Popular '69

Only 4 missed the cut. Which surprises me. I would have only been a toddler in ’69, but a lot of these songs are VERY familiar, and are really quite enjoyable. An older version of me would have found 1969 to be quite a thrill-fest.

i’ve still got ‘something in the air’ down as one of the Great Popular Injustices – i think it’s an incredible record and almost unbearably moving – joyful utopianism curdling into pain and insanity before our eyes, plus honky tonk piano. but again votes here suggest most don’t see it like that – not as good as ‘get back’! (i mean i love the beatles, even the disintegrating beatles, but really?).

but not a great year. only six votes in total from me, though starstedt probably should’ve got one too.

All but five made the cut for me – great year for chart-toppers.

But…but….this isn’t a new one – is it?? I’m absolutely certain I did a Popular ’69 poll before! However, I’ve never (despite much searching) come across polls for any of the earlier years, with a couple of exceptions (’59 and ’65, I think). Dear admin, do these exist somewhere and, if not, could you lash ’em up? I blummin’ love those polls, I do.

I’m sharing in the love for the ’69 list. All but five get my vote – and three of those were borderline.

#3 agree with you about “something in the air”. I remember this song coming straight out of left field and sounded totally different from the mainstream music at the time. A little overblown maybe,but the piano solo was unique, so gets my best song of the year vote.

What a good year! I hadn’t noticed when I read this blog before. Well, what a year for good songs getting to number 1, anyway. It sort of means that The Record Buying Public had great taste, or at least, the same ideas about good records as future people.

I mean, compared to 1991, which had piles and piles of good records and truly dismal number 1s.

@JonnyB. You should track down LaBelle’s SITA cover which swaps out the piano break for a rousing version of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

11 for me without choosing either Beatles single (though Get Back is probably a 6 or even a 7, I was just trying hard not to pick too many).

I’m surprised Sugar Sugar isn’t getting more love from Popular commenters. And pleasantly surprised by how tight the poll is – it didn’t seem like many people had time for Blackberry Way when Tom originally posted it.

Something In The Air is a record I never get tired of: for me, the wonky piano section only serves to make the sun-bursting-through climax all the more intense and exciting.

Possibly a year when the number ones were unrepresentative and better than the charts were generally? Sandie’s Monsieur Dupont, Cliff’s Big Ship, Lulu’s Boom Bang a Bang, Herman’s Something’s Happening – none were career highlights. Big Euro-gum representation.

Looking forward to Lena picking her way through 1969.

@ 15 again – ‘Sugar Sugar’ isn’t doing too badly (58% as I write) considering there’s probably still a fair amount of residual snobbery about bubblegum pop from that era. I’m more suprised that ‘Albatross’ is only polling at the same level; I can remember when it still seemed to be universally revered. As I see it, its mediocre showing is yet another illustration of how no-one really seems to dig the blues anymore. It’s a genre that, as I suggested in another thread a while ago, has effectively become “museum music”.

Wouldn’t really Albatross ‘the blues’, it’s got to be one of the least bluesy of the Pete Green Fleetwood Mac songs.

Generally, yes a great year!

I’d the top three so far (Marvin, Desmond, Creedence) would be my top three.

I’d rate Archies, Albatross and Thunderclap higher, Beatles and Stones less – I’m not a massive fan of Honky Tonk Women, there are loads of Stones songs from this period I rate way more: even as dangerless party-rock, Brown Sugar is better.

Ballad of John and Yoko is dreadful (not even the real Beatles etc etc); it was one of the first singles I ever bought (second hand in the mid-nineties) having really loved my Dad’s early Beatles singles and I was bitterly dissapointed. I can’t believe over half of people have rated it; if they get that easy a ride, I kind of see why some people really hate the Beatles. Get Back is passable boogie, but Status Quo were about to do this sort of thing much better and even then it’s not exactly my cup of tea.

1969 really is polling remarkably well. Leaving aside the usual solitary “none of them” vote (is it always the same perverse individual who does that, I wonder?), the worst performing song is currently at 12% and the second worst is up at 25%. I haven’t seen anything like that in any other year so far – although ’65 and ’81 have a comparable proportion of songs that get over 50%.

No! Get Back = 2nd rate Quo!

I actually love the Beatles and %-wise they’ve got very few truly crap songs, but most of their crap songs are from the last two years of their career. I wouldn’t call Get Back crap, it’s just very uncompelling: McCartney treading water singing about some quirky characters’ unremarkable adventures over a bit of boogie-lite. Billy Preston’s organ break and Ringo’s clunky drum-fills just about rescue it from utter mediocrity.

Ballad of John and Yoko is an utter stinker. Definitely in my 10 least favourite Beatles songs of all time.

I always thought Get Back was the Beatles trying to be Canned Heat, with Macca doing a decent Al ‘Kermit’ Wilson impression. It’s also the first single with which they followed rather than led (not counting Lady Madonna, which was part of a more general R&R revival).

Ballad Of J&Y is barely a b-side, and I prefer (the still mediocre) Old Brown Shoe on the flip. It was recorded with Band Aid-style haste, though for entirely self-publicising reasons – the poor bed-ridden lambs. This partially explains its feebleness.

I did quite enjoy the proto-Twitter ‘a week in the life of John Lennon from the man himself’ lyrics, but as I’ve said, I’ve always borne it a grudge for wasting a week’s pocket money right at the start of my record-buying life.

The lyrics are quite funny. I just find the music and singing pretty boring and the self-absorption repellent as it is fascinating.

BofJ&Y kind of lays the groundwork for “Through The Wire”. I say “kind of” simply because Kanye suffered a whole lot more pain than John did. Although John wasn’t ultimately allowed to survive, I doubt having to endure the aftermath of a car crash compares IN THE SLIGHTEST to running away from a relentless and remorselessly nosey Press.

Those US 1969 no.1s in full:

Marvin Gaye – I Heard It Though the Grapevine (7 weeks)
Tommy James & the Shondells – Crimson and Clover (2)
Sly & the Family Stone – Everyday People (4)
Tommy Roe – Dizzy (4)
5th Dimension – Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (6)
Beatles – Get Back (5)
Henry Mancini – Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet (2)
Zager & Evans – In the Year 2525 (6)
Rolling Stones – Honky Tonk Women (4)
Archies – Sugar Sugar (4)
Temptations – I Can’t Get Next To You (2)
Elvis Presley – Suspicious Minds (1)
5th Dimension – Wedding Bell Blues (3)
Beatles – Come Together (1)
Steam – Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye (2)
Peter Paul & Mary – Leaving On a Jet Plane (1)
Diana Ross & the Supremes – Someday We’ll Be Together (1)

A couple that didn’t make the UK Top 50 at all (Tommy James and Henry Mancini, both rather surprisingly) and one that barely did (Sly & the Family Stone – I’ve never really got the appeal of that one). Otherwise, a fair bit of crossover (6 were transatlantic no.1s) compared to 1968 (only Hey Jude).

Sugar Sugar by The Archies is pretty much the greatest single ~OF ALL TIME~ and I will smite anyone who dares disagree!

Swanstep – good call on BofJ&Y’s place in the Beatles story. Likewise, I like Sheila Take A Bow and Girlfriend In A Coma as ’87 singles more than I would’ve done if they’d followed, say, This Charming Man.

Elsa – think yr right but wouldn’t many of the earlier Beatles singles have followed a similar pattern? I suppose the difference here is the personal content of the songs (Instant Karma aside), which Mark has almost certainly identified correctly as Fluxus inspired.

I love you smart people.

Early Beatles and Stones singles were written and recorded quickly as it was standard industry practise at the time (the Swinging Blue Jeans apparently ran out of songs during the recording of their debut album so just worked through lunch to write a few more!) Whereas Lennon recording his Bag-era stuff was done quickly thru choice, as Elsa pointed out above, as an artistic and political statement. Still don’t really enjoy it as music.

Latter period Smiths has grown on me, but I can take or leave the slick, subdued sound of Strangeways…

And the fact he was singing so frankly about his own life, aims and even personal flaws. That is interesting, although it walks a knife-edge between honesty and narcissism.

41-44, The early Beatles singles might have been recorded quickly, but if I recall my Beatles books right, they were still usually subject to a bit of redrafting from the group and George Martin, in the form of speeding things up, adding a few ‘woohs’ and ‘yeahs’, putting the middle 8 at the beginning to maximise impact, etc.

The sense I have with TBoJ&Y and other Lennon things at the time is that such editing was not only absent, but scorned by him as artificial.

All that said, I agree that TBoJ&Y is quite amiable. I like that even when he’s not trying to make the music interesting, Lennon can’t help but end the bridge on a couple of his irregular added beats.

Wow, US has Steam and that is a great song! In either country I’m going with Marvin though.