All In Ten Years
I recently posted about a website that ranks music. It's based on lists from a lot of critics, and the 60s were clearly their favorite decade. No doubt the critics were biased--if your music is ragtime, or George Gershwin, or hip hop, the 60s are not your favorite. Even if you like rock it may not be.
Still, on the whole, if I'm asked what's the best decade for popular music in the 20th century, I've got to go with the 60s. Why?
For one thing, you've got pretty much the entire Beatles' output. After that, do we really need a second thing? Also, there's a lot of the best stuff from the Rolling Stones and the Who and other British Invasion bands.
There are a bunch of great American rock bands, such as the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons, Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, the Doors and CCR. Then there are more experimental acts, like Frank Zappa and the Velvet Underground. There's also the psychedelic sound, with Jefferson Airplane and Love and so on.
You've also got Motown--almost all their best singles come from the 60s. Then you've got the amazing records from Stax--Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Booker T. & The M.G.'s and so many more. There's a lot of the best of James Brown. And a fair amount of Ray Charles.
There are also the folkies--acts like Peter, Paul and Mary and the Kingston Trio, not to mention pop acts that grew out of folk, such as Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas and the Papas and the Lovin' Spoonful. And, of course, Bob Dylan, who broke the bounds of what popular music could be.
There's the Brill Building sound, with great songwriters such as Goffin and King, Greenwich and Barry, Mann and Weill and many others. Plus the great productions of Phil Spector.
And let's not leave out country music, with acts such as Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and Roger Miller doing some of their best work.
Then you've got somewhat different sounds that still made the charts, such as the music of Herb Alpert or Burt Bacharach. And even 60s made-up bands, like the Monkees and the Archies, are fun.
I'm merely scratching the surface. There are so many great singles from acts I haven't even mentioned, such as "Runaway," "The Twist," "Gypsy Woman," "Stand By Me," "The End Of The World," "Louie Louie," "Telstar," "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)," "Surfin' Bird," "I Got You Babe," "Yes I'm Ready," "Flowers On The Wall," "When A Man Loves A Woman," "Wild Thing," "A Whiter Shade Of Pale," "Build Me Up Buttercup," "La-La (Means I Love You),""Born To Be Wild," "Tighten Up," and "Dance To The Music."
I could list hundreds more, but I'd rather hear what the other decades have got. Sure, there's good stuff, but does it compare?
posted by LAGuy @ 8:43 AM
10 Comments:
The Seventies, dude.
Stop the decadocentrism. I would go with 1977-87
The 70s, like the 60s, has different eras within it. Some think the great stuff starts in the late 70s, while others feel the best stuff is over by the mid 70s.
By the way, I've got another decade thing planned for next week. You'll see.
All of these lists. I once went to Zingermans where I was greedily sampling stuff and encountered a young man who desperately wanted me to try his "third favorite mustard." My first thought was, of course, why not numbers 1 and 2? But my second thought was, I don't even have a list.
Now I love music (from many decades) and yet I have not made a list. Or have I? I made mix tapes- a list of sorts. I made playlists and sorted them by stars (before itunes abandoned people who to curate their own music).
So perhaps I have but never specifically, never to the point of Beach Baby comes behind Red Rubber Ball. Now decades are really hard as I have not LIVED in all of them. So, I think the twenties is a competing decade with the sixties music-wise. Louis Armstrong, the Duke, blues and jazz really begin here, and many great popular artists and even those wobbly vibratos. I never lived it (and probably am glad for it) but I say it competes. It may be my third favorite-
er- decade.
Okay, then I'll vote for 1966-1977. Twelve years. It gets half of the Beatles, and includes the early days of punk (and since later punk was just a repetition, that suffices).
It includes the great era of catchy songwriting, both soft-rock and pop: Simon & Garfunkel, Carole King, Elton John, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Diamond, Al Stewart, America, James Taylor, CSN[Y], Glen Campbell, and some amazingly catchy one-hit wonders. Their melodies retain their tunefulness even in other settings.
And it includes the growth of rock'n'roll into a complex, multi-faceted genre. A lot of major 1960s bands were better in the early 1970s -- the Who, for example.
Simon $ Garfunkel pretty much ended in 1970.
As for The Who, the majority may agree with your take, but their 60s work is everything up to and including Tommy. Most of my favorite Who singles come from the 60s, so I'd probably taken their 60s work over their 70s work, though it'd be close.
For the Stones it's everything up to and including Let It Bleed. And most of my favorite singles of theirs are from the 60s. Sure, they did fine work in the 70s, but I'll give the 60s the edge.
Every other British Invasion band that from the early Beatles era, and that's quite a few, did their best work in the 60s.
In my post above, I shifted the goalposts, voting for 1966-1977. That includes Simon & Garfunkel.
I agree that 60s Stones are better, on balance, than 70s Stones, although Some Girls is arguably their best album. But SG is from 1978 so my twelve-year quasi-decade misses it anyway.
I'm not surprised that you and I disagree on the relative value of the 1960s and 1970s Who. I would place Tommy (1969), Who's Next (1971), and Quadrophenia (1973) way at the top of their output, even though both double-albums are bloated.
I think that the Who's 1960s singles history is definitely inferior to the Stones', and vastly inferior to the Beatles'. If you threw these three bands' 1960s songs into one pile and rated them, the top 20 wouldn't contain any Who songs at all.
In any event, I rate the 1970s (or 1966-1977) as high as I do more because of the great songs than the great AOR. There have been great AOR bands in the decades since then. But no pop songwriter has equalled the best melodies of Carole King, Neil Diamond, or Gordon Lightfoot. The classic tin-pan-alley and Broadway writers wrote songs this catchy, but not mainstream pop songwriters. Taylor Swift? Hah.
Of course, Paul McCartney is that good, but he still had great tunes in the 70s, even though they were sappy.
I'm a big fan of The Who--I like them as much as I like the Stones. And while I recognize their fans tend to prefer their later stuff, starting with Tommy, if I'm going to put one of their songs on a mixtape (assuming they still existed) it would likely be one of their early ones.
Certainly their 70s albums are great--Who's Next might be their best of all, and stuff not quite as classic, like The Who By Numbers and Who Are You, are really good. Even their post-Moon stuff, like It's Hard, is good.
But my favorite singles were mostly recorded in the 60s. Which ones? Well, how about "I Can't Explain," "My Generation," "Substitute," "The Kids Are Alright," "Happy Jack," "Pictures Of Lily," "I Can See For Miles" "Magic Bus" and "Pinball Wizard"? They hold up favorably to anything else they did.
Interesting. I enjoy all the singles you listed, but if some mysterious force erased all of them, the only ones I would miss would be "The Kids Are Alright" and "I Can See For Miles".
In fact, while sticking with my view that Tommy, Who's Next, and Quadrophenia are their best era, if I had to choose between what came before that and what came after, I'd pick after. That would include great songs like "Slip Kid", "Who Are You", "You Better You Bet", and "Athena", which I'd choose over any of the songs in your list.
I don't feel that way about the Stones. "Miss You" and "She's So Cold" are phenomenal, but other than those two tracks, all my favorites are from the 60s.
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