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What genre of music did you listen to in the 60s? Hits of 1966

On the year's most popular singles and innovative methods in sound engineering...

Best singles of 1966 - Music Chronicle

In the 60s, the world of music expanded considerably. New genres appeared and now the music lovers of the world had a lot to choose from: jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, rock... By the way, rock was no longer just rock. Now everyone knew about classic rock, heavy rock, psychedelic and so on. Let's choose a specific year and find out what was popular then. So, 1966.

Strangers in the night

If jazz were a man, it is possible, and even certain, that his name would be Frank Sinatra and he would be wearing a trilby hat. The man's voice is immortal and echoes from records, radio and smartphones to this day. In 1966 he released another one of his hits called "Strangers in the Night".

In the beginning there was a melody and it was written by Bert Kaempfert for the film "A Man Can Be Killed". But later the lyrics were put on it and a little later Frank's voice and the song became an international hit.

The album of the same name became the most commercially successful album of Frank Sinatra's career, and the song "Strangers in the Night" itself hit number one on the Billboard chart and took a special place in the world of romance.

The Beatles forever...

Since 1963, no hit parade has been without The Beatles. And the band always occupied not one, but several positions in any chart, like seats in a cinema.

"Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" were the A and B sides of the single, which was released in December and hit #1 on the Billboard charts in January. Both songs were written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. It is because of the two writers that the songs are characterised by an ambiguity of meaning. So the song "We Can Work It Out" was started by Paul, he was thinking about his relationship with Jane Asher. But it was John who ended the song, and so, at the end of the chorus, the song goes into philosophy with John Lennon's impatient (as he himself said) phrase: "Life is short, there's no time for trivia".

Another Beatles single that climbed to the top of the charts featured two songs that were as different as night and day: the childlike and surreal "Yellow Submarine" and the groundbreaking, lonely "Eleanor Rigby". No wonder the single became popular - they were songs for all occasions, you want to rejoice thinking about yellow submarines, you want to wallow with Eleanor Rigby!

The beatles yellow submarine cover.
The Beatles "Yellow Submarine" cover.

"Eleanor Rigby" occupies an important place in the band's history. Its sound was not only something new for the Liverpool Four, it set the direction of popular music in general, and its composition has been compared to the music of Mozart and called an attempt to escape "the perennial epidemic of the avant-garde" (Composer Howard Goodall). According to the same composer, "Eleanor Rigby" is "an urban version of a tragic ballad".

One thing's for sure: if you're not a Beatles fan, you'd have a tough time living in the 60s. Of the five most popular singles, three are by the Liverpool band.

The third single on our list contained two songs: "Paperback writer" and "Rain". The first song was written in response to a challenge issued to Paul McCartney... by his aunt. She once asked Paul why do they always write love songs? Can't they write about something else? (It's not just you, Paul McCartney's aunt!). The song is a letter from an aspiring author to a publisher.

The "B" side of the record was dedicated to another unusual, but already more lyrical theme - rain. As John Lennon says, the idea for the song came to them in Sydney, as they found themselves there during the rainy season. "Rain" is dedicated to those people who "whine about bad weather all the time".

This song is also associated with something special: it was the first time the inverted phonograph effect was used in pop music. Although both Lennon and George Martin are credited with the idea of playing part of the recording backwards, in any case, this experiment was the beginning of many such innovations, which later found their way into the Beatles' next album, Revolver.

Innovative vibrations - pleasant vibrations

Another innovator in the world of music was the members of The Beach Boys. The single "Good Vibrations" was made up of parts recorded in four different studios. Brian Wilson compared recordings from all four studios and selected the best parts. This was the first time such an approach to creating a track had been used, and although it cost $50,000 to create, the effort paid off big time - the song became a hit, reaching number one on the most famous charts, and also reached number 6 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and was nominated for 3 Grammy Awards the following year, in '67.

Apart from the fact that all the songs we've been talking about today have topped the charts and captivated millions of listeners, they brought something new to the creation of music in general. Now the beauty of the melody was the fruit of labour not only of the performers and songwriters, but also of the sound engineers who could make the melody something new, special and unrecognisable. So the music reflected the spirit of novelty that was the aesthetic of the 60s.

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