My 2006 Picks # Surprise : Paul Simon

Since severing his epochal partnership with Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon's solo career been characterized by restless reinvention. But while it's easy to see such disparate, cross-cultural collaborations as Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints as Simon's quest for new creative partnerships, beneath them lies a more crucial willingness to continually challenge the very assumptions and craft of his own songwriting. Six years after his sublime, underappreciated You're the One Simon has pushed that sensibility into a rewarding, if equally unlikely, partnership with Brian Eno.

The playful "Sure Don't Feel Like Love" argues Simon can still beckon his more traditional pop muse at will. Yet some of his best work here turns as much on hypnotic, if no less politically pointed, quasi-spoken word pieces (like "Wartime Prayers" and the gripping, post 9/11 rumination "How Can You Live in the Northeast?") as traditional songcraft.

Eno is credited with providing "Sonic Landscape" to Simon's production, but also co-wrote three tracks, infusing "Another Galaxy" with contrasting doses of bracing energy and ethereal elegance, while seasoning the more traditional folk musings of "Once Upon a Time There Was An Ocean" with infectious electro-funk rhythms. "Outrageous," their best full collaboration, suggests that while Eno and Simon may approach world music - and indeed most pop forms - from polar extremes, the common ground they find is truly elevated.

In an era when many of his peers are content to craft mere artistic comebacks, Simon's re-emergence here is a bold, compelling step forward. --Jerry McCulley

My 2006 Picks # We Shall Overcome: Bruce Springsteen

The premise was simple. Bruce Springsteen invites a dozen or so New York City musicians--packing banjos, fiddles, accordions and the like--to his New Jersey farmhouse for a three-day hootenanny, and tape is rolling. The results are sublime, his 21st album featuring their versions of songs harvested from Springsteen's dog-eared LPs by Pete Seeger.

Not all written by Seeger, the songs are how the American folk icon interpreted them, and these organic recordings, with no rehearsals or overdubs, pay tribute with the simplicity and spontaneity he intended. It's not hard to link Springsteen's dissatisfaction with American politics to the protest song "We Shall Overcome" or even the Irish ballad "Mrs. McGrath," where he alters the lyrics to read, "I'd rather have my son as he used to be/Than the King of America and his whole navy."

But the beauty of these Seeger Sessions are pieces that underscore the mood of the bandleader, which borders on down-home amusement: the bluegrass outlaw ballad "Jesse James," the Dylanesque "Pay Me My Money Down" and the euphoric "Jacob's Ladder," a gumbo-and-whiskey-fueled romp that could pass for the closing hymn at the Church of Asbury Park. --Scott Holter

2006 My Picks # The Captain and the Kid : Elton John

The degree to which you'll like The Captain & the Kid is going to depend on your personal history with Sir Elton John. If you're a resolute follower who was once reduced to a quivering mass of humility by "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" and then revived by the blast of pop liberation that was "Philadelphia Freedom" (a single that later appeared on the CD version of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, the album to which this disc is a sequel) you'll have enough invested to appreciate the concept. If, on the other hand, you're a late arrival to the Rocket Man's repertoire, you'll have to adjust your expectations. Kid, unlike more recent efforts, isn't aiming itself at the lite-FM listening masses. What it's asking instead is that you return yourself to your 1970s-era childhood bedroom, flop on the bed, and lock the door, or at least fasten an elastic band around your MTV-addled attention span. This is total-immersion music, and it's got 30 years worth of stories to tell.

The Captain and the Kid are John and Bernie Taupin, his longtime songwriting partner. The music, a choir-enhanced swerve through genres including pop, rock, blues, folk, and country with signature piano riffs thrown in nearly everywhere, chronicles their splintery relationship. Innocence and hope ("Postcards from Richard Nixon") give way to success and joy ("Just Like Noah's Ark"), which eventually leads to discontent ("Tinderbox") and disaster ("And the House Fell Down"). A shot at redemption ("The Bridge") later finds the Captain; reflection ("Old 67") and a joyous reunion (the title track) follow.

Theirs is ultimately a simple story, but John and Taupin suffuse it with hypnotic sentimentality--along with the narrative, echoes of past hits wander into several classic-sounding tracks. "Tiny Dancer" darts through the cracked-voice beauty of "Blues Never Fade Away" and "The Bridge," for example, while "Wouldn't HaveYou Any Other Way (NYC)" works in hints at both "Candle in the Wind" and "Where to Now St. Peter." Other songs shake loose less likely influences ("I Must Have Lost it on the Wind" sounds like something off a vintage Linda Ronstadt album), but all are compellingly steeped in context; if you don't get the late-disc reference to fine silk suits and six-inch heels, you'll wish you did. --Tammy La Gorce

2006 My Picks

Well Folks as we near the end of 2006 - am gonna be a bit more self indulgent. In the next few weeks and posts will put up reviews of albums which are my favourite releases of 2006.

I start with my current favourite Elton John's new album "The Captain & The Kid" !!!

Enjoy & Comments Welcome

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s #10-1

10. Desmond Dekker & The Aces: "Israelites"
(Desmond Dekker)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#9), UK (#1, #10 for 1975 reissue)
Available on Rockin' Steady: The Best of Desmond Dekker

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

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9. The Who: "I Can't Explain"
(Pete Townshend)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#8)
Available on My Generation

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

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8. Johnny Cash: "Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison)"
(Johnny Cash)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#32), UK (N/A)
Available on At Folsom Prison

"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

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7. The Beach Boys: "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
(Tony Asher/Brian Wilson)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#8), UK (N/A)
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. --Joe Tangari

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6. The Ronettes: "Be My Baby"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#4)
Available on The Best of the Ronettes

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

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5. The Beatles: "A Day in the Life"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

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

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4. Bob Dylan: "Like a Rolling Stone"
(Bob Dylan)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (#4)
Available on Highway 61 Revisited

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 #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

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3. Sam Cooke: "A Change Is Gonna Come"
(Sam Cooke)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#31), UK (N/A)
Available on The Man and His Music

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

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2. The Jackson 5: "I Want You Back"
(Berry Gordy, Jr./Alphonso Mizell/Freddie Perren/Deke Richards)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#2)
Available on Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5

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: I / IV / vi / iii / IV / I / ii / V / I. --Mark Richardson

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1. The Beach Boys: "God Only Knows"
(Tony Asher/Brian Wilson)
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 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

Taken From Pitchforkmedia Website

ww.pitchforkmedia.com

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s #20-11

20. The Shangri-Las: "Out in the Streets"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Myrmidons of Melodrama

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

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19. The Beatles: "Tomorrow Never Knows"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Revolver

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

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18. The Crystals: "Then He Kissed Me"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (#6), UK (#2)
Available on The Best of the Crystals

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 tonguebath-- 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

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17. Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Fortunate Son"
(John Fogerty)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#14), UK (N/A)
Available on Willy and the Poor Boys

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

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16. The Stooges: "I Wanna Be Your Dog"
(Dave Alexander/Ron Asheton/Scott Asheton/Iggy Pop)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Stooges

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

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15. Aretha Franklin: "Think"
(Aretha Franklin/Teddy White)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#7), UK (#26, #31 for 1990 reissue)
Available on Aretha Now

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

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14. The Beach Boys: "Don't Worry Baby"
(Roger Christian/Brian Wilson)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#24), UK (N/A)
Available on Endless Summer

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. --Mark Richardson

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13. The Band: "The Weight"
(Robbie Robertson)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#21)
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. --Sean Fennessey

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12. The Rolling Stones: "Gimme Shelter"
(Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Let It Bleed

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

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11. Led Zeppelin: "Dazed and Confused"
(Jimmy Page)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Led Zeppelin

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 okay to be kind of evil sometimes-- these things separate the fun from the fundamental. It's the real shit. --Dominique Leone

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s #40-21

40. The Zombies: "This Will Be Our Year"
(Chris White)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Odessey and Oracle

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

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39. The Rolling Stones: "Sympathy for the Devil"
(Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Beggars Banquet

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 palefaced 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

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38. The Meters: "Cissy Strut"
(Ziggy Modeliste/Art Neville/Leo Nocentelli/George Porter, Jr.)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#23), UK (N/A)
Available on The Very Best of the Meters

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 demi-gods 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

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37. Simon & Garfunkel: "The Sound of Silence"
(Paul Simon)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (N/A)
Available on Greatest Hits

"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 and 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 #1, those additions also helped shed the original's choirboy wimpiness. --John Motley

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36. 13th Floor Elevators: "You're Gonna Miss Me"
(Roky Erickson)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators

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

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35. Johnny Cash: "Ring of Fire"
(June Carter Cash/Merle Kilgore)
1963
Chart info: U.S. (#17), UK (N/A)
Available on The Essential Johnny Cash

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

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34. The Who: "The Kids Are Alright"
(Pete Townshend)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on My Generation

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

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33. James Brown & the Famous Flames: "It's a Man's Man's Man's World"
(James Brown/Betty Jean Newsome)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#8), UK (#13)
Available on JB40: 40th Anniversary Collection

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

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32. Ennio Morricone: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Main Theme)"
(Ennio Morricone)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Ennio Morricone Anthology: A Fistful of Film Music

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 it over stampeding horses and shotgun blasts. It's kaleidoscopic, exhilarating, and incontrovertibly badass. --Alex Linhardt

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31. Nico: "These Days"
(Jackson Browne)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Chelsea Girl

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

30. The Shangri-Las: "Leader of the Pack"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Shadow Morton)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#11, #3 for 1972 reissue)
Available on Myrmidons of Melodrama

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-La's. "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

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29. The Kinks: "Waterloo Sunset"
(Ray Davies)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (#2)
Available on Something Else by the Kinks

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 re-imagined 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

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28. Otis Redding: "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay"
(Steve Cropper/Otis Redding)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#3)
Available on Very Best of Otis Redding

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 #1 record. --Alex Linhardt

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27. The Velvet Underground: "I'm Waiting for the Man"
(Lou Reed)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Velvet Underground & Nico

"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

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26. The Beatles: "I Am the Walrus"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Magical Mystery Tour

"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

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25. The Rolling Stones: "Paint It Black"
(Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1)
Available on Aftermath

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

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24. The Supremes: "You Can't Hurry Love"
(Lamont Dozier/Brian Holland/Eddie Holland)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#3)
Available on The Ultimate Collection

"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

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23. Etta James: "At Last"
(Mack Gordon/Harry Warren)
1961
Chart info: U.S. (#47), UK (N/A)
Available on The Essential Etta James

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

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22. Marvin Gaye: "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"
(Barrett Strong/Norman Whitfield)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1)
Available on The Very Best of Marvin Gaye

Not even the California Raisins could fuck this one up. Gladys Knight and the Pips took "Grapevine" to #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

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21. The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations"
(Mike Love/Brian Wilson)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1, #18 for 1976 reissue)
Available on Endless Summer

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

The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s #60-41

60. Sly & the Family Stone: "Hot Fun in the Summertime"
(Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#2), UK (N/A)
Available on Anthology

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

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59. The Velvet Underground: "Sunday Morning"
(John Cale/Lou Reed)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Velvet Underground & Nico

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

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58. The Beatles: "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#1)
Available on Meet the Beatles!

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

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57. Tommy James & the Shondells: "Crimson and Clover"
(Tommy James/Peter Lucia)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (N/A)
Available on Crimson & Clover

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

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56. Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot: "Bonnie and Clyde"
(Serge Gainsbourg)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Comic Strip

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 bass line, dizzy strings, and a bizarre hiccupping backing vocal, all of which turn simple strums into something hypnotizing. --John Motley

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55. Jackie Wilson: "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher"
(Gary Jackson/Raynard Miner/Carl Smith)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (#6), UK (#11)
Available on The Greatest Hits of Jackie Wilson

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, soul mate 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

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54. The Monkees: "Daydream Believer"
(John Stewart)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#5)
Available on The Birds, The Bees & the Monkees

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

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53. Led Zeppelin: "Whole Lotta Love"
(John Bonham/Willie Dixon/John Paul Jones/Jimmy Page/Robert Plant)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#4), UK (#21)
Available on Led Zeppelin II

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

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52. Ray Charles: "Georgia on My Mind"
(Hoagy Carmichael/Stuart Gorrell)
1960
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#24)
Available on Anthology

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

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51. Ike & Tina Turner: "River Deep Mountain High"
(Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#88), UK (#3)
Available on Proud Mary: The Best of Ike & Tina Turner

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

50. Love: "Alone Again Or"
(Bryan MacLean)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on Forever Changes

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

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49. Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra: "Some Velvet Morning"
(Lee Hazlewood)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#26), UK (N/A)
Available on Nancy & Lee

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

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48. David Bowie: "Space Oddity"
(David Bowie)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (#15), UK (#5)
Available on Space Oddity

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 super-stardom-- 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

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47. The Beatles: "Eleanor Rigby"
(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
1966
Chart info: U.S. (#11), UK (#1)
Available on Revolver

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

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46. The Creation: "Making Time"
(D. Phillips/Kenny Pickett)
1967
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on We Are Paintermen

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

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45. Dusty Springfield: "Son of a Preacher Man"
(John Hurley/Ronnie Wilkins)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (#10), UK (#9)
Available on Dusty in Memphis

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 Steele 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

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44. The Supremes: "Where Did Our Love Go"
(Lamont Dozier/Brian Holland/Eddie Holland)
1964
Chart info: U.S. (#1), UK (#3)
Available on The Ultimate Collection

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

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43. Vince Guaraldi Trio: "Linus & Lucy"
(Vince Guaraldi)
1965
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on A Charlie Brown Christmas

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

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42. The Band: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
(Robbie Robertson)
1969
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Band

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

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41. Leonard Cohen: "Suzanne"
(Leonard Cohen)
1968
Chart info: U.S. (N/A), UK (N/A)
Available on The Songs of Leonard Cohen

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