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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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