The British Invasion of the Hot 100 in 1964 really was an invasion of the American pop chart by British acts that no one could have foreseen. In 1963, only one British act reached #1 on the American singles chart. It was The Tornados with their instrumental hit, ‘Telstar’. It was released in 1962 and spent a single week in 1963 at #1. Many #1 records in 1963 don’t even seem like pop records, at least not the kind you would find on the Hot 100 a scant few months into 1964. You were more likely to find a lot of these records in the parents’ record collections than with America’s ...

The year 1967 has been considered to be one of the greatest years ever for pop music. The often-used descriptor for 1967 is that it was the year of ‘The Summer Of Love’. It was the year of the Monterey Pop Music Festival, LSD, Haight-Ashbury, Flower Power, psychedelia, hippies, Timothy Leary, ‘All You Need Is Love’ and the counterculture. While it may have been billed as the year of ‘The Summer Of Love’, Billboard’s top year-end singles of 1967 don’t show the list filled with psychedelic love anthems, especially among the the Top 10 singles of the year. The top single of the...

The music of 1966 doesn’t have the cachet of some of the other years of that incredible decade. It’s not 1964 with The British Invasion, and the thrill of hearing The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks for the first time, and it’s not 1967 with hippies, Flower Power, ‘All You Need Is Love’ and the psychedelic music explosion, or 1969 with Woodstock, The Rolling Stones’ infamous concert at Altamont or The Beatles’ last live performance on the rooftop of their Apple offices. Maybe nothing in particular about the music of 1966 stands out to you, but I bet you remember many...

Amidst the political turmoil in America in 1968, the music you heard on the radio was as eclectic a concoction as anyone could imagine. It’s sappy ballads, bubblegum records, psychedelic hits, instrumental hits, country tunes, hard rock, power pop, soul, Motown classics, protest songs, novelty records and, as always, or at least since 1964 in America, the genius of The Beatles. Even among just the #1 songs of the year, the variety is mind-blowing, from ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Honey’, ‘Green Tambourine’, ‘Love Is Blue’, ‘Grazing In The Grass’ and ‘Harper Valley P.T.A.’ to ‘...

Radio listeners in 1970 would be treated to some of the greatest hits of the coming decade. They would marvel at the soaring vocals of Art Garfunkel on Simon & Garfunkel’s #1 smash recording of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. They may have shed a tear upon hearing the melancholy last single and record-setting 20th #1 Hot 100 hit from The Beatles, ‘The Long And Winding Road’. Many would celebrate the joyful sound of the uber-talented Jackson 5 and their four #1 hits in 1970. The AM airwaves would be filled with the soft pop hits of the brother and sister act, Carpenters, big hits ...