The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s (2025)

Why Steve Goodman felt the need to pen the perfect country song (his attempt was the 1975 hit “You Never Even Called Me by My Name”) is baffling, as Haggard had done it seven years previous. It’s all here: trains, prison, mama, and the outlaw thread that ran through the country movement for most of the ’70s. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: Merle Haggard: “Mama Tried”

Family Stone member Larry Graham claims that the first chart-topping single from one of the first racially integrated mainstream bands also includes the first instance of slap bass. Sly smoothed out his incendiary funk into a couple minutes of gently buoyant pop leavened with nursery-rhyme bridges and soaring choruses, bringing his message of tolerance to less adventurous ears. –Brian Howe

Listen: Sly and the Family Stone: “Everyday People”

The highest-charting Syd Barrett–era Floyd single, and the recently deceased star's most accessible song, “See Emily Play” evokes lost childhood as bluntly as anything in his repertoire— it gets wistful right on the second line—but the stabs of steel guitar and the sped-up piano solo transcend cliché. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: Pink Floyd: “See Emily Play”

A molten guitar-and-piano strut bleeds over some serious locked-groove drums and a few perfectly placed horn-stabs, Ronald Isley growls some second-wave feminism, and then the whole vicious lope explodes in a euphoric storm of woozy, joyous psych-funk. The Isleys already had more than a decade of hits behind them in 1969, but they still managed to completely internalize both James Brown’s rigorously amorphous stomp and former sideman Jimi Hendrix’s tumultuous squall, squishing it all into a triumphant marvel of precision-engineering, every musician involved hitting his notes hard at exactly the right moment. –Tom Breihan

Listen: The Isley Brothers: “It's Your Thing”

This belongs to the most exclusive class of cover versions: One that not only improves on the original, but makes you forget who wrote it in the first place. The words—a comment on class disparity as represented by jokers, thieves, and princes—belong to Bob Dylan, but it’s Hendrix’s despairing performance that lend them continuing relevance, that aching first line ringing truer with each coffin that comes back from Baghdad. And the guitar solos are arguably the most dramatic that Hendrix ever laid down, sounding less like displays of technical virtuosity than pleas for sanity in a world gone to hell. –Stuart Berman

Listen: Jimi Hendrix: “All Along the Watchtower”

Fact: “Care of Cell 44,” which opens the Zombies’ psych-pop masterpiece Odessey and Oracle, is the sunniest song ever written about the impending release of a prison inmate. At the end of the first ineffably sing-song verse, Colin Blunstone tells his sweetie, “You can tell me about your prison stay”—and sounds positively tickled. To be fair, describing the song’s lush arrangement and ecstatic melodies as “sunny” is a vast understatement. Every time Blunstone belts out, “Feels! So! Good! You're coming home soon!” after the lull of a Beach Boys–style multi-part harmony, it sounds like his heart’s burst with joy. –John Motley

Listen: The Zombies: “Care of Cell 44”

“Pressure Drop” was covered by the Clash and the Specials, but the definitive version is still the original, performed by the Maytals (later to become Toots and the Maytals after their lead singer, Frederick “Toots” Maytal, gained some post-incarceration notoriety). Toots’ opening melody alone is almost too sweet and desperate to bear—always faster than you remember it, far stronger than you thought possible. He less sings than rips through the rest of it. It’s a revenge song—“when it drops, oh you gonna feel it, know that you were doing wrong”—but when Toots cries, “It is you,” it sounds like love. –Zach Baron

Listen: The Maytals: “Pressure Drop”

“When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love—l-u-v!” Sadly bereft of the ambient effects that feature so distinctively on Shangri-Las’ singles, “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” nevertheless features one of the foursome’s most striking spoken-word sections. One girl asks her friend how her man dances; she replies: “Close... very, very close.” The fear and excitement in those four words could make anybody want to kiss him—and enough handclap ra-ra in the chorus (plus a kiss sound-effect!) to make everybody else jealous. –Zach Baron

Listen: The Shangri-Las: “Give Him a Great Big Kiss”

It’s not the dumbest lyrical conceit ever, but it’s up there: Sam Cooke is worried that the girl he loves doesn’t know he exists, so he asks the Roman god of erotic love to smooth things out for him. But in the hands of Sam Cooke, it sounds as natural as breathing. The gently rippling drums, the soft and plaintive trumpet, and the frosty hum of the strings mesh together into a luxuriant bed for Cooke’s gorgeously airy falsetto. Cooke had the preternatural ability to turn any cliché into gospel truth, and that searching, wounded coo just melts over everything. –Tom Breihan

Listen: Sam Cooke: “Cupid”

The disparity between “Mrs. Robinson”’s jaunty music and elegiac lyrics might stem from the circumstances of its creation—asked for music for The Graduate, Paul Simon dusted off an unfinished instrumental, dropped in the jailbait-seducing lead's name, and built a requiem for America's lost idealism around it. Slinky acoustic rhythm guitars, bluesy licks, and pattering congas give out to an infectious 4/4 stomp slicked with the folkies’ seamless harmonies. An odd but true-ringing amalgamation of religious piety, stern pedantry, and suburban circumspection fills out the twilit corners of this shrine to our nation’s mythological age of innocence. –Brian Howe

Listen: Simon & Garfunkel: “Mrs. Robinson”

Can were digging out beats from the mud with the muscle of Community and Industry behind their electro-acoustics and MANIA ROCK POWER. Forget “krautrock”—this was actual, in-the-resonance acid-truth music; stuff that might send your buttoned-downs into the next room, but made much easier any ideas you wanted to entertain regarding quantum mechanics. Liebezeit is of course bigger than Jesus. Tape loops are the self-contained shit. “Yoo Doo Right” is the kind of thing that should keep people at shows way too late, filling the street with freak drug youths night after night. And Malcolm Mooney was a bad man. Malcolm Mooney was a bad man. –Dominique Leone

Listen: Can: “Yoo Doo Right”

Two albums before his solemn swan song Pink Moon, Nick Drake was already meditating on some oppressively heavy topics. With its fixation on the relentless passing of time, “River Man” is the loveliest and most delicate of those from his debut, Five Leaves Left. Over plaintive strums, Drake’s mournful voice paints images of fallen leaves, passing seasons, and the flowing river. What Drake does with his voice and an acoustic guitar is haunting enough, but it’s Harry Robinson’s string arrangement that makes it absolutely chilling. Singing the “Prufrock”-inspired refrain of “How they come and go,” Drake’s voice is swallowed up by the strings, which swell like a rising tide. –John Motley

Listen: Nick Drake: “River Man”

While rumors have long been snuffed that “Substitute” stems from Pete Townshend’s Rolling Stones–fueled inferiority complex, this self-righteous power-pop lament never took America by storm like similar rockers “Satisfaction” or “Day Tripper,” and it’s difficult to understand why. Maybe we weren't ready for the cunning lyrics, Keith Moon’s whopping fills, or, my lord, John Entwhistle’s anachronistic, shredding bassline. Even more salient with today’s listeners, Roger Daltrey turns the sunny 60s frontman persona on its head, howling about superficiality, duplicity, and social class. Ultimately the song taps just the right amount of angst, hitting that sweet spot between libertine classic rock and the austere, self-important grunge movement it no doubt helped inspire. –Adam Moerder

Listen: The Who: “Substitute”

Not so much about a boyfriend than about one boy coming home to beat the living hell out of another boy, this 1963 single, originally meant for the Shirelles, is one of the most flat-out mean girl-group tracks ever. College coeds will forever sing it when their high school beaus come to visit, but unless said beau is punching a few suitors in the face on arrival, he’s missing the spirit of the whole thing. –Zach Baron

Listen: The Angels: “My Boyfriend’s Back”

The first thing you hear is the groove: tribal drums falling down stairs, guitar and bass flaring into an eternal Link Wray jungle-stomp, before the guitar flares up into a gooey, miasmic haze. If “1969” was an instrumental, it’d be a psychedelic-funk classic. But of course all anyone talks about is Iggy Pop’s bored, detached sneer, the way he dismisses what looks in retrospect like a season of upheaval as “another year with nothing to do.” When you’ve got a groove like that behind you, anything you say starts to take on a blasphemous weight. –Tom Breihan

Listen: The Stooges: “1969”

Van Halen’s equally popular 1977 cover added an orgasmic breakdown chorus of “oohs” and “aahs,” but that was just DLR being redundant. Because the original’s caustic riff says it all: These guys are packing the biggest set of blue balls known to man. But what makes “You Really Got Me” so fearsome and ferocious after 41 years isn’t its everlasting theme of unrequited teenage lust. It’s that within Ray Davies’ sneering, leering delivery, we hear the threat of violence that will result if he doesn’t get what he wants. –Stuart Berman

Listen: The Kinks: “You Really Got Me”

The hit factory at Motown built songs to last and this Miracles tune is one of its most enduring. “The Tracks of My Tears” is so meticulously constructed that it rolls over the competition. And it’s so deceptively simple that its genius actually isn’t easy to trace. But from the moment the drums drop over the gentle, twanging guitar intro to Smokey Robinson’s vocal improvisations over blasting horns as it fades out, every piece fits together perfectly. –John Motley

Listen: The Miracles: “The Tracks of My Tears”

Double-edged sword: If the pseudo-classical pop-rock band the Left Banke’s keyboardist, Michael Brown, hadn’t been obsessed with guitarist Tom Finn’s girlfriend, the band might’ve lasted longer, but never would’ve written the fey weeper about secret longing and unrequited love upon which the Left Banke made their name. The saturated strings and mincing harpsichord are moving in and of themselves, but Steve Martin’s aching rendition of Brown’s teary-eyed proto-emo lyrics are more essential to the song’s longevity—most everyone can identify with the gloomy romance of rain on empty sidewalks, and pining away for your buddy’s girl never goes out of style. –Brian Howe

Listen: The Left Banke: “Walk Away Renée”

Roy Orbison never shied from rockabilly swagger, but it was his ballads of unrequited love that made him a legend. In this pocket-sized soap opera, Orbison discovers he’s far from over an ex when the touch of her hand sends him over the edge, wringing his eyes out in agony. He’s not just “crying,” either. He's “cry-i-i-ing” in an angelic falsetto—with a cooing chorus of voices backing up his sob story. You’d never guess melodrama could be so wrenching until Orbison moves a couple octaves deeper for his show-stopping finale. –John Motley

Listen: Roy Orbison: “Crying”

Color me raised by a boomer, but this song contains one of the most important pieces of information to come out of the 1960s: Despite all the shit you go through to get what and who you want, and despite any good you might have accidentally done on the side, sometimes you just don’t have it. This was a surprising thing to hear from the Stones, but it could have been a Zen koan—“Try, and do not try. Nothing is achieved.” And let’s be real: This band never sounded better than in 1969-71. Listen to the girls singing backup. Really, anytime you have the Stones using maracas and bongos, something good is going to happen. –Dominique Leone

Listen: The Rolling Stones: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

Written in the throes of an illness, “Down by the River” grew into an epic fever-nightmare tortured enough to state more clearly than any other song why Young was so out of step with his idealistic peers. The silly hippie dreams of redemption—“she could take me over the rainbow”—are immediately quashed by murder imagery, sung in pained, off-key Crazy Horse harmonies. Then the rest of the song is a blank two-chord page for Neil to scrawl his jagged guitar tone all over, two marathon solos played with zero technical flash and every note taking another awful stab into that failed hope’s body. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: Neil Young & Crazy Horse: “Down by the River”

Perhaps controversially, I find late-period Vegas showman Elvis more thrilling than Elvis in his historic Sun Records days; it’s an image that better lives up to the massive mythology he inspired. Fortunately, “Suspicious Minds” offers the best of both worlds: It’s gritty and funky enough to recall those Memphis days, but laden with enough garish audio glitter—the backup singers, the false ending, the swooping strings—to befit a legend. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: Elvis Presley: “Suspicious Minds”

This flurry feels like a how-to farmer’s almanac for the 1960s counterculture—a speed-freak call from the streets and the Invisible Man’s basement, offering tricks, warnings, puns, paranoia, LSD concoctions, protest, and fire hose–toting cops. It’s famous for the cue card–toting video from Don’t Look Back (complete with Allan Ginsberg cameo). I’d venture to say Dylan was ultimately the more interesting poet and this spazzed Beat stuffing breeds the blues with Jack Kerouac and Pete Seeger. Even the seemingly tossed-off notions—writing in Braille or watching parking meters— bloom into great thought lines. Everyone’s trying to blend in one way or another—the plain clothes cops, the hippies not wearing sandals. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: Bob Dylan: “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

Knowing no Portuguese, I imagine Costa’s singing not to a lover but to an actual baby—a six-monther, cradled in her lap and listening to a voice that’s loving and cool. And while she and the slow bossa nova are entrancing, the fantastic strings are the wild card: dipping and flittering, they collide mid-air like two matched flocks of tropical birds. If it’s sexy, it’s laughing during the act, and the baby in the crib nearby doesn’t mind. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: Gal Costa: “Baby”

Sly Stone’s ode to letting music take hold is not about marching on Washington. And it’s not about spitting in The Man’s face. But it’s definitely about freedom at any cost. The baton-pass of Rose, Freddie, and Sly Stone and the basso profundo of Larry Graham elevate what is in some ways Sly’smost lyrically toothless number into a rapturous call-and-response jam that rocked thousands at Woodstock (or so Mom told us), and even more than that at supermarkets near you every day. But Sly knew what he was doing, slotting the amorphous and joyful “Higher” as the B-side to the more righteous “Stand!” It predicted everything about the next few years from Sly: joy and pain, fun and fire, truth and fucking, darkness and drugs. The perfect antithesis in a career marked by duality. –Sean Fennessey

Listen: Sly & the Family Stone: “I Want to Take You Higher”

Another of Lou Reed’s inner monologues detailing the poetry of negation, this depicts the solitary sacredness of a high, the ritual of shooting up/zoning: “I have made the big decision/I'm gonna try to nullify my life.” I could retitle it “I’ll Be Your Shattered Mirror”—the protagonist feels like a fucked-up everyman, despite the first person. Sonically, it builds like it could arc forever: Drink coffee, press play, feel the noisy viola inject a frenzy. All the sounds are intensely perfect, but Moe Tucker’s drums are the manic pulse: If she stops, the high’s kaput. –Brandon Stosuy

Listen: The Velvet Underground: “Heroin”

Where the U.S.’s “Star Trek” sent a sleek vessel into “the final frontier,” Britain’s “Dr. Who” began with a cranky old alien hurtling around in a phone booth—and the theme song couldn’t be a better fit. While Ron Grainer’s swooping melody and throbbing beat have seen slicker arrangements over the decades, this first version is an incredible piece of primitive electronic music. Delia Derbyshire constructed it in 1963 by manipulating sounds from test tone generators and mixing them together almost note by note, yet the cobbled-together, almost mismatched timbres come together in a lumpy, throbbing—and definitely futuristic—whole. –Chris Dahlen

Listen: BBC Radiophonic Workshop: “Doctor Who (Original Theme)”

Two reasons this is the best of many good S&G songs. First, Paul Simon never wrote a better melody. It bends and turns—and yes, drifts—like it’s going to lose its way until he tugs it back in for a chorus that every kid in the 1970s memorized before grade school. And then the lyrics, from a guy given to saying too much, are terrifically restrained and open-ended, with only the barest hints of the story fleshed out. It’s an impressionistic, painterly approach not far from where Bob Dylan would be a few years later on Blood on the Tracks. –Mark Richardson

Listen: Simon & Garfunkel: “The Boxer”

Almost everyone with even a passing interest in JB knows the story of how, while stopping off on tour to record a new single, the raggedy, exhausted band inched as if waist-deep in swamp water through a slower, more grinding version of “Papa’s” than the one everyone knows. Someone got the bright idea to get nice with the razor blades and the knob marked “speed everything up,” and funk got one step closer to becoming its own genre. Like a lot of music on this list, “Papa’s” can seem overfamiliar, but Brown’s shift from one of the best ballad singers and soulmen of the early 1960s to the Godfather is still one of the most remarkable transformations in pop history, and this is one of its key moments. –Jess Harvell

Listen: James Brown & the Famous Flames: “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”

With the millions of words written on the political and cultural significance of Bob Dylan’s career, it’s easy to forget that dude could write a pretty damn fierce breakup song, when he wanted to. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” may be the most venomous of Dylan’s “so long, honeybabe” tracks, in part due to the laid-back, icy delivery of its original version. When he gets to the cruel punch line of “you just kinda wasted my... precious time,” it’s shrugged off like a business transaction, a relationship diss track he can hardly be bothered to sing. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: Bob Dylan: “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”

Surely, scores of grass-kissing, mass Romantics have tried to hole away with a couple of their jazzbo buds for a couple deep nights in search of the next Astral Weeks. Such is the seduction of the quick muse. Of course, it’s going to sound like shit because, however hard your scatman broheim tries to grimace and spasm like he’s feeling the force, he’s not channeling his past with folky pathos set to stun—he’s not Van Morrison. “Sweet Thing” is that one thing; sprightly bows sloping down streets, flutes searching through the mist, and elated bass leading to a fountain of youth. “It feels right, but I can’t say for sure what it means,” Lester Bangs said of it. Of course he can’t. –Ryan Dombal

Listen: Van Morrison: “Sweet Thing”

A showcase for Hendrix’s wholly original guitar techniques, “Manic Depression” is dizzying with its odd time signature and winding, cyclical melody. And while Hendrix will always be the focal point of his songs, the Experience shouldn’t be entirely written off. Drummer Mitch Mitchell is a beast here, pounding every drum in the kit, often leaving bassist Noel Redding to keep things grounded. Lyrically, the song is typical Hendrix—women, drugs, music, and just getting along, man. But that’s neither here nor there: When you’re watching the World Series, what the announcers are saying is beside the point. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: Jimi Hendrix: “Manic Depression”

With Top10 performances on both the country and pop charts, “Crazy” was the first indication that Patsy Cline’s appeal is pretty damn universal. On this Willie Nelson–penned heartbreaker, the music—all loping bass and twinkling piano runs—plays it cool, but Cline’s voice is so cuttingly clear and emotive it’s like she's right there in the room with you. As she sings, “I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted/And then some day, you’d leave me for somebody new,” there’s palpable sorrow and self-loathing in her delivery that makes misery sound exquisite. –John Motley

Listen: Patsy Cline: “Crazy”

According to headshop t-shirts, Charlie don’t surf, but if he did, this is what would’ve been blasting out of his Victrola. Dick Dale made surf music for bikers: “Misirlou” isn’t an occasion to catch a wave, it’s an invitation to a knife fight, and that bee-swarm guitar line takes on all comers—a cha-cha rhythm, a trumpet chorus, even a piano solo—and slays them all. “Misirlou” wasn’t just punk rock before punk existed—it was punk rock even before rock’n’roll became boring enough to make punk necessary. –Stuart Berman

Listen: Dick Dale & the Del-Tones: “Misirlou”

Carole King was a better songwriter than singer/songwriter, though Tapestry is probably about due for a too-ironic revival. On this 1960 release, the Shirelles take the Brill Building doo-wop and enchantment-under-the-sea strings of King’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and sanctify it with modest, youthful wisdom. Other 60s girl-group ballads would be huger, or more dramatic, but the understated pathos of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” is singularly combustible. I feel the earth move. –Marc Hogan

Listen: The Shirelles: “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”

The “riff” in this one is a sludge of lumbering power chords and the solo is a single note; even at the beginning of his Crazy Horse era in 1969, Young’s guitar playing had already started to crystallize into something shambolic and occasionally counterintuitive. The sweetness in the burr is all the melodic things happening: the conversations between the vocal harmonies, the guitars and bass, the high and low ends. So what if it’s one of Young’s most superficial songs—in so many other ways, its ragged musculature perfectly encapsulates everything he ever did best. –Mark Pytlik

Listen: Neil Young & Crazy Horse: “Cinnamon Girl”

Violin isn’t common in reggae, but damn it sounds good on this gem from the rocksteady era. I’m amazed you can fit this much melody in one song—John Holt’s lead vocal swoops and dives, his phrases expanding and contracting like the very tide itself, while the doo-wop interjections of his mates weave around him like chips of glass in a kaleidoscope. Duke Reid’s band lays down a classic track stuffed with details—a muted guitar hook, a ridiculously sublime violin solo, the way the chorus sounds great no matter what order its halves are sung in—and the result is one of the best Jamaican tracks in pop history. –Joe Tangari

Listen: The Paragons: “The Tide Is High”

Apparently it’s so dreadful not to live in California, it drove the Mamas & Papas to create one of the most beautifully eerie harmony-pop songs in rock history. Thanks to the limitations of 1966 production, John and Michelle Phillips’ reverb-waterlogged four-part arrangement sounds apocalyptically choral, making the experience of actually suffering through four seasons sound positively ghastly. –Rob Mitchum

Listen: The Mamas & the Papas: “California Dreamin’”

So spare it’s almost not there at all, Shannon’s masterpiece is teen heartbreak in haiku, winnowed down from a 15-minute vamp into a perfect 2:20. A No. 1 smash in 1961, rock’n’roll through and through, “Runaway” is also a proto-synth pop hit, introducing the electric musitron with a wicked solo. Shannon’s hiccuping, froggy falsetto details the most basic of breakup stories, and yet it resonates like cosmic truth. Despite lacking the “yeah, well, fuck you too” vitriol of garage groups like the Seeds, hundreds of punks and proto-punks heard, for better or worse, a whole aesthetic universe in “Runaway.” It’s one of the most coverable songs of all time. –Jess Harvell

Listen: Del Shannon: “Runaway”

While the titular object of desire is described as walking “like a samba,” the breezy wisp of a song she saunters through has become synonymous with bossa nova, which emphasizes subtle melodic phrasing over dance-oriented cadence. Bossa nova pioneer Tom Jobim’s bittersweet ode to the unattainable allure of youthful beauty turned the still-young Brazilian genre into a household name in the United States. Astrud Gilberto’s dreamy lilt and João Gilberto’s succinct flecks of guitar describe the mesmerizing syncopation of rolling hips, while Getz blows his sax as sweetly as any drug-crazed wife-beater ever did. –Brian Howe

Listen: Stan Getz & João Gilberto: “The Girl From Ipanema” [ft. Antônio Carlos Jobim]

On this searing call-to-arms the Stones set the impending revolution under an appropriately intense summer sun, and heat rolls off of it in waves. Brightly jagged guitars glitter like blacktop mirages; thunderous percussion cracks asphalt; Jagger’s voice is a wowing police siren. The music is emphatic; the prognosis is dire but vague; and the upshot, ambivalent: “What can a poor boy do except sing for a rock’n’roll band?” Thankfully so: If they cared too much, they wouldn’t be the Stones. –Brian Howe

Listen: The Rolling Stones: “Street Fighting Man”

This Motown masterpiece has been rerecorded as rock, country, and new wave pop. No wonder: Its unceasing beat, bright guitar chirping, horn blasts, and bubbling bass line make it arguably the most rock-influenced hit of the group’s career, and suited for any setting. Nobody has sold it better, however, than Diana Ross, who somehow manages to sound heartbroken and sassy at the same time. –Cory D. Byrom

Listen: The Supremes: “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”

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

Listen: Sly & the Family Stone: “Hot Fun in the Summertime”

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

Listen: The Velvet Underground: “Sunday Morning”

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

Listen: The Beatles: “I Want to Hold Your Hand”

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

Listen: Tommy James & the Shondells: “Crimson and Clover”

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 bassline, dizzy strings, and a bizarre hiccupping backing vocal, all of which turn simple strums into something hypnotizing. –John Motley

Listen: Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot: “Bonnie and Clyde”

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, soulmate 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

Listen: Jackie Wilson: “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher”

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: Evena young kid glued to the Monkees’ TV show knows that the sweet comes with the bitter, so why try to hide it? –Chris Dahlen

Listen: The Monkees: “Daydream Believer”

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

Listen: Led Zeppelin: “Whole Lotta Love”

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 statesong, 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

Listen: Ray Charles: “Georgia on My Mind”

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

Listen: Ike & Tina Turner: “River Deep, Mountain High”

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

Listen: Love: “Alone Again Or”

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

Listen: Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra: “Some Velvet Morning”

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 superstardom—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

Listen: David Bowie: “Space Oddity”

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

Listen: The Beatles: “Eleanor Rigby”

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

Listen: The Creation: “Making Time”

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 Steel 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

Listen: Dusty Springfield: “Son of a Preacher Man”

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

Listen: The Supremes: “Where Did Our Love Go”

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

Listen: Vince Guaraldi Trio: “Linus and Lucy”

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

Listen: The Band: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”

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

Listen: Leonard Cohen: “Suzanne”

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

Listen: The Zombies: “This Will Be Our Year”

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 pale-faced 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

Listen: The Rolling Stones: “Sympathy for the Devil”