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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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