MUSIC
Pitchfork released their top 200 songs of the 1960s -- definitely worth a perusal and some downloads. Highlights:
19. The Beatles: "Tomorrow Never Knows"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
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.
17. Creedence Clearwater Revival: Fortunate Son
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 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.
14. 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 forboding.
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.
13. The Band: "The Weight"
1968
Available on Music From Big Pink
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.
12. The Rolling Stones: "Gimme Shelter"
1969
Available on Let It Bleed
The Rolling Stones' most malevolent single 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.
8. Johnny Cash: "Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison)"
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#32), UK (N/A)
"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.
7. The Beach Boys: "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
1966
Available on Pet Sounds
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.
6. The Ronettes: "Be My Baby"
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#4)
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.
2. 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, Indiana. 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: G / C / G / Em / Am / C / G.
1. The Beach Boys: "God Only Knows"
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#39), UK (#2)
Available on Pet Sounds
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 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, Wilson 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.
Pitchfork released their top 200 songs of the 1960s -- definitely worth a perusal and some downloads. Highlights:
19. The Beatles: "Tomorrow Never Knows"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
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.
17. Creedence Clearwater Revival: Fortunate Son
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 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.
14. 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 forboding.
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.
13. The Band: "The Weight"
1968
Available on Music From Big Pink
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.
12. The Rolling Stones: "Gimme Shelter"
1969
Available on Let It Bleed
The Rolling Stones' most malevolent single 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.
8. Johnny Cash: "Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison)"
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#32), UK (N/A)
"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.
7. The Beach Boys: "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
1966
Available on Pet Sounds
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.
6. The Ronettes: "Be My Baby"
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#4)
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.
2. 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, Indiana. 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: G / C / G / Em / Am / C / G.
1. The Beach Boys: "God Only Knows"
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#39), UK (#2)
Available on Pet Sounds
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 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, Wilson 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.
posted by D @ 6:03 AM
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