less than No. 1 singles. In response, one of the greatest songwriting teams in American history wrote a soaring anthem that encapsulated the greatness of their entire body of work within one perfect three-minute single that, naturally, reached the top of the charts.  –David Raposa

Listen: The Supremes: “I Hear a Symphony”

Patsy Cline: “I Fall to Pieces” (1961)

Patsy Cline had a “one of the guys” reputation—she supposedly could drink, cuss, and fight with the best of them. You’d never know it from this weepy pop-country gem. Of strong personal significance for Cline, “I Fall to Pieces” allowed her to break through on her own terms; the walking bass, dry snare, and vocal harmonies were the perfect backdrop for a booming voice that was best heard on heartbreakers. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: Patsy Cline: “I Fall to Pieces”

Glen Campbell: “Wichita Lineman” (1968)

Campbell’s 1968 hit, penned by Jimmy Webb, helped define his career with its slick production and strong melody. The underlying sadness in his smooth vocals was pure country, but the sweeping strings and sparkling production were a fresh pop addition. –Cory D. Byrom

? and the Mysterians: “96 Tears” (1966)

On the smartest/dumbest two-note Farfisa riff in history, “96 Tears” went to No. 1 at a time when a couple of shifty looking guys from Saginaw, Mich., with a shaky grasp on rock’n’roll could do such a thing. I read somewhere, possibly apocryphally, that once at a Suicide show before they performed “96 Tears,” Alan Vega screamed “your national anthem, whether you know it or not!” Works for me. –Jess Harvell

Listen: ? and the Mysterians: “96 Tears”

Silver Apples: “Oscillations” (1968)

Where Morton Subotnick’s “Silver Apples of the Moon” congealed, the Silver Apples’ shiny electro-acoustic baubles actively grooved. Their penchant for quivering electronics—and the self-conscious content of their lyrics, paying tribute to same—laid the groundwork for Krautrock (not to mention American Tapes) with a dazzling, not-quite-three minutes of tribal drumming, gamelan timbres, folky modal harmonies, train whistles—and of course those pesky waveforms, oscillating wildly. –Philip Sherburne

Listen: Silver Apples: “Oscillations”

The Bobby Fuller Four“I Fought the Law” (1966)

Bobby Fuller sits in the prison yard with not a hair or a note out of place, and his guitar shines like the sparks off the bullet that ended his life as a free man. As cool a killer as any in rockabilly, he makes the sing-along confession of the title iconic in a song that’s fast, hostile and, doomed—just as Fuller’s own legend was sealed when he was found dead at the height of his stardom, in a suicide that’s still believed to be murder. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: The Bobby Fuller Four: “I Fought the Law”

Ben E. King: “Stand By Me” (1961)

I always thought this song was longer. King’s telling us that he can endure the end of the world if he has the love of a good woman. But with that steadfast bassline behind him, he doesn’t sound like he needs help—just that he’s looking for a more perfect union, the kind of love that makes us more than just men and women. You hear what that sounds like in the strings, which are almost too beautiful—and stop right before they get mushy. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: Ben E. King: “Stand By Me”

Jefferson Airplane: “White Rabbit” (1967)

Don’t pay attention to the lyrics. Just don’t. Pay attention to the snaking guitar line, the bolero beat, and Grace Slick’s tremulous voice. And even if you hate hippies as much as I do, pay attention to the closing crescendo. It slays everything in its path: hippies, punks, yuppies, metalheads, even Jefferson Starship. –Amy Phillips

Listen: Jefferson Airplane: “White Rabbit”

The Kinks: “Victoria” (1969)

With “Victoria,” Ray Davies turns the social critique that always lurks in his songcraft to take on, well, the history of the British Empire—in under four minutes. And as the song moves from wistfully nostalgic verses to soaring, patriotic choruses, he pretty much nails it. God save the Kinks. –John Motley

Listen: The Kinks: “Victoria”

Nancy Sinatra: “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” (1966)

The descending bassline that opens the song feels like a playground taunt, and so does everything else: Sinatra’s blithe and flirty delivery, the skeletal tambourines, even the glorious, stomping horn riff that bursts into the song in its final 20 seconds. “Boots” is maybe the finest bitchy kiss-off in pop history. Take notes. –Tom Breihan

Listen: Nancy Sinatra: “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”

The Easybeats: “Friday on My Mind” (1965)

Bursting out in fab psychedelic Technicolor, Australia’s Easybeats sounded the horn for anyone who’s ever pined for the weekend. Angels at the chorus go, “toniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggghhhht,” and if only for a few seconds, tease visions of the city and everything that’s going to happen there. “Friday on My Mind” is the jam. –Dominique Leone

Listen: The Easybeats: “Friday on My Mind”

Steve Reich: “It’s Gonna Rain” (1965)

Steve Reich’s most famous tape-loop finds a frothing black-magic Pentecostal minister prepping for street-riot Armageddon. With the assistance of Reich’s gap-ridden tape splicing, his voice transforms into a series of beeps, springs, fans, and artillery fire. Occasionally, it approaches something that resembles serrated doo-wop or the Psycho theme. Fluttering pigeons turn into marching boots. Despite all the violence, “It’s Gonna Rain” is a testament to man’s ability to wrest melody from speech and rhythm from insanity. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: Steve Reich: “It’s Gonna Rain”

Stevie Wonder: “I Was Made to Love Her” (1968)

For much of his career no one could fill the world with silly love songs as superlatively as Stevie Wonder. The sunshine soul of 1967’s “I Was Made to Love Her” easily shows up the emptiness of most modern melisma, as the 16-year-old singer’s churchy rejoicing lends a happy ending to a choir-and-harmonica Romeo and Juliet tale of parental disapproval and all-conquering hubba-hubba. –Marc Hogan

Listen: Stevie Wonder: “I Was Made to Love Her”

The Four Tops: “It’s the Same Old Song” (1965)

Oh, that groove—it’s so irresistible an entire orchestra had to get involved. Levi Stubbs pumps anguish into the tortured lyric about a guy who can’t escape the song he and his girl once shared. Once loved, now it’s the pain in his heart going out on the airwaves. –Joe Tangari

Listen: The Four Tops: “It’s the Same Old Song”

The Byrds: “Eight Miles High” (1966)

Calling this psychedelia’s greatest pop moment will probably ignite a shitstorm from the peanut gallery, but what the hell, I’ll say it anyway. Normal adjectives like “serpentine” do violence to the guitar playing on “Eight Miles High”; 12 strings manage to snare John Coltrane modal chaos, Indian ragas, and chiming bucolic folk. Not bettered by the (very fine) Hüsker Dü cover, even for those like me who prefer their freakouts to sound like heavy weather. –Jess Harvell

Listen: The Byrds: “Eight Miles High”

Harry Nilsson: “One” (1968)

It opens with a single note over and over and we know the song immediately, no matter who’s performing it. I grew up on Three Dog Night’s R&B bombast so returning to Harry’s original I forget how wispy and ethereal this tune could be. Definitely the loneliest version out there. –Mark Richardson

Listen: Harry Nilsson: “One”

Bob Dylan: “Visions of Johanna” (1966)

A song that never really ends, about a girl he’s never really gonna find, in a place that he’ll never really leave. Joins fellow Dylan track “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” as one of the most immaculate songs about being eternally, existentially, stuck in the same place. “He’s sure got a lot of gall, being so useless and all…” –Zach Baron

Listen: Bob Dylan: “Visions of Johanna”

Desmond Dekker & the Aces: “007 (Shanty Town)” (1967)

The King of Ska brought this loping anthem, about rudeboys that “bomb up de town,” to hordes of tenderfoots. But with a voice as compact and emotive as his, Dekker was capable of enrapturing even the biggest xenophobe. The only reason people can get away with loving ska is still Dekker. –Sean Fennessey

Listen: Desmond Dekker & the Aces: “007 (Shanty Town)”

Simon & Garfunkel: “America” (1968)

A short, wistful trip, Bookends’ soft-focus acoustic highlight “America” wasn’t actually a single until it appeared on 1972’s Greatest Hits. Whenever. Dewily harmonious Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel do the she’s-leaving-home myth maybe half as good as Nabokov, but it’s priceless for the gabardine spy alone. –Marc Hogan

Listen: Simon & Garfunkel: “America”

King Crimson: “21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969)

King Crimson announced itself to the world with this seven-minute hellstorm of gonzo guitar, shifting meters, and nasty sax. Greg Lake sounds like he’s being eaten by robots, and there’s hardly anything more fantastically filthy than Robert Fripp and Ian McDonald’s opening guitar/sax riff. –Joe Tangari

Listen: King Crimson: “21st Century Schizoid Man”

Merle Haggard: “Mama Tried” (1968)

Why Steve Goodman felt the need to pen the perfect country song (his attempt was the 1975 hit “You Never Even Called Me by My Name”) is baffling, as Haggard had done it seven years previous. It’s all here: trains, prison, mama, and the outlaw thread that ran through the country movement for most of the ’70s. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: Merle Haggard: “Mama Tried”

Sly & the Family Stone: “Everyday People” (1968)

Family Stone member Larry Graham claims that the first chart-topping single from one of the first racially integrated mainstream bands also includes the first instance of slap bass. Sly smoothed out his incendiary funk into a couple minutes of gently buoyant pop leavened with nursery-rhyme bridges and soaring choruses, bringing his message of tolerance to less adventurous ears. –Brian Howe

Listen: Sly and the Family Stone: “Everyday People”

Pink Floyd: “See Emily Play” (1967)

The highest-charting Syd Barrett–era Floyd single, and the recently deceased star's most accessible song, “See Emily Play” evokes lost childhood as bluntly as anything in his repertoire— it gets wistful right on the second line—but the stabs of steel guitar and the sped-up piano solo transcend cliché. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: Pink Floyd: “See Emily Play”

The Isley Brothers: “It’s Your Thing” (1969)

A molten guitar-and-piano strut bleeds over some serious locked-groove drums and a few perfectly placed horn-stabs, Ronald Isley growls some second-wave feminism, and then the whole vicious lope explodes in a euphoric storm of woozy, joyous psych-funk. The Isleys already had more than a decade of hits behind them in 1969, but they still managed to completely internalize both James Brown’s rigorously amorphous stomp and former sideman Jimi Hendrix’s tumultuous squall, squishing it all into a triumphant marvel of precision-engineering, every musician involved hitting his notes hard at exactly the right moment. –Tom Breihan

Listen: The Isley Brothers: “It's Your Thing”

Jimi Hendrix: “All Along the Watchtower” (1968)

This belongs to the most exclusive class of cover versions: One that not only improves on the original, but makes you forget who wrote it in the first place. The words—a comment on class disparity as represented by jokers, thieves, and princes—belong to Bob Dylan, but it’s Hendrix’s despairing performance that lend them continuing relevance, that aching first line ringing truer with each coffin that comes back from Baghdad. And the guitar solos are arguably the most dramatic that Hendrix ever laid down, sounding less like displays of technical virtuosity than pleas for sanity in a world gone to hell. –Stuart Berman

Listen: Jimi Hendrix: “All Along the Watchtower”

The Zombies: “Care of Cell 44” (1968)

Fact: “Care of Cell 44,” which opens the Zombies’ psych-pop masterpiece Odessey and Oracle, is the sunniest song ever written about the impending release of a prison inmate. At the end of the first ineffably sing-song verse, Colin Blunstone tells his sweetie, “You can tell me about your prison stay”—and sounds positively tickled. To be fair, describing the song’s lush arrangement and ecstatic melodies as “sunny” is a vast understatement. Every time Blunstone belts out, “Feels! So! Good! You're coming home soon!” after the lull of a Beach Boys–style multi-part harmony, it sounds like his heart’s burst with joy. –John Motley

Listen: The Zombies: “Care of Cell 44”

The Maytals: “Pressure Drop” (1969)

“Pressure Drop” was covered by the Clash and the Specials, but the definitive version is still the original, performed by the Maytals (later to become Toots and the Maytals after their lead singer, Frederick “Toots” Maytal, gained some post-incarceration notoriety). Toots’ opening melody alone is almost too sweet and desperate to bear—always faster than you remember it, far stronger than you thought possible. He less sings than rips through the rest of it. It’s a revenge song—“when it drops, oh you gonna feel it, know that you were doing wrong”—but when Toots cries, “It is you,” it sounds like love. –Zach Baron

Listen: The Maytals: “Pressure Drop”

The Shangri-Las: “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” (1965)

“When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love—l-u-v!” Sadly bereft of the ambient effects that feature so distinctively on Shangri-Las’ singles, “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” nevertheless features one of the foursome’s most striking spoken-word sections. One girl asks her friend how her man dances; she replies: “Close... very, very close.” The fear and excitement in those four words could make anybody want to kiss him—and enough handclap ra-ra in the chorus (plus a kiss sound-effect!) to make everybody else jealous. –Zach Baron

Listen: The Shangri-Las: “Give Him a Great Big Kiss”

Sam Cooke: “Cupid” (1961)

It’s not the dumbest lyrical conceit ever, but it’s up there: Sam Cooke is worried that the girl he loves doesn’t know he exists, so he asks the Roman god of erotic love to smooth things out for him. But in the hands of Sam Cooke, it sounds as natural as breathing. The gently rippling drums, the soft and plaintive trumpet, and the frosty hum of the strings mesh together into a luxuriant bed for Cooke’s gorgeously airy falsetto. Cooke had the preternatural ability to turn any cliché into gospel truth, and that searching, wounded coo just melts over everything. –Tom Breihan

Listen: Sam Cooke: “Cupid”

Simon & Garfunkel: “Mrs. Robinson” (1968)

The disparity between “Mrs. Robinson”’s jaunty music and elegiac lyrics might stem from the circumstances of its creation—asked for music for The Graduate, Paul Simon dusted off an unfinished instrumental, dropped in the jailbait-seducing lead's name, and built a requiem for America's lost idealism around it. Slinky acoustic rhythm guitars, bluesy licks, and pattering congas give out to an infectious 4/4 stomp slicked with the folkies’ seamless harmonies. An odd but true-ringing amalgamation of religious piety, stern pedantry, and suburban circumspection fills out the twilit corners of this shrine to our nation’s mythological age of innocence. –Brian Howe

Listen: Simon & Garfunkel: “Mrs. Robinson”

Can: “Yoo Doo Right” (1969)

Can were digging out beats from the mud with the muscle of Community and Industry behind their electro-acoustics and MANIA ROCK POWER. Forget “krautrock”—this was actual, in-the-resonance acid-truth music; stuff that might send your buttoned-downs into the next room, but made much easier any ideas you wanted to entertain regarding quantum mechanics. Liebezeit is of course bigger than Jesus. Tape loops are the self-contained shit. “Yoo Doo Right” is the kind of thing that should keep people at shows way too late, filling the street with freak drug youths night after night. And Malcolm Mooney was a bad man. Malcolm Mooney was a bad man. –Dominique Leone

Listen: Can: “Yoo Doo Right”

Nick Drake: “River Man” (1969)

Two albums before his solemn swan song Pink Moon, Nick Drake was already meditating on some oppressively heavy topics. With its fixation on the relentless passing of time, “River Man” is the loveliest and most delicate of those from his debut, Five Leaves Left. Over plaintive strums, Drake’s mournful voice paints images of fallen leaves, passing seasons, and the flowing river. What Drake does with his voice and an acoustic guitar is haunting enough, but it’s Harry Robinson’s string arrangement that makes it absolutely chilling. Singing the “Prufrock”-inspired refrain of “How they come and go,” Drake’s voice is swallowed up by the strings, which swell like a rising tide. –John Motley

Listen: Nick Drake: “River Man”

The Who: “Substitute” (1966)

While rumors have long been snuffed that “Substitute” stems from Pete Townshend’s Rolling Stones–fueled inferiority complex, this self-righteous power-pop lament never took America by storm like similar rockers “Satisfaction” or “Day Tripper,” and it’s difficult to understand why. Maybe we weren't ready for the cunning lyrics, Keith Moon’s whopping fills, or, my lord, John Entwhistle’s anachronistic, shredding bassline. Even more salient with today’s listeners, Roger Daltrey turns the sunny 60s frontman persona on its head, howling about superficiality, duplicity, and social class. Ultimately the song taps just the right amount of angst, hitting that sweet spot between libertine classic rock and the austere, self-important grunge movement it no doubt helped inspire. –Adam Moerder

Listen: The Who: “Substitute”

The Angels: “My Boyfriend’s Back” (1963)

Not so much about a boyfriend than about one boy coming home to beat the living hell out of another boy, this 1963 single, originally meant for the Shirelles, is one of the most flat-out mean girl-group tracks ever. College coeds will forever sing it when their high school beaus come to visit, but unless said beau is punching a few suitors in the face on arrival, he’s missing the spirit of the whole thing. –Zach Baron

Listen: The Angels: “My Boyfriend’s Back”

The Stooges: “1969” (1969)

The first thing you hear is the groove: tribal drums falling down stairs, guitar and bass flaring into an eternal Link Wray jungle-stomp, before the guitar flares up into a gooey, miasmic haze. If “1969” was an instrumental, it’d be a psychedelic-funk classic. But of course all anyone talks about is Iggy Pop’s bored, detached sneer, the way he dismisses what looks in retrospect like a season of upheaval as “another year with nothing to do.” When you’ve got a groove like that behind you, anything you say starts to take on a blasphemous weight. –Tom Breihan

Listen: The Stooges: “1969”

The Kinks: “You Really Got Me” (1964)

Van Halen’s equally popular 1977 cover added an orgasmic breakdown chorus of “oohs” and “aahs,” but that was just DLR being redundant. Because the original’s caustic riff says it all: These guys are packing the biggest set of blue balls known to man. But what makes “You Really Got Me” so fearsome and ferocious after 41 years isn’t its everlasting theme of unrequited teenage lust. It’s that within Ray Davies’ sneering, leering delivery, we hear the threat of violence that will result if he doesn’t get what he wants. –Stuart Berman

Listen: The Kinks: “You Really Got Me”

The Miracles: “The Tracks of My Tears” (1965)

The hit factory at Motown built songs to last and this Miracles tune is one of its most enduring. “The Tracks of My Tears” is so meticulously constructed that it rolls over the competition. And it’s so deceptively simple that its genius actually isn’t easy to trace. But from the moment the drums drop over the gentle, twanging guitar intro to Smokey Robinson’s vocal improvisations over blasting horns as it fades out, every piece fits together perfectly. –John Motley

Listen: The Miracles: “The Tracks of My Tears”

The Left Banke: “Walk Away Renée” (1967)

Double-edged sword: If the pseudo-classical pop-rock band the Left Banke’s keyboardist, Michael Brown, hadn’t been obsessed with guitarist Tom Finn’s girlfriend, the band might’ve lasted longer, but never would’ve written the fey weeper about secret longing and unrequited love upon which the Left Banke made their name. The saturated strings and mincing harpsichord are moving in and of themselves, but Steve Martin’s aching rendition of Brown’s teary-eyed proto-emo lyrics are more essential to the song’s longevity—most everyone can identify with the gloomy romance of rain on empty sidewalks, and pining away for your buddy’s girl never goes out of style. –Brian Howe

Listen: The Left Banke: “Walk Away Renée”

Roy Orbison: “Crying” (1962)

Roy Orbison never shied from rockabilly swagger, but it was his ballads of unrequited love that made him a legend. In this pocket-sized soap opera, Orbison discovers he’s far from over an ex when the touch of her hand sends him over the edge, wringing his eyes out in agony. He’s not just “crying,” either. He's “cry-i-i-ing” in an angelic falsetto—with a cooing chorus of voices backing up his sob story. You’d never guess melodrama could be so wrenching until Orbison moves a couple octaves deeper for his show-stopping finale. –John Motley

Listen: Roy Orbison: “Crying”

The Rolling Stones: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (1969)

Color me raised by a boomer, but this song contains one of the most important pieces of information to come out of the 1960s: Despite all the shit you go through to get what and who you want, and despite any good you might have accidentally done on the side, sometimes you just don’t have it. This was a surprising thing to hear from the Stones, but it could have been a Zen koan—“Try, and do not try. Nothing is achieved.” And let’s be real: This band never sounded better than in 1969-71. Listen to the girls singing backup. Really, anytime you have the Stones using maracas and bongos, something good is going to happen. –Dominique Leone

Listen: The Rolling Stones: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: “Down by the River” (1969)

Written in the throes of an illness, “Down by the River” grew into an epic fever-nightmare tortured enough to state more clearly than any other song why Young was so out of step with his idealistic peers. The silly hippie dreams of redemption—“she could take me over the rainbow”—are immediately quashed by murder imagery, sung in pained, off-key Crazy Horse harmonies. Then the rest of the song is a blank two-chord page for Neil to scrawl his jagged guitar tone all over, two marathon solos played with zero technical flash and every note taking another awful stab into that failed hope’s body. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: Neil Young & Crazy Horse: “Down by the River”

Elvis Presley: “Suspicious Minds” (1969)

Perhaps controversially, I find late-period Vegas showman Elvis more thrilling than Elvis in his historic Sun Records days; it’s an image that better lives up to the massive mythology he inspired. Fortunately, “Suspicious Minds” offers the best of both worlds: It’s gritty and funky enough to recall those Memphis days, but laden with enough garish audio glitter—the backup singers, the false ending, the swooping strings—to befit a legend. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: Elvis Presley: “Suspicious Minds”

Sam & Dave: “Hold On, I’m Comin’” (1966)

Look, it’s not brain surgery. You come up with an absolutely undeniable monster of a six-note horn riff. You put it over a wound-tight funk vamp that breathes and lunges and builds to a fiery climax. You find a couple of guys to bray and scream and plead and rage over it with a sort of churchy zeal. That’s it. You are now Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter, and you’ve written maybe the greatest Southern soul song of all time. You’ll start getting burger-commercial royalties in about 30 years. –Tom Breihan

Bob Dylan: “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (1965)

This flurry feels like a how-to farmer’s almanac for the 1960s counterculture—a speed-freak call from the streets and the Invisible Man’s basement, offering tricks, warnings, puns, paranoia, LSD concoctions, protest, and fire hose–toting cops. It’s famous for the cue card–toting video from Don’t Look Back (complete with Allan Ginsberg cameo). I’d venture to say Dylan was ultimately the more interesting poet and this spazzed Beat stuffing breeds the blues with Jack Kerouac and Pete Seeger. Even the seemingly tossed-off notions—writing in Braille or watching parking meters— bloom into great thought lines. Everyone’s trying to blend in one way or another—the plain clothes cops, the hippies not wearing sandals. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: Bob Dylan: “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

Gal Costa: “Baby” (1969)

Knowing no Portuguese, I imagine Costa’s singing not to a lover but to an actual baby—a six-monther, cradled in her lap and listening to a voice that’s loving and cool. And while she and the slow bossa nova are entrancing, the fantastic strings are the wild card: dipping and flittering, they collide mid-air like two matched flocks of tropical birds. If it’s sexy, it’s laughing during the act, and the baby in the crib nearby doesn’t mind. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: Gal Costa: “Baby”

Sly & the Family Stone: “I Want to Take You Higher” (1969)

Sly Stone’s ode to letting music take hold is not about marching on Washington. And it’s not about spitting in The Man’s face. But it’s definitely about freedom at any cost. The baton-pass of Rose, Freddie, and Sly Stone and the basso profundo of Larry Graham elevate what is in some ways Sly’s most lyrically toothless number into a rapturous call-and-response jam that rocked thousands at Woodstock (or so Mom told us), and even more than that at supermarkets near you every day. But Sly knew what he was doing, slotting the amorphous and joyful “Higher” as the B-side to the more righteous “Stand!” It predicted everything about the next few years from Sly: joy and pain, fun and fire, truth and fucking, darkness and drugs. The perfect antithesis in a career marked by duality. –Sean Fennessey

Listen: Sly & the Family Stone: “I Want to Take You Higher”

The Velvet Underground: “Heroin” (1967)

Another of Lou Reed’s inner monologues detailing the poetry of negation, this depicts the solitary sacredness of a high, the ritual of shooting up/zoning: “I have made the big decision/I'm gonna try to nullify my life.” I could retitle it “I’ll Be Your Shattered Mirror”—the protagonist feels like a fucked-up everyman, despite the first person. Sonically, it builds like it could arc forever: Drink coffee, press play, feel the noisy viola inject a frenzy. All the sounds are intensely perfect, but Moe Tucker’s drums are the manic pulse: If she stops, the high’s kaput. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: The Velvet Underground: “Heroin”

BBC Radiophonic Workshop: “Doctor Who (Original Theme)” (1963)

Where the U.S.’s “Star Trek” sent a sleek vessel into “the final frontier,” Britain’s “Dr. Who” began with a cranky old alien hurtling around in a phone booth—and the theme song couldn’t be a better fit. While Ron Grainer’s swooping melody and throbbing beat have seen slicker arrangements over the decades, this first version is an incredible piece of primitive electronic music. Delia Derbyshire constructed it in 1963 by manipulating sounds from test tone generators and mixing them together almost note by note, yet the cobbled-together, almost mismatched timbres come together in a lumpy, throbbing—and definitely futuristic—whole. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: BBC Radiophonic Workshop: “Doctor Who (Original Theme)”

Simon & Garfunkel: “The Boxer” (1969)

Two reasons this is the best of many good S&G songs. First, Paul Simon never wrote a better melody. It bends and turns—and yes, drifts—like it’s going to lose its way until he tugs it back in for a chorus that every kid in the 1970s memorized before grade school. And then the lyrics, from a guy given to saying too much, are terrifically restrained and open-ended, with only the barest hints of the story fleshed out. It’s an impressionistic, painterly approach not far from where Bob Dylan would be a few years later on Blood on the Tracks. –Mark Richardson

Listen: Simon & Garfunkel: “The Boxer”

James Brown & the Famous Flames: “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” (1965)

Almost everyone with even a passing interest in JB knows the story of how, while stopping off on tour to record a new single, the raggedy, exhausted band inched as if waist-deep in swamp water through a slower, more grinding version of “Papa’s” than the one everyone knows. Someone got the bright idea to get nice with the razor blades and the knob marked “speed everything up,” and funk got one step closer to becoming its own genre. Like a lot of music on this list, “Papa’s” can seem overfamiliar, but Brown’s shift from one of the best ballad singers and soulmen of the early 1960s to the Godfather is still one of the most remarkable transformations in pop history, and this is one of its key moments. –Jess Harvell

Listen: James Brown & the Famous Flames: “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”

Bob Dylan: “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (1963)

With the millions of words written on the political and cultural significance of Bob Dylan’s career, it’s easy to forget that dude could write a pretty damn fierce breakup song, when he wanted to. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” may be the most venomous of Dylan’s “so long, honeybabe” tracks, in part due to the laid-back, icy delivery of its original version. When he gets to the cruel punch line of “you just kinda wasted my... precious time,” it’s shrugged off like a business transaction, a relationship diss track he can hardly be bothered to sing. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: Bob Dylan: “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”

Van Morrison: “Sweet Thing” (1968)

Surely, scores of grass-kissing, mass Romantics have tried to hole away with a couple of their jazzbo buds for a couple deep nights in search of the next Astral Weeks. Such is the seduction of the quick muse. Of course, it’s going to sound like shit because, however hard your scatman broheim tries to grimace and spasm like he’s feeling the force, he’s not channeling his past with folky pathos set to stun—he’s not Van Morrison. “Sweet Thing” is that one thing; sprightly bows sloping down streets, flutes searching through the mist, and elated bass leading to a fountain of youth. “It feels right, but I can’t say for sure what it means,” Lester Bangs said of it. Of course he can’t. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Van Morrison: “Sweet Thing”

Jimi Hendrix: “Manic Depression” (1967)

A showcase for Hendrix’s wholly original guitar techniques, “Manic Depression” is dizzying with its odd time signature and winding, cyclical melody. And while Hendrix will always be the focal point of his songs, the Experience shouldn’t be entirely written off. Drummer Mitch Mitchell is a beast here, pounding every drum in the kit, often leaving bassist Noel Redding to keep things grounded. Lyrically, the song is typical Hendrix—women, drugs, music, and just getting along, man. But that’s neither here nor there: When you’re watching the World Series, what the announcers are saying is beside the point. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: Jimi Hendrix: “Manic Depression”

Patsy Cline: “Crazy” (1961)

With Top 10 performances on both the country and pop charts, “Crazy” was the first indication that Patsy Cline’s appeal is pretty damn universal. On this Willie Nelson–penned heartbreaker, the music—all loping bass and twinkling piano runs—plays it cool, but Cline’s voice is so cuttingly clear and emotive it’s like she's right there in the room with you. As she sings, “I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted/And then some day, you’d leave me for somebody new,” there’s palpable sorrow and self-loathing in her delivery that makes misery sound exquisite. –John Motley

Listen: Patsy Cline: “Crazy”

Dick Dale & the Del-Tones: “Misirlou” (1962)

According to headshop t-shirts, Charlie don’t surf, but if he did, this is what would’ve been blasting out of his Victrola. Dick Dale made surf music for bikers: “Misirlou” isn’t an occasion to catch a wave, it’s an invitation to a knife fight, and that bee-swarm guitar line takes on all comers—a cha-cha rhythm, a trumpet chorus, even a piano solo—and slays them all. “Misirlou” wasn’t just punk rock before punk existed—it was punk rock even before rock’n’roll became boring enough to make punk necessary. –Stuart Berman

Listen: Dick Dale & the Del-Tones: “Misirlou”

The Shirelles: “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” (1960)

Carole King was a better songwriter than singer/songwriter, though Tapestry is probably about due for a too-ironic revival. On this 1960 release, the Shirelles take the Brill Building doo-wop and enchantment-under-the-sea strings of King’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and sanctify it with modest, youthful wisdom. Other 60s girl-group ballads would be huger, or more dramatic, but the understated pathos of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” is singularly combustible. I feel the earth move. –Marc Hogan

Listen: The Shirelles: “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: “Cinnamon Girl” (1969)

The “riff” in this one is a sludge of lumbering power chords and the solo is a single note; even at the beginning of his Crazy Horse era in 1969, Young’s guitar playing had already started to crystallize into something shambolic and occasionally counterintuitive. The sweetness in the burr is all the melodic things happening: the conversations between the vocal harmonies, the guitars and bass, the high and low ends. So what if it’s one of Young’s most superficial songs—in so many other ways, its ragged musculature perfectly encapsulates everything he ever did best. –Mark Pytlik

Listen: Neil Young & Crazy Horse: “Cinnamon Girl”

The Paragons: “The Tide Is High” (1967)

Violin isn’t common in reggae, but damn it sounds good on this gem from the rocksteady era. I’m amazed you can fit this much melody in one song—John Holt’s lead vocal swoops and dives, his phrases expanding and contracting like the very tide itself, while the doo-wop interjections of his mates weave around him like chips of glass in a kaleidoscope. Duke Reid’s band lays down a classic track stuffed with details—a muted guitar hook, a ridiculously sublime violin solo, the way the chorus sounds great no matter what order its halves are sung in—and the result is one of the best Jamaican tracks in pop history. –Joe Tangari

Listen: The Paragons: “The Tide Is High”

The Mamas & the Papas: “California Dreamin’” (1966)

Apparently it’s so dreadful not to live in California, it drove the Mamas & Papas to create one of the most beautifully eerie harmony-pop songs in rock history. Thanks to the limitations of 1966 production, John and Michelle Phillips’ reverb-waterlogged four-part arrangement sounds apocalyptically choral, making the experience of actually suffering through four seasons sound positively ghastly. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: The Mamas & the Papas: “California Dreamin’”

Del Shannon: “Runaway” (1961)

So spare it’s almost not there at all, Shannon’s masterpiece is teen heartbreak in haiku, winnowed down from a 15-minute vamp into a perfect 2:20. A No. 1 smash in 1961, rock’n’roll through and through, “Runaway” is also a proto-synth pop hit, introducing the electric musitron with a wicked solo. Shannon’s hiccuping, froggy falsetto details the most basic of breakup stories, and yet it resonates like cosmic truth. Despite lacking the “yeah, well, fuck you too” vitriol of garage groups like the Seeds, hundreds of punks and proto-punks heard, for better or worse, a whole aesthetic universe in “Runaway.” It’s one of the most coverable songs of all time. –Jess Harvell

Listen: Del Shannon: “Runaway”

Stan Getz & João Gilberto: “The Girl From Ipanema” [ft. Antônio Carlos Jobim] (1964)

While the titular object of desire is described as walking “like a samba,” the breezy wisp of a song she saunters through has become synonymous with bossa nova, which emphasizes subtle melodic phrasing over dance-oriented cadence. Bossa nova pioneer Tom Jobim’s bittersweet ode to the unattainable allure of youthful beauty turned the still-young Brazilian genre into a household name in the United States. Astrud Gilberto’s dreamy lilt and João Gilberto’s succinct flecks of guitar describe the mesmerizing syncopation of rolling hips, while Getz blows his sax as sweetly as any drug-crazed wife-beater ever did. –Brian Howe

Listen: Stan Getz & João Gilberto: “The Girl From Ipanema” [ft. Antônio Carlos Jobim]

The Rolling Stones: “Street Fighting Man” (1968)

On this searing call-to-arms the Stones set the impending revolution under an appropriately intense summer sun, and heat rolls off of it in waves. Brightly jagged guitars glitter like blacktop mirages; thunderous percussion cracks asphalt; Jagger’s voice is a wowing police siren. The music is emphatic; the prognosis is dire but vague; and the upshot, ambivalent: “What can a poor boy do except sing for a rock’n’roll band?” Thankfully so: If they cared too much, they wouldn’t be the Stones. –Brian Howe

Listen: The Rolling Stones: “Street Fighting Man”

The Supremes: “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (1966)

This Motown masterpiece has been rerecorded as rock, country, and new wave pop. No wonder: Its unceasing beat, bright guitar chirping, horn blasts, and bubbling bass line make it arguably the most rock-influenced hit of the group’s career, and suited for any setting. Nobody has sold it better, however, than Diana Ross, who somehow manages to sound heartbroken and sassy at the same time. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: The Supremes: “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”

Sly & the Family Stone: “Hot Fun in the Summertime” (1969)

Sly Stewart’s band could play anything, and here they lay out plush vibes over words that seem a bit realist (moral: things come and go?). No surprise, however, that it’s the sweet and psychedelic soul sounds that win out. Or do they? Sometimes, this song becomes an actual source of nostalgia for me, making me think about someone's old summers when both the sun and fun were hot. But then the bridge happens, and the bass drops out, and even though I know that summer ends soon, and that I’m constantly running out of time, and that life is just a meaningless exchange of particles—well, fuck it, things come and go. –Dominique Leone

Listen: Sly & the Family Stone: “Hot Fun in the Summertime”

The Velvet Underground: “Sunday Morning” (1967)

The Velvets rap is always about “influence,” but how many artists influenced both the Strokes and Belle and Sebastian? The opener to 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico has more in common with the latter, as John Cale’s celeste tinkles beside the feedback wash of Sterling Morrison’s bass-guitar plod, and Lou Reed’s gentle melody explains what an early-morning comedown felt like before Crate & Barrel invented downtempo. It’s a walk of no shame, solitary and serene despite submerged bursts of paranoia. Like their non-evil twins the Modern Lovers, the Velvet Underground introduced not so much a sound as an aesthetic, and that’s pretty hard to bite. –Marc Hogan

Listen: The Velvet Underground: “Sunday Morning”

The Beatles: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1964)

Something about a Kennedy dying, and an airplane arriving in New York. And though the Beatles got more consistently great—or at least more self-consciously artistic after their initial impact—they never really got much better than 1964 and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” People still won’t shut up about Kurt Cobain mish-mashing the Beatles and Black Sabbath, but here are the Fabs themselves shaking up both twee and punk before either was invented. –Marc Hogan

Listen: The Beatles: “I Want to Hold Your Hand”

Tommy James & the Shondells: “Crimson and Clover” (1969)

Not gonna front: I loved Joan Jett’s version first. But her cover rocks too hard. This song—quite possibly the closest white pop musicians have ever come to approximating how making love actually feels—is meant to be an afternoon roll in the hay, not an alleyway screw. Even though the climaxes are certainly there, “Crimson and Clover” isn’t about the payoff, it’s about the journey: those three chords descending like pieces of clothing hitting the floor, the sweaty droplets of reverb, the backbeat thrusts. Over and over, over and over. –Amy Phillips

Listen: Tommy James & the Shondells: “Crimson and Clover”

Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot: “Bonnie and Clyde” (1968)

During his collaborations with then-lover Brigitte Bardot, Gainsbourg nurtured a near-Warholian obsession with American iconography: Ford Mustangs (bang!), Coca-Cola, comic strips, and, of course, gangsters. Portraying himself as a cultural outlaw (which, in his most transgressive work, he undoubtedly was), Gainsbourg narrates the lives and deaths of the infamous bank robbers. For listeners who don't parlez français, it’s one of Gainsbourg’s most fascinating songs in that, from start to finish, it never really changes. Its acoustic foundation is miraculously filled out by a fat, creeping bassline, dizzy strings, and a bizarre hiccupping backing vocal, all of which turn simple strums into something hypnotizing. –John Motley

Listen: Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot: “Bonnie and Clyde”

Jackie Wilson: “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” (1967)

It’s no shock that the finest four-stringer to ever lay in the cut, James Jamerson, provided the base for Wilson’s late-1960s resurrection. With the can’t-miss arrangement, the then-33-year-old Detroit deity emotes with enough searing intensity to even explode through today’s layers of post-pop cynicism. Truth is, there’s not much depth. But Wilson’s idyllic, soulmate destination is so inviting that, by the time the horns sweep in, you may stop snickering at Brangelina and start to appreciate their forever bond. The thing can move mile-high peaks—or at least the Statue of Liberty. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Jackie Wilson: “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher”

The Monkees: “Daydream Believer” (1967)

There’s something extra-touching about a band that’s ostensibly “for the kids” singing a song about the end of childhood. The lolling piano line and the big, bright chorus—“Cheer up sleepy Jean”—are irresistible to people of all ages, but there’s something moving about the way the narrator’s daydreams are ever-so-slightly punctured in the verses: Even a young kid glued to the Monkees’ TV show knows that the sweet comes with the bitter, so why try to hide it? –Chris Dahlen

Listen: The Monkees: “Daydream Believer”

Led Zeppelin: “Whole Lotta Love” (1969)

According to Joy Press and Simon Reynolds’ The Sex Revolts, American soldiers in Vietnam would ride into battle blasting “Whole Lotta Love,” the part where it roars out of its fuzzed-out miasmic free-jazz middle section and back into its titanic brontosaurus riff. It’s a terrifying image, bloodthirsty heavily armed children fueling themselves with the heaviest, most violent music available. But it’s oddly exhilarating, too, and that’s the genius of the song. Zeppelin turned teenage sex-drive into apocalyptic precision-tooled violence. Even in that experimental stretch, the peals of feedback sound like bombs falling. –Tom Breihan

Listen: Led Zeppelin: “Whole Lotta Love”

Ray Charles: “Georgia on My Mind” (1960)

In its conception, “Georgia on My Mind” was about songwriter Hoagy Carmichael’s sister, not the Peach State. But when native Georgian Ray Charles wrapped his sultry pipes around it, it became an obvious choice for official state song, despite the weird image of a landmass competing with “other arms” and “other eyes” for the singer’s affections. (Come to think of it, that’s a rather odd thing to write about one’s sister as well.) The string section hovers just this side of schmaltz, and Charles’ twinkling piano and supple inflections imbue the song with an elegiac sway, peaceful as those moonlit pines. –Brian Howe

Listen: Ray Charles: “Georgia on My Mind”

Ike & Tina Turner: “River Deep - Mountain High” (1966)

The lyrics are a string of weak, almost corny analogies, like something someone who’s not much with words would write in a one-year anniversary card—and so Tina Turner has no choice but to belt them from every inch of her lungs to get her point across. She holds her own against one of the biggest of Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” productions, while the orchestra and chorus boom and clamor like a dictator’s rally. As hair-tearingly overpowering as the love she describes, “River Deep - Mountain High” has nothing left to hold back. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: Ike & Tina Turner: “River Deep, Mountain High”

Love: “Alone Again Or” (1967)

Written by Love guitarist Bryan MacLean, “Alone Again Or” was in its original conception a simple, flamenco-tinged folk song. But as the opening and greatest track on Love’s 1967 magnum opus Forever Changes, it became a perfect reflection of the L.A. group’s unique and conflicted dynamic. Producer Bruce Botnick enlisted David Angel to supply the distinctive mariachi horn section and Nelson Riddle–like string arrangements that provide the song its strange, out-of-time luster. Meanwhile, bandleader Arthur Lee infamously mixed his own harmony vocals louder than MacLean’s lead vocal to give the track an asymmetric wobble to match its elliptical title, and lending MacLean’s heart-stirring, alone-in-a-crowd lyricism an added degree of poignancy. –Matthew Murphy

Listen: Love: “Alone Again Or”

Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra: “Some Velvet Morning” (1968)

Even after thousands of listens, I still don’t know quite what to make of this bizarre, creepy song. A country-outlaw singer drowning in a pool of reverb, constantly interrupted by dazed-hippie interludes, and haunted by a storm cloud orchestra. Sure, Phaedra is part of a Greek myth and all, but I prefer to think of “Some Velvet Morning” as a love song to drug rehab, Hazlewood longing for a time when he’ll be sober enough to reminisce about his addiction (ephedra = amphetamine, natch) and Sinatra in the role of the drug-personified siren calling him back to her clutches. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra: “Some Velvet Morning”

David Bowie: “Space Oddity” (1969)

Bowie’s first bona fide hit, “Space Oddity” was rush-released to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing. The lyrics, with their strong ties to 2001: A Space Odyssey, tell the sad and paranoid story of poor Major Tom, lost in the void of space. They’ve alternately been interpreted to be about drug abuse, and the psychedelic folk backdrop certainly supports the position that Tom’s experiencing the bad trip to end all bad trips. But while the themes foreshadow the symbolic sci-fi narratives in Bowie’s first true taste of superstardom—the Ziggy Stardust era—the song stands on its own, showcasing Bowie’s gifts for building atmosphere through arrangements and thematic elements. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: David Bowie: “Space Oddity”

The Beatles: “Eleanor Rigby” (1966)

Big ups to George Martin, who wrote the score for the eight-piece string section (four violins, two cellos, and two violas) floating behind Paul McCartney’s libretto (with assistance from John Lennon and George Harrison on the harmonizing and background vocals). The meditation on loneliness is just over two minutes long, but the characters are fleshed out so strongly that each individual feels packed with a novel’s worth of details. When the stars come together—“Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name/Nobody came/Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave/No one was saved”—think back to Rigby cleaning up the post-wedding rice. She and McKenzie partake in these solitary rituals constantly—never finding a conscious overlap. Seems bizarre that it was released as a single with “Yellow Submarine”: Let's paint the Revolver black. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: The Beatles: “Eleanor Rigby”

The Creation: “Making Time” (1967)

That riff’s an instant mod flashpoint on par with “I Can’t Explain” or “You Really Got Me,” but only in the parallel universe ruled by Max Fischer did this song achieve the same legendary status. What differentiates “Making Time” from its peers is that it trades in teen angst for ennui: Kenny Pickett sings, “Why do we have to carry on/Always singing the same old song,” so after the second chorus guitarist Eddie Phillips obliges him and changes the tune, slashing a violin bow across his fret board—years before Jimmy Page stole the shtick—and inverting the song’s riff into something far nastier. They may have been called the Creation, but they excelled at the art of destruction. –Stuart Berman

Listen: The Creation: “Making Time”

Dusty Springfield: “Son of a Preacher Man” (1968)

Aretha Franklin famously rejected this song, only deciding to record it once she heard Springfield’s version. Lyrically, it's clichéd, trite even. Good girl and equally good boy meet, sneak off, give in to each other: It’s a Danielle Steel novel waiting to happen. But Springfield’s quavering tenor is clear and warm enough to turn an underwritten character into an archetype, and it dissolves into the glistening guitars and hard-rolling horn riffs just perfectly. –Tom Breihan

Listen: Dusty Springfield: “Son of a Preacher Man”

The Supremes: “Where Did Our Love Go” (1964)

This No. 1—the Supremes’ first—marked the beginning of an astonishing 1960s chart reign that included 12 pop toppers. Whereas many of their sister groups barreled with boldness, this trio veered away, mastering the seductive coo led by whispery glass goddess Diana Ross. As claptrap percussion gallops away, Ross sidles up to the typical teen heartbreak sentiments and instantly matures them with breathless pathos and sensuality. Punctuated by 15 seconds of blustery sax that hints at a full recovery, “Where Did Our Love Go” is a come down that comes on strong. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: The Supremes: “Where Did Our Love Go”

Vince Guaraldi Trio: “Linus and Lucy” (1965)

Perhaps inseparable from images of pathetic little Christmas trees and ice-skating puppy dogs, “Linus and Lucy” is, for many kids, still the first “jazz” they ever hear. (It was certainly the only “jazz” record in my household; my mom held jazz in disregard as weird dialectic beatnik music without a beat.) That 12-note main theme (with Guaraldi’s left hand answering with five low notes) is possibly the most memorable melody on this list. Guaraldi’s crates run deeper than his Peanuts work, obviously, but there are certainly worse things to leave as your legacy. –Jess Harvell

Listen: Vince Guaraldi Trio: “Linus and Lucy”

The Band: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (1969)

Nothing like a group that’s 80% Canadian singing about The War of Northern Aggression. Fortunately, the other 20% is Levon Helm, whose dramatic performance here turns a period piece that could have been a “Schoolhouse Rock” episode into a mournful piece of folk-rock. Helm’s vocals alone are perfectly evocative of the song’s character, but subtler and more crucial is his simultaneous drumming, skipping like a heartbeat whenever he gets to the really sad parts. With the rest of the Band bobbing and weaving within that perfect John Simon production, they get closer than ever to achieving their goal of escaping to a sepia-toned past. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: The Band: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”

Leonard Cohen: “Suzanne” (1968)

Cohen wrote this perfect ballad about a night with Suzanne Verdal, who was married at the time to the Montreal sculptor Armand Vaillancourt. It was initially a poem, “Suzanne Takes You Down,” collected in Parasites of Heaven, and the drenched dreamscape language situates the listener via all senses: “And she shows you where to look/Among the garbage and the flowers/There are heroes in the seaweed/There are children in the morning.” Suzanne, holding a mirror, supposedly really did give Cohen tea and they had some sort of slinky walking tour of Montreal and the St. Lawrence River, but, also supposedly, they didn't sleep together—didn’t want to ruin the wavelength. Still, even without the nookie, Cohen recasts the night as worthy of the Bible—turning the simplest moment into something extraordinary. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: Leonard Cohen: “Suzanne”

The Zombies: “This Will Be Our Year” (1968)

Like the rose-colored finale of a feel-good musical, this proto-twee anthem has always felt over (the top) before it begins—an incandescent, elegiac bit of closure. “Time of the Season”’s the more generally beloved track from Odessey and Oracle and has received the most Hollywood hippie lip-service, but this track’s baroque pop brevity uplifts more grandly: Like “Happy Together” lined with rays of psychedelic sunshine (vocal-harmony mouthing piano, trumpets, ornate choral harmonies, and warm drums that link it in my head to Pet Sounds and Forever Changes). When singer Colin Blunstone says, “And I won’t forget the way you said/‘Darling I love you’/You gave me faith to go on,” he creates a smeared palimpsest that tugs my heart every time. It’s ironic that the group who penned this eternally optimistic song had disbanded by the time the album hit the shelves. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: The Zombies: “This Will Be Our Year”

The Rolling Stones: “Sympathy for the Devil” (1968)

It was a ballsy move for Mick Jagger to sing about Satan in the first person, and it was even ballsier to make him so damn likable, a charming rake with a sense of decorum and a way with words. “Sympathy” may be Jagger’s finest lyrical moment; in a few quick strokes, he weaves the Crucifiction, the Hundred Years’ War, the October Revolution, World War II, and the assassinations of the Kennedys into an interlocking tapestry of human cruelty, and then he takes credit for all of it. Even ballsier may be the Stones’ use of the sort of rippling African grooves that pale-faced rockstars usually deploy when they’re trying to sound warm and life affirming. It’s an exhilarating piece of work, especially as the song builds and Keith Richards starts using his guitar the same way the Bomb Squad used sirens, a trebly fuzzbomb exploding into the sinuous mess. –Tom Breihan

Listen: The Rolling Stones: “Sympathy for the Devil”

The Meters: “Cissy Strut” (1969)

When the first moments of the first song of your first album are as crisp and chilling as the “Aaaaaa-yah!” and fat chords that open “Cissy Strut,” hyperbole tends to abound. New Orleans demigods and house band for Allen freakin’ Toussaint before they were out of their infancy, the Meters were the peak of precise, slashing through each other’s instruments and whipping up funk like it was chicken salad—thoroughly, deliciously, and fast.

Art Neville ran shit from on high behind that keyboard, but the interplay between guitarist Leo Nocentelli and drummer Zigaboo Modeliste is near impossible to compute. Which explains why the track has been flipped more than 20 times on hip-hop records ranging from Onyx’s “Bacdafucup” to Raheem’s “5th Ward.” There are few songs that pop with the kind of instrumental arrogance “Cissy Strut” carries. In doing so, and basically laying the concrete for funk music, they set the standard for talking loud and saying nothing. In a good way. –Sean Fennessey

Listen: The Meters: “Cissy Strut”

Simon & Garfunkel: “The Sound of Silence” (1965)

“Hello darkness, my old friend.” Few songs sink their hooks into a listener as instantly as this classic ode to alienation. Paul Simon’s tautly crafted lyrics unfold effortlessly as his harmonies with Art Garfunkel grow in emotional intensity. Those elements were already in place when the duo recorded “The Sound of Silence” for its folk-damaged debut, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. But after that album flopped and Simon & Garfunkel called it quits (for the first time), producer Tom Wilson took the folk frame of the original and added a rock edge. Inspired by the Byrds and Dylan’s evolution to electric, Wilson overdubbed electric guitars, bass, and drums. Not only did the new version reach No. 1, those additions also helped shed the original’s choirboy wimpiness. –John Motley

Listen: Simon & Garfunkel: “The Sound of Silence”

13th Floor Elevators: “You’re Gonna Miss Me” (1966)

I need to do the research, but I doubt the electric jug was ever put to such good use. For this convulsive harmonica-singed garage-psychedelia blast, Tommy Hall pilots it as a twittering army of sopping-wet percussive mini-moogs. Then, of course, come Roky Erickson’s vocalizations, threats, and promises (“oh, you’re gonna miss me”) with patterns that feel less like rock lyricism and more like looped jazz frenetics (or, hey, Astral Weeks). This was the Austin band’s first single and only real hit, and its history seems endless: Erickson recorded it once before with his earlier band, the Spades; forty-something years later, it’s the title of Keven McAlester’s documentary about the man’s life/work. It even greets you on Erickson’s website. He’s unfortunately become one of those figures, like Daniel Johnston or Syd Barrett, fetishized by some for his mental illness. Fuck that. Listen to this track, recorded before he spent time in an institution and allegedly received shock therapy: Erickson was already possessed with rock’n’roll genius. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: 13th Floor Elevators: “You’re Gonna Miss Me”

Johnny Cash: “Ring of Fire” (1963)

That Cash could adopt a goofy conceit like this (not just any ring of fire, a burning one), drape it in mariachi music, and still come out looking twice as big a man as your favorite uncle, father, and grandfather combined says more than any glorified MOTW ever could. If composure in the face of death is proof of character, composure in the face of love is downright molecular; here’s a man singing about “wild desire” and “falling like a child” straight from the ashes at the bottom of his stomach. That “Ring of Fire” was one of his biggest hits is no easily explainable trick of the chorus either—there’s a booming posture to this that, 50 years removed, still extends out across his many decades. It’s why people loved seeing him sing even more than they loved hearing him. –Mark Pytlik

Listen: Johnny Cash: “Ring of Fire”

The Who: “The Kids Are Alright” (1965)

That big opening chord sounds like a challenge to the Beatles of a “A Hard Day’s Night.” Sure enough, the Who turn in a gorgeous, sophisticated pop song that focuses the band’s sick instrumental prowess into three minutes of kinetic melancholy. Those vocal harmonies positively soar on Pete Townshend’s guitar jangle, and the modulation at the end is brilliant, preceded by just a tiny snatch of raucous Sturm und Drang. Roger Daltrey’s vocal has just the right tinge of sadness as he heaves the inner conflict stoked by his relationship on the table for all to see. –Joe Tangari

Listen: The Who: “The Kids Are Alright”

James Brown & the Famous Flames: “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” (1966)

For all of its sweat-soaked machismo and fist-pump funk, Brown’s most potent 1960s statement was a relatively quiet, distinctly feminine testament to intrinsic dependence. “A man who don’t have a woman,” squeals the conflicted soul man, “he’s lost in the wilderness.” It’s as if he could foresee his post-70s wasteland, when allegations of domestic abuse outnumbered hit singles, but was utterly helpless to stop the spiral. The ballad’s titular emphasis and man-made roll call only serve to underline its loneliness and desperation. Against arch string plucks, lagging piano, and snap rimshots, the man works his demons hard. And this direct feed into his struggle is as stunning as the ensuing wreckage is stunningly pitiful. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: James Brown & the Famous Flames: “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”

Ennio Morricone: “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Main Theme)” (1966)

Film was the most important medium of the 20th century, and Ennio Morricone was among its chief architects. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” didn’t simply reinvent soundtracks; it reinvented movies. For even the most uncouth audiences, the titular theme—hell, just the opening “wah-wah-wah”—is synonymous with stoicism, murder, and pop-art delirium. Despite the Wagnerian crescendos and theatrical irony, every effect is critical and unforgettable: pacing boots, tribal flutes, flaring surf guitar, Indian warwhoops, field-recording flotsam, meth-mangled trumpet solos. In just under three minutes, Morricone condenses all the greatest elements of music—from opera, garage, musique concrète, peyote songs, whatever—and layers them over stampeding horses and shotgun blasts. It’s kaleidoscopic, exhilarating, and incontrovertibly badass. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: Ennio Morricone: “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Main Theme)”

Nico: “These Days” (1967)

It’s not hard to imagine hearing Nico’s low register and ineffable sadness over a less extravagant combination of instruments on “These Days.” This could well have been another coffeehouse folk song about day-to-day drudgery and the disappearance of passion—especially because those damn strings, skipping around and over the delicate guitar, weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. Producer Tom Wilson added them after the recording, much to the chagrin of Nico, who later called its parent album, Chelsea Girl, “unlistenable.” Psssht. The grandeur of her melancholy is less restrained when there’s a viola chipping away at the melody, but there’s no gussying up or glossing over the punishing closing sentiment, perhaps an acknowledgement of the chanteuse’s already intense heroin addiction: “Please don’t confront me with my failures/I had not forgotten them.” –Sean Fennessey

Listen: Nico: “These Days”

The Shangri-Las: “Leader of the Pack” (1964)

Teen melodrama was a valuable commodity in the 1960s, but few girl groups did it as darkly or as well as the death-obsessed Shangri-Las. “Leader of the Pack”—on which the Weiss and Genser twins spun spoken-word and saccharine singing into the tale of a local tough who’s killed in a motorcycle crash on the night the narrator breaks up with him, per her father’s orders—is part concise musical theater, part novelty song, and all avant-garde, thanks in no small part to George “Shadow” Morton’s inventive production. Every element of the song mimetically refers to its tacit catastrophe—the cardiac percussion limns heart-pumping urgency; stately piano chords suddenly tumble as if they’ve hit wet asphalt; and while the crisis is never explicitly named, the throaty motorcycle revs, horrible crashing sounds, and cries of “Look out look out look out!” leave little room for ambiguity. –Brian Howe

Listen: The Shangri-Las: “Leader of the Pack”

The Kinks: “Waterloo Sunset” (1967)

The protagonist’s ritualistic observations have always reminded me of Death in Venice minus the overt dissipation: The “dirty old” Thames, Waterloo Station, and a 1960s orange-red nighttime London sky reimagined as a private paradise by the window pane’s light. Ray Davies’ airy harmonies compliment the rarefied aestheticism: “Busy-busy” causes vertigo, taxi lights scald eyes, it’s too cold to venture outside. This was supposedly the first track he produced on his own and every detail works to reconfirm a sensibility: The sporty intro sidesteps into the unmistakable vocal melody played first on guitar, then sung by Davies. Throughout, a scrappy rhythm guitar abuts an angelic harmonic web, balancing vicarious experience with the gorgeous hands-on pageantry of the city. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: The Kinks: “Waterloo Sunset”

Otis Redding: “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” (1968)

Released at the beginning of 1968, Redding’s posthumous hit was a lamenting—and prescient—cry of resignation after the Summer of Love. It’s as immortal a song as R&B ever produced, renouncing all references to the transitory pleasures of love, rage, or infatuation. There’s merely Redding’s piteous hum, balanced by buoying guitar and slumberous horns. He sounds like a disappointed god, bored by infinity and captivated by his own constancy. The voice is soft and sleek, and traces of anger still disturb the serenity. The lyrics pass from calmness to sorrow, pleasure to damage, bemusement to barrenness. It’s a repudiation of empty promises: Nothing’s blowin’ in the wind, no changes are gonna come, there’s “nothing to live for, and looks like nothing’s gonna come my way.” He drives all the way to San Francisco just to remind himself that his life will never change. And then there’s that final nonchalant whistle, the most haunting and elegiac sound you could ever hear from a dead man’s No. 1 record. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: Otis Redding: “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”

The Velvet Underground: “I’m Waiting for the Man” (1967)

“The Man is never on time,” William Burroughs typed in 1959’s Naked Lunch. “First thing you learn is that you always got to wait,” Lou Reed complained eight years later on The Velvet Underground & Nico. Buffeted by krautrockist guitar blocks and insatiable jackhammer drums, Reed’s deadpan vocals makes a delinquent of early rock’n’roll piano and urban-twang lead licks. Dude takes the present-day 4/5/6 to East Harlem (that’s “SpaHa” for the noobs), $26 in hand not adjusted for inflation, then oh look at the time splits cause hey I’m running late. To think in Jamaica they’ll just plop heaping bags in your palm for a mere Andrew Jackson (I’m told)—though context suggests it’s probably the junk Reed’s really on about. Whatever, he’s feeling good, he’s gonna work it on out, and that brownstoned walk home is easy to imagine even if most of us have never experienced it. Oh, also many people heard this and then formed bands. –Marc Hogan

Listen: The Velvet Underground: “I’m Waiting for the Man”

The Beatles: “I Am the Walrus” (1967)

“I Am the Walrus” wasn’t the first psychedelic song the Beatles recorded, but where the others were about the trip, this was about the destination: A tour of a surreal, strikingly vulgar place far out there (or far inside Lennon’s head), following a march beat that doesn’t quite fit your feet. Although the production is dense and full of disruptive voices and found sounds, your ear always knows where to go, thanks to that wobbly back-and-forth theme on the electric piano. And while Lennon barks the words, he also reminds us why the Beatles were the least scary available tour guide to this strange new place. After all, John (or was it Paul?) was The Walrus, a post-human growth on the collective subconscious—but he still looked silly with those giant flippers. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: The Beatles: “I Am the Walrus”

The Rolling Stones: “Paint It Black” (1966)

Mick conjures his charm school squall and Brian Jones makes that sitar chirp like a newborn blue jay, but it’s Charlie Watts’ crashing kit that slugs most every other Stones tune out of the way of this depression-incarnate. Perhaps overplaying his hand too soon (subtlety has never been Mick’s fastball), Jagger’s lyrics bellyache from start, “No colors anymore, I want them to turn black,” to finish, “I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky.” But it’s the persistent snare thumping and cymbal shattering that has led so many people to believe there’s some sort of demonic undertone to the song. There really isn’t. Seems Jags got dumped (or perhaps saw an emotional emptiness inside himself) and wants the whole world to look black. Kind of childish if you break it down to the literal, but to think about that swaggering cocksman now and imagine him crumpled and crying, scrawling, “Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts” in 1966 is kind of heartening. –Sean Fennessey

Listen: The Rolling Stones: “Paint It Black”

The Supremes: “You Can’t Hurry Love” (1966)

“If you’re not with someone, then they’re not meant for you,” Art Brut’s Eddie Argos declared in the middle of “Emily Kane” at this summer’s Pitchfork Fest. So here we are, mustache-deep in love songs and hate songs and Rolling Stones songs, and “You Can’t Hurry Love”—a little Holland-Dozier-Holland bouncer about the pointlessness (and frustrating inevitability) of getting all broke up over heartbreak—is still one of the few that tells us what we really need to hear. The ostinato bass, tingling tambourine chirp, shy Herman’s Hermits guitar, and especially Diana Ross’ suavely teenybop vocals (plus the hear-a-symphony backing oohs) stand in uneasy harmony. While the Beatles, Beach Boys, and Stones got all the white straight rock geek worship, the Supremes shimmied their way to pop perfection in 1966. Neither “Lust for Life” nor “Someday” nor any other beat-ganker does it better. Phil Collins can eat poop. –Marc Hogan

Listen: The Supremes: “You Can’t Hurry Love”

Etta James: “At Last” (1961)

When love finally comes, Etta James meets it with the unhurried cool of someone shuffling to catch an early bus. Maybe she’s too wounded, or maybe she's an ascetic, but probably she's just savoring—too used to going without to remember how to be excitable. Instead she’s content to stretch the moment out like taffy, itself a new kind of wait. But where her measured delivery suggests she’s entering into this thing one limb at a time, as if slipping into an icy pool, the orchestration tells a different story. With “life is like a song,” she even confesses as much. While she stands solid and resolute, dispensing her release in controlled bursts, the strings’ backflips, twirls, and knots do the rest of her work. They’re the butterflies, the relief and the joy, and they’ve never been more beautifully expressed than they are here. –Mark Pytlik

Listen: Etta James: “At Last”

Marvin Gaye: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (1968)

Not even the California Raisins could fuck this one up. Gladys Knight and the Pips took “Grapevine” to No. 2 in 1967, a full year before Gaye’s was released, but when was the last time you heard Knight’s version? Gaye’s take on the song remains perhaps the darkest, fuzziest, most unglued moment in Motown history. Gaye’s voice was usually an ecstatic lilt, but here it’s a frozen paranoid sneer, the sound of a man collapsing inward into doubt and regret and hate. Gaye clamps down on the “you mean that much to me” line with so much venom that we know it isn’t really true, not anymore. The murky Funk Brothers arrangement offers no respite: the organ bubbles, the Bernard Herrmann strings screech, the guitars echo and moan, and you know just as well as Gaye does that his life is about to end. There’s no hope anywhere in the song. It’s terrifying. –Tom Breihan

Listen: Marvin Gaye: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”

The Beach Boys: “Good Vibrations” (1966)

The pressure to surpass Pet Sounds and keep apace with the ante-upping Beatles set the stage for this obsessive-compulsive, career-derailing masterpiece. Wilson amassed hours upon hours of tape at multiple studios to cobble together his intricately segmented, cut’n’paste “pocket symphony,” reportedly spending anywhere between $16-50,000 to produce three-and-a-half minutes of weird yet accessible pop. Besides its haunting organs, shapeshifting riffs, and cubist harmonies, “Good Vibrations” introduced the electro-Theremin (now often known as the Tannerin, its interface involves shifting the pitch of a sine wave by sliding a knob across a dummy keyboard) to the world at large, its bright eeriness audibly echoing Wilson’s knack for blending the mundane with the extraterrestrial. –Brian Howe

Listen: The Beach Boys: “Good Vibrations”

The Shangri-Las: “Out in the Streets” (1965)

The Shangri-Las perfected pop melodrama, and their best songs feel like a synthesis of Douglas Sirk, Beatlemania, Hells Angels, and a support group for middle-aged manic depressives. Yes, the group addressed the most lurid elements of 1960s suburbia, from rape and death to skull-smashing bikers and abused dropouts. But “Out in the Streets” accomplishes the tremendous feat of transforming teen-beat puppy love and leather-laced fetishism into the foundations of adulthood: nostalgia, boredom, and guilt.

Surrounded by siren-like howls and orchestral plinks, the girls rue their own appeal and repent for sanitizing their bad-boy beaus. As a premise, this apology has the benefits of uniting pride and pathos: “He used to act bad/He used to, but he quit it/It makes me so sad/’Cause I know that he did it for me.” The underlying message is that we should hate ourselves as penitence for our beauty, and this song is therefore the finest distillation of the teenage dream ever recorded. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: The Shangri-Las: “Out in the Streets”

The Beatles: “Tomorrow Never Knows” (1966)

Where did this come from? Drugs, you say? Well, sure… Timothy Leary was involved, as he so often was in those days. His book The Psychedelic Experience, itself based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, served as an inspiration. LSD had come to the boys a year earlier and Lennon had imbibed and things were changing fast. In another year, the minds of John’s fellow Beatles would begin to look rather small, Yoko was someone smart and hip to talk to, and the end was nigh. But here the Beatles are together—Paul’s the avant-garde one, as he’d later say, bringing in the tape loops—and the band together is a serious force.

Never had pop swirled quite like this—the seagulls, the sitar drone, the sped-up orchestral bits. It was music without edges, all porous borders, one sound bleeding into the next. But it wasn’t some new age drift, either, what with Ringo compensating for all the space in his part by hitting each stutter-stop beat with double force, and the snarling backward lead zigzagging ribbon-like down the rabbit hole. Disorienting contrast is the power of this song—a possible bad trip talk-down that happens to be scary as shit—and explains why it loomed mightily above the nascent psychedelic movement. “Listen to the color of your dreams,” Lennon suggested, and an army of baby boomers was ready to give it a try, for good or ill. –Mark Richardson

Listen: The Beatles: “Tomorrow Never Knows”

The Crystals: “Then He Kissed Me” (1963)

Some of the sweetest minutes in all of pop music. Lyrically, it couldn’t be any less lascivious—promises of fidelity, taking the boy home to meet the folks, and that kiss sounds more like a quick peck then a tongue bath—but it’s all so charming that it could melt the staunchest libertine’s heart. The Crystals’ indelible ode to chastity and monogamy gave license to a thousand indie pop bands who longed for a time when music wasn’t so (eww) sexual, but its real legacy is in everything from the Jackson 5 to New Edition to a thousand teen pop hits from the last 40 years. They’re songs for audiences trying to articulate the rush of a first crush before the sticky biological urges muck everything up. We may not live in a hand-holding world anymore—it probably wasn’t much of a hand-holding world even then—but puppy love is still a helluva thing. –Jess Harvell

Listen: The Crystals: “Then He Kissed Me”

Creedence Clearwater Revival: “Fortunate Son” (1969)

For all the hype about the 1960s being a time when politics and music merged into a great shining sword that thwarted racism and ended war, few of the era’s protest songs have retained significant power outside of their initial context. Yet “Fortunate Son” has lost none of the ferocity with which it was initially written and recorded. Sure, it’s great to hold hands and sing “We Shall Overcome” together, but angry times call for angry songs, spelled out in blunt language and bold colors.

John Fogerty was perfect for this kind of righteous frustration, his voice strangled but defiant, punctuated by “Lord” invocations and slurring “it ain’t me” into a garbled wail. Placed over a rhythm-section rumble and a pissed-off breakdown, and over in barely two minutes, it’s enough of a middle finger to be rightly labeled as punk’s cool uncle. The very fact of its continued political relevance only makes it sound even more livid, foaming at the mouth over how little has changed these last 40 years. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: Creedence Clearwater Revival: “Fortunate Son”

The Stooges: “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (1969)

No, Iggy Stooge (not yet Pop) doesn’t want to be your boyfriend. He wants to be your dog. Backed by fuzzed-out riffs and thumping bass, Ig speak-sings his intentions: “I’m so messed up/I want you here.” And by the chorus, he sounds as hollow as a zombie, insistently repeating: “Now I wanna... be your dog.” With a single phrase, he turns the pop trope of puppy love into a disturbing ode to submission, self-effacement, and sheer animal instinct.

Having defected from the Velvets, the classically trained John Cale handles production by adding sleigh bells and an endlessly repeated single-note piano riff. Instead of deflating the grit and toughness of the music, it elevates the tension and enhances the mood of numbed detachment. And in the end, it’s that unsettling sense of monotonous resolution in Iggy’s pleas that makes this sound so dangerous. –John Motley

Listen: The Stooges: “I Wanna Be Your Dog”

Aretha Franklin: “Think” (1968)

Franklin brings the funk with gospel fervor, and the Muscle Shoals rhythm section delivers it with a swing in its step. Forget girl power: Aretha was the ultimate woman, not to be pushed around, and “Think” brims with the confidence of a singer at the very top of her game. It’s barely two minutes long, but the song is still a veritable suite, with four sections you’ll never get out of your head. If the “freedom!” bridge doesn’t shoot you full of energy and make you yearn for the highway, check your pulse. Aretha is dynamite, but this song is also a clinic in back-up singing—the interplay between lead and accomplices is so ridiculously tight one can’t even exist without the other. The group interplay cements the powerful women’s lib message of earlier hit “Respect” (and doubles as a powerful race-relations message). “Think” is more than just another excellent Atlantic soul side. “Think” is power. –Joe Tangari

Listen: Aretha Franklin: “Think”

The Beach Boys: “Don’t Worry Baby” (1964)

We’ve all been there. Shooting our mouths off about our cars until, finally, it’s time to put up or shut up. We hope that nothing goes wrong, but there's so much that could. We’d be sunk, really, if it weren’t for the encouragement of that special girl. With her love riding shotgun, suddenly the makeshift drag strip at the abandoned drive-in theater doesn’t seem quite so foreboding.

OK, so maybe the appeal of this one has nothing to do with the specifics of the story, but surely we can all relate to the idea of support, how knowing that someone cares for you regardless of what happens gives you strength to do great things. And the music is such a perfect accompaniment to this theme, so damn cozy and warm, a tender respite from the stressful reality of the main narrative. It’s that night in bed with your lover before the big day, that night you wish could last forever. –Mark Richardson

Listen: The Beach Boys: “Don’t Worry Baby”

The Band: “The Weight” (1968)

Like so many 1960s stunners, “The Weight” has nearly been spoiled rotten by that culture-siphoning boom-boom-boomer trash The Big Chill, but the Robbie Robertson–penned tune is deeper and more biblical than pass-the-pain ibuprofen ideology. Led by drummer Levon Helm’s slurry roar and hammered home by Rick Danko’s shouty backup vocals, Robertson mirrored Christian allusions to the devil and the end of time with the emotional dismemberment of small-town living. Certainly the Band’s best-known song, “The Weight” is pushed along by a chummy saloon-style piano line and country-ish three-part harmonies making it a no-brainer sing-along jukebox highlight, capable of raising the spirits of even the damnedest drunks yet still complex enough to arouse even the most spiritually confounded. –Sean Fennessey

Listen: The Band: “The Weight”

The Rolling Stones: “Gimme Shelter” (1969)

The Rolling Stones’ most malevolent song is now indelibly linked to murderous riots and racist bikers. Of course, Altamont was merely a reflection of this song’s apocalyptic politics. Bill Wyman’s trembling bass and Charlie Watts’ percussive lightning conjure up a fire-and-brimstone typhoon of blood, guns, and doom. Keith Richards’ hands are covered in barbed wire and Mick Jagger laces together unremitting images with no concrete objects. They therefore connect all of our greatest psychopaths—assassins, street fighters, My Lai soldiers—into one swelling throng. Scalding harmonica and torrential guitar scatter like shrapnel, and Merry Clayton’s feverish backup summons annihilationist gospel and risqué teen pop. In the last few seconds, Jagger proposes that, well, “Love, sister, it’s just a kiss away.” But no one actually believes that. There’s a reason the Stones aren’t known for their romanticism, and these sinners can’t escape the damnation of their own hell. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: The Rolling Stones: “Gimme Shelter”

Led Zeppelin: “Dazed and Confused” (1969)

I don’t care who you are. You could bring me to shows, give me all the best drugs, steal stuff from work for me; you could rock my shit in every other way, but if you’re not down with “Dazed and Confused,” I can’t hang out with you. This is the numbest, blackest, taking-the-least-possible-amount-of-shit track any rock band ever recorded (next to “When the Levee Breaks”). Sure, we’ve all heard how Jimmy Page stole his licks and Robert Plant is just a big hippie, but that doesn’t matter, does it? The bassline is what matters. Bonzo’s triplet tom rolls into the second verse are what matters. Moaning, wailing smears of acid noise guitar that just happen to point down, and something that lets me know it’s OK to be kind of evil sometimes—these things separate the fun from the fundamental. It’s the real shit. –Dominique Leone

Listen: Led Zeppelin: “Dazed and Confused”

Desmond Dekker & the Aces: “Israelites” (1969)

The dearly departed Desmond Dacres will have to argue with Toots Hibbert and Lee Perry over who actually invented reggae, but “Israelites” is as good a starting place as any. Dekker’s mighty lament for the sufferer’s woe of the titular tribe still rides ska’s backbeat, but clipped to a stately lilt. The organ and stabbing guitar lock with percolator percussion for a groove that’s irresistible, but never bouncy like prime ska.

The warm, glowing, muffled quality of Perry’s recording—a ghostly halo of echo and reverb—was at least partially created by feeding seemingly paltry two-track recordings back into themselves. Dekker’s voice produces Perry’s nimbus all on its own. The swaying, heat-warped quality of “Israelites” feels like gospel and the blues, and considering the song links Biblical trials with the hustle of modern poverty, the comparison’s not as far off as it might seem. “Get up in the morning/Slaving for bread, sir/So that every mouth can be fed/Oh, oh, the Israelites.”

And it was a huge hit, the first of Jamaica’s exports to reach an audience off the island, going Top 10 in both the U.S. and the UK. It earned Dekker a tribute from a (rightfully) awed Beatles and made him Jamaica’s first international sensation. Saint Bob would of course eclipse Dekker in popularity, but little in the Marley catalog has this kind of power. –Jess Harvell

Listen: Desmond Dekker & the Aces: “Israelites”

The Who: “I Can’t Explain” (1965)

You could stop this song after four seconds and still hear why the Who’s first single launched their career back in 1965, why they continued to open shows with it decades later, and why it remains a favorite more than 40 years on. Those syncopated bursts of contained explosion constitute one of the most perfect power-pop riffs ever strummed, and the only way to improve on it is to add Keith Moon’s hyperactive drumming to fill in the charged silences between the chords. If that’s all there was to “I Can’t Explain”... well, it would have probably still made the list, but the snake attached to that head is a great song as well as a persuasive argument against originality in rock.

Written by Pete Townsend as a blatant Kinks rip-off, “I Can’t Explain” ably replicates the Davies’ herky-jerky rock rhythms right down to the handclaps, but the Who supe it up with American pop harmonies and a hooky chorus that hints at their meaty, beaty, big, and bouncy singles to follow. Writing in Rolling Stone in the early 1970s, Townsend mused, “It seems to be about the frustrations of a young person who is so incoherent and uneducated that he can’t state his case to the bourgeois intellectual blah blah blah. Or, of course, it might be about drugs.” Either way it’s also about the best song the Who ever recorded. –Stephen M. Deusner

Listen: The Who: “I Can’t Explain”

Johnny Cash: “Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison)” (1968)

“Hello. I’m Johnny Cash.” That opening line, so deadpan and needless—everybody, especially in Folsom, knows who Johnny Cash is—may be the genesis of the Man in Black myth, even more so than the song “Man in Black.” Making such a humble introduction, Cash sounds larger than life—definitely larger than prison—and he delivers an electric, excited performance on his signature Sun hit.

Egged on by W. S. Holland’s driving snare and Luther Perkins’ breakout guitar solos, Cash gives a shout-out to the Razorbacks (“Soo-ey!”) and after the second verse laughs a playful heidi-ho. But as the song progresses, his freewheeling energy becomes hurried and dogged, and he sounds like a truly desperate man, as haunted by the idea of confinement as any of the inmates—a measure of how deep his identification with his audience went. The fear in his voice still resonates decades later, long after the man has died and the Man in Black has become a canonical American figure. –Stephen M. Deusner

Listen: Johnny Cash: “Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison)”

The Beach Boys: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (1966)

Love songs in rock and roll can be many things—lusty, lecherous, pining, resigned, anguished, sweet—but “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is the rare one that feels genuinely innocent. It kicks in with a music box harp figure that’s quickly obliterated by Brian Wilson’s Phil Spector–sized drum sound—it’s the sound of reality briefly shattering fantasy. The reality for these lovers is that they’re simply too young to be out on their own. But they can imagine, and their fantasy magnifies every child’s naïve wish to become an adult—freedom without the mortgage, cars that need fixing, and lack of adequate health insurance.

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” has everything you love about the Beach Boys in spades: the Wall of Sound Jr., the scarcely believable harmonies, the dreamtime prosody, and the imaginative instrumentation. It’s the ultimate starry-eyed teenage symphony to God, and it perfectly captures the earnest devotion we only seem capable of in a small window of years. –Joe Tangari

Listen: The Beach Boys: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”

The Ronettes: “Be My Baby” (1963)

Phil Spector hasn’t descended into self-parody the way some others on this list have, but certainly not for lack of trying. Trigger happy, possibly unhinged, and now sporting a bizarre Hair Bear Bunch afro, if Spector had been a star in his own right, his trials and travails would be all over Court TV. Thankfully, he hid behind the mixing desk and the biggest, blackest shades this side of Jack Nietzsche, thereby preserving some of his legacy. (Like you can listen to “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough” without a reflexive twinge of sadness.)

Critic David Toop has talked about the disconnect between hearing “Be My Baby” on record and seeing the Ronettes live on stage, lost in cavernous British theaters in their immaculate print dresses, their live backing bands not even able to approximate the force of Spector’s Wrecking Crew. The first time I ever really heard “Be My Baby” was on a PBS special of all things, on a TV with a shitty mono speaker—and even then it felt Cinemascope wide and THX intense.

But if “Be My Baby” birthed modern studio pop—the point at which records became artifacts that could not be accurately (or at least easily) replicated in the real world—then it would be merely impressive. What makes it soar, punch holes in hearts as well as walls, is the lead vocal by Ronnie Bennett. Bennett’s voice was a little raw, unlike Darlene Love or Diana Ross, and her kittenish performance that strains slightly at the chorus transmutes the slightly sappy lyrics into possibly the best pop song of all time. –Jess Harvell

Listen: The Ronettes: “Be My Baby”

The Beatles: “A Day in the Life” (1967)

The Beatles had attempted ambitious mosaics before (“She Said She Said,” “Tomorrow Never Knows”), but Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s epic finale catalogues every explosive element of the Fab Four. George Martin’s production revolutionized pop music with its avant-garde opulence. Lennon and McCartney’s aural bricolage elevates and parodies itself, and their lyrics distance the group from naiveté and Summer-of-Love idealism. Lest we forget, the opening line notes how someone “blew his mind out in a car” and finds Lennon cackling at corpses, media saturation, and humanity’s natural disposition toward violence.

When paired with hailing folk and piano, Lennon’s portion is as wry and poignant as rock is ever likely to get. In fact, “A Day in the Life” is pretty much the archetype for the Lennon/McCartney duality, firmly distinguishing John as a nightmarish narcophilosopher and Paul as a pragmatic businessman with a schedule to keep. But with its startling juxtaposition of pop melodies and flowery experimentalism, “A Day in the Life” consolidates all of the group’s audiences. Here is a song for preteens and acidheads, surrealists and Sinatra fans, the Monkees and the Manson family. That final crescendo, with all its disembodied screams and orchestral terrorism, is surely the most famous—and strident—ending of any song in the last 50 years: a caterwauling assemblage of Zen humming, instrumental flairs, and three monolithic pianos stacked on top of one another. Somehow the world’s greatest musical icons closed their most famous album with a solid 30 seconds of morbid textural sculpture. By the time the dust settled, Paul was dead, atonalism had gone pop, and four Liverpudlian rockers became high-art heroes. –Alex Linhardt

Listen: The Beatles: “A Day in the Life”

Bob Dylan: “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965)

From its first double-drum crack (which Bruce Springsteen later described as the sound of someone “kicking open the door to your mind”), to its mythical opening couplet (a perfectly seething “Once upon a time...”), “Like a Rolling Stone” is one of Dylan’s strangest and most enthralling moments, a big, shambling statement that hovers on the verge of total dissolution, threatening to shimmy your record player (and, potentially, your entire life) off the shelf and onto the floor. One minute in, when Dylan finally hits the chorus, glibly hollering “How does it feeeel?” to an unnamed subject (or possibly himself), his sneer is so convincing it’s difficult not to feel deeply ashamed of everything you’ve ever done, but still desperate for five more minutes of lashings.

It’s hard to overstate the cultural heft of “Like a Rolling Stone,” which puttered to No. 2 on the pop chart (the first song of its length to do so) and hovered there for nearly three months. In 2005’s Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, Greil Marcus exhausts 200 pages dissecting the socio-political context and lyrical nuances of “Like a Rolling Stone,” ultimately christening the track “a triumph of craft, inspiration, will, and intent,” and, more importantly, “a rewrite of the world itself.” Certainly, the song transforms every time it’s played, expertly adapting to new generations and new vices, just wobbly and amorphous and dangerous enough to knock us over again and again. –Amanda Petrusich

Listen: Bob Dylan: “Like a Rolling Stone”

Sam Cooke: “A Change Is Gonna Come” (1964)

Filtered through a vessel of honest hurt, message and moment meet modern gospel. Suffering from the recent death of his 18-month old son Vincent and troubled by the omnipotent specter of racism, Cooke caught the unsteady temperament of a nation. Struck by Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” the Mississippi native detected the folk movement’s crucial sense of understanding; they “may not sound as good but they people believe them more,” he once said. Sam Cooke sounds pretty great on “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

After Martin Luther King was assassinated, Rosa Parks listened to “A Change Is Gonna Come” for comfort. The spiritual synergy between King’s preaching and the song’s painful vignettes is powerful. Both are battered, bruised but vigorous. Rene Hall’s classic arrangement, bolstered by French horns, timpani, and a flowering orchestra is pure Hollywood magic but Cooke subverts the Disneyland pomp with anguished realism: “It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die/’Cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky.” “A Change Is Gonna Come” was released as part of a single only after Cooke’s murky murder. He never felt its rapturous reception. Yet, as long as change aches for resolution, the song will stand. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Sam Cooke: “A Change Is Gonna Come”

The Jackson 5: “I Want You Back” (1969)

Writers and producers Freddie Perren, Fonce Mizell, and Deke Richards originally envisioned this as the backing track for a Gladys Knight and the Pips song, but Berry Gordy had other ideas. With a little rewriting he heard it as the perfect vehicle to introduce five kids he’d just signed from Gary, Ind. And as was so often the case throughout the 1960s, Gordy was right.

What is it about this song that cuts through generations and trends and cynicism and makes everyone within its range prick up ears and loosen hips? I once thought my age had something to do with my deep love of this song (it hit the Hot 100 two months and a day after my birth) but here Pitchfork writers up to 15 years my junior heard something special just as clearly. Some of it is Michael Jackson’s voice reaching beyond its years, some of it is the Five’s supportive backing. But really I think it’s the song’s most basic structure, possibly the best chord progression in pop music history. The descending bit on the chorus is joy reduced to its molecular level: I / IV / vi / iii / IV / I / ii / V / I. –Mark Richardson

Listen: The Jackson 5: “I Want You Back”

The Beach Boys: “God Only Knows” (1966)

I’m sure you’ve read these: “the world’s greatest song,” “Brian Wilson’s masterpiece,” “the most beautiful piece of music ever recorded.” Yes, the initiation into the Museum of Western Popular Music is always rough, as credible historians rush to summarize our collective experiences in short phrases. But for better or worse, “God Only Knows” is the kind of song that’s almost impossible for me to talk about divorced from the way it makes me feel: sad, in love, honestly grateful, but also a little hopeless. Even in mono, it’s like being swept up by a wave of compassion but still getting bruised.

The first words Carl Wilson sings, “I may not always love you,” are already uncertain, so if you need a tie into the legacy of 1960s youth culture, glance no further than the naïve but strained optimism locked inside this song. Yet Carl made this uncertainty sound gorgeous. The voices that sail behind his might just as well be a quartet of violas and cellos playing counterpoint that’d already been obsessed over a few times before they got it. “God Only Knows” is so ideally conceptualized and realized, critics can’t help but support it. Somehow, even that can’t turn it into an art exhibit; its humanity resists the attempt. To me, this song is a goodbye to being a kid, and hoping that love actually is the answer. And almost nobody knows if it is. –Dominique Leone

Listen: The Beach Boys: “God Only Knows”