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1966 was pops greatest year.... according to ME!
mushymanrob
Posts: 17,992 Forum Member
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ladies and gentlemen i put foreward my case for why 1966 was pop musics best ever year. 
singles wise it started with a corking new #1, spencer davis 'keep on running' a song which encapsulates everything good about a classic pop song. and the whole year for british beat/r&b groups saw then at (imho) their zenith. it was the year where groups like the beatles, rolling stones, yardbirds, kinks, small faces, and the who all produced most of their best material . it was the year of:-
elenore rigby
paperback writer
paint it black
19th nervous breakdown
dead end street
sunny afternoon
dedicated follower of fashion
shapes of things / mr youre a better man then i (way way ahead of its time)
im a boy
substitute
all or nothing
all tracks whos lyrical content made you think. on the lighter side you had
god only knows
pretty flamingo
a groovy kinda love
these boots are made for walkin
wild thing
black is black
out of time
bus stop
you had great covers
michelle
got to get you into my life
girl
dusty with her motown-esque - little by little, her biggest hit 'you dont have to say you love me' and her signiture tune 'goin back' .
talking of motown, you had the supremes 'you cant hurry love' , 'you keep me hangin on' , the emerging stevie wonder 'uptight (everythings alright)' and the four tops 'reach out ill be there ', and (not motown) ike and tina turners standard 'river deep mountain high'. james brown, otis reading, junior walker, smokey robinson also had minor hits.
for the wimmin ( ) you had some great ballads from the walker brothers - my ship is coming in, the sun aint gonna shine anymore. tom jones 'green green grass of home' and even frank sinatra 'strangers in the night'
as for the albums.... well ill skip past bob dylan (blonde on blonde), rolling stones(aftermath), simon and garfunkle (sounds of silence) and blow everything else out the water with the beatles - revolver and beach boys - pet sounds.
so imho 1966 had the most cutting edge, original, groundbreaking music alongside the usual softer pop then any other year.
singles wise it started with a corking new #1, spencer davis 'keep on running' a song which encapsulates everything good about a classic pop song. and the whole year for british beat/r&b groups saw then at (imho) their zenith. it was the year where groups like the beatles, rolling stones, yardbirds, kinks, small faces, and the who all produced most of their best material . it was the year of:-
elenore rigby
paperback writer
paint it black
19th nervous breakdown
dead end street
sunny afternoon
dedicated follower of fashion
shapes of things / mr youre a better man then i (way way ahead of its time)
im a boy
substitute
all or nothing
all tracks whos lyrical content made you think. on the lighter side you had
god only knows
pretty flamingo
a groovy kinda love
these boots are made for walkin
wild thing
black is black
out of time
bus stop
you had great covers
michelle
got to get you into my life
girl
dusty with her motown-esque - little by little, her biggest hit 'you dont have to say you love me' and her signiture tune 'goin back' .
talking of motown, you had the supremes 'you cant hurry love' , 'you keep me hangin on' , the emerging stevie wonder 'uptight (everythings alright)' and the four tops 'reach out ill be there ', and (not motown) ike and tina turners standard 'river deep mountain high'. james brown, otis reading, junior walker, smokey robinson also had minor hits.
for the wimmin (
) you had some great ballads from the walker brothers - my ship is coming in, the sun aint gonna shine anymore. tom jones 'green green grass of home' and even frank sinatra 'strangers in the night'as for the albums.... well ill skip past bob dylan (blonde on blonde), rolling stones(aftermath), simon and garfunkle (sounds of silence) and blow everything else out the water with the beatles - revolver and beach boys - pet sounds.
so imho 1966 had the most cutting edge, original, groundbreaking music alongside the usual softer pop then any other year.
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A shame the retard management at the BBC decided to wipe all the Top of the Pops episodes from that year.
Yep, it's my high water mark too. Favourite Beatles album (although I do veer towards The White Album sometimes) Favourite Dylan album, the first in a run of superb albums up to and including 'Lola versus...' by the Kinks, The Beach Boys imperishable masterpiece and so much more, a lot already covered above.
ie It was a rather good year! Shame I was -3, but I caught up eventually. And so will generation after generation after....:cool:
True but Radio Bremen have all their "Beat Club" tapes and they have been shown on C4.
Here are the Walker Brothers in 1966
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3Bx1_PSUWk
Germany had another show "Beat Beat Beat" around the same time. Here is Spencer Davis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV4RnWsP2hk
My favourite song of 1966 would probably have been the Easybeats' Friday on My Mind.
♬ SHAPES! of things before my eyes ...♪
one of my all time favs... top 5 ever...
id also draw peoples attention to its b side 'mr youre a better man then i' which tackled prejudice head on at a time when racism, sexism was rife and homosexuality was still illegal.
In itself that suggests that the idea of one year being better than another begins to make sense.
Can a year like 66 be the best overall though when there are no representatives from certain types of music? There was no electro pop in 66 for example. Does pop music not get better as more genres make up its rich tapestry?
Also, and more important perhaps, the idea that pop music was also art only emerged clearly in the late 60s, early 70s. And then you get the major alternative strands of pop music represented by the Velvet Underground, Bowie and then reggae and punk.
Who cares that you didn't have electro pop (yawn) in 1966 when you had superior melodic pop, Rock 'n' Roll, Stax, Motown, Rhythm 'n' Blues, Jazz, Folk Rock, Blues Rock, Garage Rock, Psychedelia and Ska? That's a rich enough tapestry for me.
In the following year (1967) Sergent Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band was released and pop music was suddenly declared an art form. Was that a good thing? In some ways yes, but it many ways no. It meant that by the mid-70's some pop music, but rock music in particular, became overblown and pretentious, and the music scene had to be rescued by the back to 3-chord basics of Punk.
By the late 70s/early 80s you have electronic music, disco, reggae, all the crossover music of jazz, funk, rock and then new wave and alt-rock, then rap and hip hop which is a far richer tapestry with the accumulation of genres.
As for the art thing, it has its positives and negatives. To me music is an art form whether it is high classical or popular. And yes, it was The Beatles that started that but no harm.
Simply put and probably more accurate than picking a particular year.
Maybe we are living in a golden age of pop but don't realise it yet?
I'll take a sneaky opportunity to add Electric Prunes 'I had too much to dream (last night)' which although technically soundtrack 1967 was issued in November 1966. I noticed Brian Matthews played it last weekend, only a few days after it got mentioned in the thread discussing tracks he really ought to play. Coincidence?
Since I loathe disco, funk and hip hop, prefer ska to reggae and am not overkeen on electronic music, for me personally the tapestry in the late 70's/80's while definitely more diverse than 1966 was certainly not richer!
Some people like a multitude of genres, others specialise in just a few. A Doo-Wop aficionado certainly wouldn't rate 1966 but a Northern Soul fan would. But how much so-called Northern Soul reached the charts? None really. It is an obscurist scene based around music that flopped, or was largely unheard, or narrowly distributed but does that mean the (at the time, unheralded) records from that scene are of less merit than something which charted? No chance.
Most attempts to measure the quality or relevance of music begin and end with popularity, familiarity and sales charts. What about the fantastic records we haven't even discovered yet? Who's to say they aren't better than some already established hierarchy of supposed greatness? Records aren't less good because they don't sell cart-loads. Hits are created by music biz politics/ promotion/ payola. Then the masses get to know only THAT music, rate only THAT music and decide which is the greatest out of only THAT music. Most of the media will discuss only THAT music also.
Certainly, it becomes more diverse. Whether that is good or not is subjective. Quite possibly, for the individual, it can be quite a bad thing. Genres evolve but they also eclipse other genres which many people may have invested in. I'm sure a great many music fans lament the demise of Rock'n'Roll, Jump Blues, Doo-Wop, Punk, Disco etc. as they were largely retired in favour of the new. Then there are revivals. Can a revival of things dormant reach the heights of the original period? Nu-Disco vs 1970's Disco / Neo-soul vs 1970's Soul - D'Angelo vs Donny Hathaway / Two-Tone vs 1960's Jamaican Ska - The Specials vs The Skatalites / modern Punk vs 1977 Punk / Sharon Jones 7 the Dap Kings vs Lyn Collins & the J.B.'s. etc. You can't have a revival without first, a disappearance and all those years when certain styles and genres were underground can't be 'the best year ever' for someone who loves those sidelined sounds.
Music journalists generally are like new car salesmen: there to sell you what is 'now' not what has already passed.
You say that is an idea - basically, a way of looking at things - but if music is embraced as an art form (and it definitely should be) then ALL music is art by default and our historical reference points of origin will be the earliest transcribed music we can unearth and play and the earliest recordings that are known to exist i.e. not something which took place in the 1960s - no matter how much we may all enjoy music from that decade.
You can probably tell that I don't have much time for rating wonderful popular culture in a supposedly definitive or indisputable way, or following what the press dictate to us. It all helps to create a population full of people with similar opinions who are easier to market the same things to and who'll keep perpetuating the myths they've been told. Music lists are like history, mostly recorded by the winner or those who support them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuNrlecJCNA
Two brief observations:
1. the defined popular culture and press diktat also has the opposite effect -by driving some to the outer reaches in search of something better, and also generating new 'underground' styles as a reaction to the status quo.
2. those who create music lists usually don't really fit into 'history is made by the winner'. I'd suggest more lists and discussions are generated by niches than mainstream music, whatever the genre. You don't often get mainstream geeks (and that is not a criticism or flip statement). Other than 'fans' of course.
Many genres make a rich tapestry but genres are not all as big or as important as each other and they come and go anyway. I don't just look at the charts to assess quality.
A history of Northern Soul will have its development timeline and its list of best and worst works just like any other genre. But a history of one genre would not be a history of popular music.
Aesthetic judgement isn't as certain as much scientific measurement but because there is a subjective element but that doesn't mean it is impossible to identify quality in pop music. You just need to get some collective agreement.
Part of the magic of pop music is the rediscovery and reassessment of music from the past (like Slint, or Big Star or the Velvettes) which maybe didn't sell as much as other music but turns out to endure and/or to influence later artists. There's a whole thread on the 60s here which attempts to do that.
Well you start with a theoretical idea and then you need to evidence it. The best evidence being the musical works themselves. There's lots of serious critical work on pop music which attempts to do this and it is not limited to the popular media (see the 33 and a third series on individual albums, for example).
It's also not true to say that music has not always been seen as an art form (i.e. we don't have to go back to the earliest times). Art and music were mainly seen as crafts before they were seen as art. The idea of personal expression in music and art is a relatively recent idea. Also pop music was not taking seriously as an art form until some of those Rolling Stone music critics etc. that you don't love suggested that it might be.
There was alot going on outside mainsttream in 66, there was still a healthy jazz scene for eg. Plus those genres you cite are firmly rooted in the 60's, of which 66 is a seminal year.
I started this thread by picking a year (as opposed to an era) as a tongue in cheek reposte to the 84 thread. If i had to pick an era or a collection of years it would be 65 - 67 which id suggest was THE seminal, most creative and innovative time in pop music evolution, one that has influenced most music ever since.
As johnny said, 79might have had variety in mainstream but 66 had the quality, as my opening post highlights.
Scott McKenzie San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)
Procol Harum A Whiter Shade Of Pale
The Monkees I'm A Believer
The Bee Gees Massachusetts
Nancy Sinatra & Frank Sinatra Somethin' Stupid
The Beatles All You Need Is Love
The Tremeloes Silence Is Golden
The Foundations Baby Now That I've Found You
The Mamas & The Papas Dedicated To The One I Love
The Move Flowers In The Rain
Traffic Hole In My Shoe
Long John Baldry Let The Heartaches Begin
The Beatles Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever
The Monkees Alternate Title
The Beatles Hello Goodbye
The Kinks Waterloo Sunset
The Small Faces Itchycoo Park
Cat Stevens Matthew And Son
The Monkees A Little Bit Me A Little Bit You
Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich Zabadak!
The Tremeloes Even The Bad Times Are Good
Jimi Hendrix Experience Purple Haze
The Hollies Carrie-Anne
The Rolling Stones Let's Spend The Night Together
Dave Davies Death Of A Clown
The Seekers Morningtown Ride
The Beach Boys Then I Kissed Her
The Herd From The Underworld
Flowerpot Men Let's Go To San Francisco
The Box Tops The Letter
Troggs Love Is All Around
The Seekers Georgy Girl
Manfred Mann Ha Ha Said The Clown
Pink Floyd See Emily Play
Young Rascals Groovin'
Procol Harum Homburg
Lulu The Boat That I Row
Gene Pitney Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart
Herman's Hermits There's A Kind Of Hush
The Move I Can Hear The Grass Grow
Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe
Paul Jones I've Been A Bad Bad Boy
Jeff Beck Hi-Ho Silver Lining
Cat Stevens I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun
The Turtles Happy Together
See, i dont agree with the late 60's. It turned in 67 when you lost some of the quality and pop started to become more popular. You lost the social comment, business got its claws into the scene, manufactured acts started to appear and pop nonsense songs started to proliferate. I listed in my first post some of the quality tracks from 66 that made deep social comment, from shapes of things, through to dead end street. Id suggest there was more in 66 then in 67-69 inclusive.
Now im not saying the likes of dave dee, tremeloes, hermans hermits, love affair, casuals, vanity fair, cuff links, move, etc didnt create good pop, they did, but it hadnt got the depth that elenore rigby, sunny afternoon, paperback writer, substitute, etc had.
Thats why imho 66 cannot be beaten,, plus pet sounds and revolver are still regarded as two of the best, most important, influencial albums ever.