I’m only really catching up with this thread but it is a fascinating read and interesting to see the big songs people loved in the mid point of rock and roll/pop history before punk and new wave.

 

Love songs like ‘Apache’ which of course I know but didn’t realise it was a Shadows songs so fair dues to them. Other great songs include The Walker Brothers, the Big O, The Carpenters and Rod Stewart (def think this is his most well known and played hit these days for the record)!

 

These things always make me wonder what music did people listen to before ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and was their actually big hits everyone knew 😅. Or am I being arrogant and of my time as of history only started with the top 40?!

 

Thanks Steve, I also find it fascinating - I was intrigued by it at the time, and it has a sort of historical interest in just how much time passing affects some tracks popularity. A poll of the same period now would be very very different, and given a wider age range of voters than then it would highlight those that have passed the test of time as great recordings in their own right, as opposed to those that were popular because the act was popular with a large group of loyal fans.

 

Rock n roll was a major dividing line in popular music - the fans of music on either side of it tended not to listen to the other side, except those that were kids in the 40's and early 50's and hit their teens as rocknroll exploded, like my parents who loved pre rock stuff too, in their case Country music especially, but big bands and singers from films like Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Glen Miller were widely known, Blues & jazz to a lesser extent, but their were always huge new songs coming up - some are still known, like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter wrote many a standard you will know but not necessarily know you know. My grandma's partner had a notebook of songs he used to write down in the 30's and 40's, most of which I'd never heard of when I was young cos they weren't played on radio 1, but we did get exposed to them on shows like Morecambe & Wise, The Good Old Days.

 

I think the changing taste of popular music can be drawn between the most-recorded song of the 20th century vs the one that replaced it. Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust was hugely popular and famous, in films, radio, and countless versions, yet by the time my generation came along, who grew up in the 60's, it was as dead as a dodo and I doubt I've heard it more than 2 or 3 times in my life. That type of bland sentimentality of lyric just didn't wash with the post rock generation. Buy Yesterday did, and still does.

86. (TO BE) YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK - Bob Marcia (1970)

 

 

Reggae! This Nina Simone minor US hit from 1969 got the reggae cover treatment in 1970 from Bob & Marcia, which was a burgeoning list of success for Jamaican acts (and others) re-inventing soul & blues songs in the fresh new ska and reggae format which had burst out big a year or two earlier in the UK, and to a lesser extent the USA, not least thanks to the Windrush generation. This was a big UK hit, and the central message of black pride struck a note with everyone who liked reggae and/or supported the sentiment. That wasn't me in 1970, due to being out the country, but by 1974 I'd heard it and loved it, and it was a huge hit in my charts shortly after this poll as it was reissued and almost made the charts again. It's a great song, and a great performance. The music industry paid close attention to this poll, as will become very very clear as we go through the list and see how many of the higher-placed tracks became hits all over again in 1974/75 and beyond.

 

 

Thanks Steve, I also find it fascinating - I was intrigued by it at the time, and it has a sort of historical interest in just how much time passing affects some tracks popularity. A poll of the same period now would be very very different, and given a wider age range of voters than then it would highlight those that have passed the test of time as great recordings in their own right, as opposed to those that were popular because the act was popular with a large group of loyal fans.

 

Rock n roll was a major dividing line in popular music - the fans of music on either side of it tended not to listen to the other side, except those that were kids in the 40's and early 50's and hit their teens as rocknroll exploded, like my parents who loved pre rock stuff too, in their case Country music especially, but big bands and singers from films like Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Glen Miller were widely known, Blues & jazz to a lesser extent, but their were always huge new songs coming up - some are still known, like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter wrote many a standard you will know but not necessarily know you know. My grandma's partner had a notebook of songs he used to write down in the 30's and 40's, most of which I'd never heard of when I was young cos they weren't played on radio 1, but we did get exposed to them on shows like Morecambe & Wise, The Good Old Days.

 

I think the changing taste of popular music can be drawn between the most-recorded song of the 20th century vs the one that replaced it. Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust was hugely popular and famous, in films, radio, and countless versions, yet by the time my generation came along, who grew up in the 60's, it was as dead as a dodo and I doubt I've heard it more than 2 or 3 times in my life. That type of bland sentimentality of lyric just didn't wash with the post rock generation. Buy Yesterday did, and still does.

 

Yeh I find football chants come from older melodies for some reason. That’s always a good start.

 

Music also seemed to be intrinsically linked to cinema and movies back then in a way it wasn’t so much post-Beatles!

 

85. JAILHOUSE ROCK - Elvis Presley (1957)

 

 

Well, if any Elvis track deserves to be on the countdown it's this one, The King at his most rocking-est, taken from an early movie that wasn't just conveyor-belt romantic-fluff pap, and so good it topped the UK charts again in the next century. So, no complaints, just the question why it's so low given the general Elvis invasion of this list - this is the 2nd of 10 tracks, and the 2nd-most deserving of the 10. It's short, punchy, and famous, and at 17 years-old one of the oldest tracks on the list. If anything, it makes it look like male fans of 50's rock weren't voting in such numbers, so I can only assume they were either listening to Terry Wogan & Jimmy Young on Radio 2, or they were too busy at work to know about the poll. As a teen I had plenty of time to catch the radio (or today it would be streaming as well) and traditionally housewives would also have had more time for polls and stuff.

84. RIDE A WHITE SWAN - T.Rex (1970)

 

 

Well, this one swooped into like a game-changer in late 1970, as it set up Glam Rock as the next phase in UK pop, and as usual the bloody BBc wiped everything from the era, so no Top Of The Pops clip, or anything else from anywhere else of that period of the great Marc Bolan pouting like a hippie elf en route from acoustic Donavon to the Primary electric guitar pop star of the day. This track was the big T.Rex breakthrough and even charted in the USA albeit a minor hit, and was a perky crossover between the bongo-strumming Tyrannosaurus Rex, beloved of hippie DJ & mate John Peel, and out and out pop star, not beloved of John Peel who tended to look down on pop, like most musos of the time. Quite why this (great) track is on the list, and bigger, classic hits Hot Love, Get It On and Jeepster aren't, is a mystery. I can only guess T.Rex fans were splitting votes over 6 or 7 tracks, and not listening to the rules by voting for hits from 1972 and 1973! Hey ho!

Yes I agree (though I loved Pretty Woman most of all as a kid) - so don't be too shocked that Roy will be back, given the popularity of Pretty Woman :lol:

 

 

Have you heard his very last album Mystery Girl? If not then why not, as it's brilliant. No duff tracks at all. My fave is California Blue but it's just a solid great album.

83. RUNAWAY - Del Shannon (1961)

 

 

At the top end of the US Teen Idol post-rock'n'roll invasion, Del Shannon had his hits using his band member's trademark clavioline electric keyboard "fairground" sound, and were generally uptempo angst-ridden tales of lost love, Runaway being the biggest and best of all of them, and a genuine Hall Of Fame classic. It was great then, it's still great now, though less-well-known - Kasabian gave a good old go at a live cover on Dermot O'Leary's show in 2011, but it's yet to get a prime movie spot or the like to give it a new generational boost. Del was pretty popular in the UK with hard-core fans voting an obscure track that was never an A side and had been entirely forgotten about by 1974, never mind 2021, much higher in the list, just to smash any credibility of genuine overall popularity. Fan clubs, eh, tch! He was probably on tour or something.

Have you heard his very last album Mystery Girl? If not then why not, as it's brilliant. No duff tracks at all. My fave is California Blue but it's just a solid great album.

 

Oh I agree entirely, it's a brilliant album, I bought it at the time, it was Roy's parting gift to us all, really, aided and abetted by Jeff Lynne and other celebrity pals... :wub:

82. LOVE GROWS (WHERE MY ROSEMARY GOES) - Edison Lighthouse (1970)

 

 

A tropical Singapore pop smash for me, where I was living at the time it was a hit, in the housing suburbs a few miles from RAF Changi, so in my mind it's multi-coloured, lush nostalgia and a fab UK pop song that rattles along beautifully, written by hit songwriters Tony Macauley (see Build Me Up Buttercup) and Barry Mason (more to come on him) and sung by Ultimate Studio vocalist Tony Burrows who featured in the UK charts under many guises from 1967 through 1974 (many of them simultaneously, 3 in the case of early 1970 when this topped), but this was his biggest. I'm peeved the TOTP clip is in black & white, but at least someone rescued that episode on videotape. I'd also rate his other tracks, The Flowerpot Men's Beach-Boys-ish Let's Go To San Fransisco, and 1974's Beach Baby under the band name First Class. Still quite popular, and a genuinely good inclusion, though I'd doubt it would make a top 100 of the era these days.

81. JULIETTE - The Four Pennies (1964)

 

 

Harking back to an earlier musical period in style, Juliette was a sweet tune, and one I loved as a 6-year-old-Doctor-Who-and-Pop-music-obsessed kiddie living in Chesham, about as far from London on the London Underground as you could get. Even as late as 1974 this old-fashioned sentimental harmony tune was still giving me waves of nostalgia and joy - and apparently lots of other people too - though it's bizarre being 16 and getting all nostalgic for stuff from 10 years before, that very much did sound very old-fashioned by then. I'm still fond of it, a bit, but let's be honest, these largely one-hit wonders have been forgotten in the 21st century, and there is no way it would make a top 500 Best Of The 60's in any poll these days, let alone top 100 of 1954 to 1972.

Absolutely love that Del Shannon track, def heard it before but sounds great now!

 

Love ‘Ride A White Swan’ less obvious compared to their bigger hits but class all the same. The ‘Love Grows’ track sounds more early 60s than 1970, sounds decent though.

Absolutely love that Del Shannon track, def heard it before but sounds great now!

 

Love ‘Ride A White Swan’ less obvious compared to their bigger hits but class all the same. The ‘Love Grows’ track sounds more early 60s than 1970, sounds decent though.

 

Oddly, since I wrote that I heard Runaway as a back-drop to a scene on a prime Netflix show the other day - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, based on the Douglas Adams books, episode 1 series 2. So it is still cropping up in modern media, yay!

 

I adore Ride A White Swan, always have - my T.Rex fandom will become obvious if I ever get round to finishing off my Top 800 chart (it's now top 900 since I started an extra 100 have entered the chart :lol: )

80. IT'S NOW OR NEVER - Elvis Presley (1960)

 

 

It's The Pelvis again, three tracks already in the rundown, this time his mega-ballad adapted from the Italian O Sole Mio song, and very Italian-sounding it is too, dramatic and semi-operatic. Elvis does a decent job, though it's no Jailhouse Rock or Heartbreak Hotel, and it's his biggest international hit selling over 20 million copies, including achieving the feat of entering the UK charts at Number One after building up demand on a late release. Still pretty-well-known, and beloved of Elvis impersonators across the globe (still an ongoing industry) I think the main surprise here is that isn't higher on the rundown - especially considering what's to come from Elvis, given 10% of the chart is comprised of Elvis hits. The ups and downs of popularity of individual tracks is fascinating...

79. HELP! - The Beatles (1965)

 

 

Incredibly one of only 2 Beatles tracks on the rundown, Help! was hugely famous and popular, not least helped by the movie of the same name which I remember seeing at the cinema and for the first time in my life having the Fab Four in glorious technicolour. UK TV (2 channels) was black and white until the late 60's so this is how we all saw our pop stars - black and white. You had to go the pictures to see the biggest pop stars, and the biggest were Elvis, then Cliff, then The Beatles, in terms of hit movies. John wrote the song at a time when their songs were getting more sophisticated, and he was starting to use his own emotional and mental state as subject matter (in this case the pressures of massive global success). Despite the lack of global media, in comparison to today, The Beatles WERE the 60's in terms of pop culture and musical creativity, and massive popularity to the extent that they had the entire US top 5 - in the days before album tracks qualified to invade actual singles charts. They had around 10 or 12 in the US Hot 100, and in an alternate universe where streaming was a thing in 1964/65 they would have 100% certainly have charted every track on all their albums and EP's to boot (2 a year of each, bare minimum) and a lot of them for more than a quick curiosity-driven in-and-out from playlists. Just to put it in historical perspective...

 

So how did we only get 2 Beatles tracks when Elvis has 10? Partly, Elvis had a nearly-20-year-group of potential voters, partly latterday Beatles fans appealed to both sexes where voters likely were majority female, and partly The Beatles had so many classic tracks that the votes might have been spread more thinly over a lot of tracks with the result that 10 or 20 of them might have just fallen short of the final. Certainly, by 1976, a mere two years later, and despite huge-selling Red & Blue double-albums (which were selling well during the voting period), The Beatles biggest singles were one still to come on the rundown, Yesterday (the most-recorded-song of the 20th century), Get Back, Paperback Writer (due to it's use as a TV arts show theme), Help! and Strawberry Fields, as all made the UK top 50 charts that year when all Beatles singles were re-issued. The rest all peaked outside the top 50, but not that far outside. Elvis also had the same re-issue "boxed sets on record shop counters" advantage The Beatles reissues had had, but none of them charted until Elvis took the career-boosting decision to die suddenly and morph into a legend rather than struggle on as the Las Vegas mess he'd actually become.

78. BOBBY'S GIRL - Susan Maughan (1963)

 

 

Know this one? Thought not. It's kind of been forgotten about, along with Susan Maughan, but for a couple of years she was pretty big in terms of TV appearances in the UK, and this cover smash hit was a huge fave of 5-year-old little John. More, it was my earliest pop record obsession (excluding kiddie novelty tracks). I was mad on it, and remained fond of it through to 1974, so I'm guessing a lot of teens my age or a bit older still felt motivated to vote for it. Not me - there were other more recent tracks I loved more by then, and other vintage records I loved way more, but y'know, you never forget your first love. The song had been a US hit for Marcie Blaine in 1962, but where Susan Maughan's version was a total full-on belter of a vocal and orchestral arrangement (Bobby better not turn her down!) Marcie's is schoolgirly and soppy, and clearly she still is a kid, despite the lyrics saying she isn't. Susan was all woman! Fairly obviously, a product of the time, and the submissive girlie doesn't work these days, not least aided and abetted by comedian Tracey Ullman covering it in 1983, her pop career being more a fun retro-nostalgia trip with more than a bit of mickey-taking in it.

77. FROM A JACK TO A KING - Ned Miller (1957)

 

 

Well, I can vouch this was popular amongst mums and dads in their mid-30's, as my parents really liked this, along with the vast majority of 50's country hits which they'd grown-up with in their teen years and early 20's. As I wasn't born, and it was never amongst my parents' record-collection I remain unmoved by it. I knew it a bit, and always regarded it as hopefully old-fashioned, while aware people of a certain age were fans. I was mystified though, why it got voted into the best 100, still am, when there are so many more better records from that era that could have qualified: anything (absolutely anything!) by Buddy Holly for a start, who is also entirely absent from the list, despite It Doesn't Matter Anymore being still-great in 1974. Ah well, this has been forgotten these days, along with Country Music reluctant-star Ned Miller, and Buddy Holly hasn't.

76. ALL RIGHT NOW - Free (1970)

 

 

One of those Rock monsters that has, to a certain extent, passed me by. I mean, I like it, I've always liked since I first became aware of it in 1973 when it made the charts again after peaking at 2 in 1970 while I lived in Singapore blissfully unaware that a throbbing driving rock classic was a thing in the UK charts. It's just that, after being a hit again in 1978, and again in the 80's, and again remixed in the 90's, and never since being off oldies radio I'm, errr, sick of hearing it and have been for at least 20 years. So, yes it was a biggie, and would have been fresh in voters minds who could vote for a current-ish hit and get by the 2-years-old rule, and yes it's recognised as a classic, but I'll take either Little Bit Of Love (my first introduction to Free) or the sublime Wishing Well which pisses all over this but isn;t well-known at all. There may also have been a bit of "awww!" voting going on as Free had just split-up and Paul Rodgers (future Freddie Mercury Queen vocalist stand-in) had just started with Bad Company who's Can't Get Enough debut single was a plodding copy of this much better song.

75. WOODSTOCK - Matthews Southern Comfort (1970)

 

 

Talking of 1970 biggies, here's a hippie classic that isn't as remembered these days as Free's rock classic is - Ex-Fairport Convention member Iain Matthews filled the description "one-hit wonder" pretty much with this soft-rock version of the Joni Mitchell song about the legendary hippie rock festival Woodstock - not that she was there, she saw it on TV - and which Crosby, Stills & Nash had covered and grabbed a US hit out of. Neither version made the UK charts, but this softer, slower, sweet harmony version went all the way to the top of the charts, and is much more polished (some would say more commercial, but I think it brings out the qualities of the song better). This was an oldie I also didn't know at the time, but by 1974 had caught it a few times and was very much a fan of (I bought it as an oldie). Ian Matthews did more than just this (for example he had a US hit with 1979's fab Shake It), and has been prolific within the music industry for 50+ years right up to 2020 and his most-recent digital single, so I'm glad he's on the list cos I don't think he'd make a similar list these days, too many other acts have stood the test of time better than a one-hit-wonder could compete with.

74. MR. TAMBOURINE MAN - The Byrds (1965)

 

 

Bob Dylan is another 60's giant who doesn't appear in the rundown. Granted, he never had what you call a massive commercial hit, the nearest he came was the still-iconic Like A Rolling Stone which would appear close to the top 10 of any critically-acclaimed list of Greatest 60's list, and probably much lower down a popular hits of the 60's list these days. The Byrds, like many a 60's act, covered Dylan songs, and this chart-topping electric riff treatment of it was pretty influential in records of the mid-60's and beyond, including the Beatles (folk pop as a sub-genre of folk, and Roger McGuinn's 12-string rickenbacker sparking sales in the guitar). David Crosby moved on to Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1967, and everyone else also left until only Roger McGuinn remained, but they hadn't finished in the influence department - the psychedelic Eight Miles High is probably my fave from their back-catalogue, though this one is still a perennial radio staple. So, one of those Critically-acclaimed tracks, influential tracks, that is also still popular and almost as well-known as it was way back when. Cos it's still great and hasn't dated in the same way that a lot of the stuff on this list from the early 60's have.

73. THE WONDER OF YOU - Elvis Presley (1970)

 

 

It's that man again! This was Elvis first UK chart-topper in 5 years, and was essentially an introduction to younger Las Vegas Elvis, as entertainer covering a standard oldie, his new business model, which worked beautifully at first, before becoming a huge albatross round his neck, from a quality threshold point of view. Now I loved this at the time, topped my charts, loved Elvis (my 2nd-ever vinyl single purchase was In The Ghetto, Elvis as social-commentary in 1969, as he reached a creative high on several singles that he'd not been on for quite some time), mum is still a massive fan - she has advanced dementia but put on Elvis and she's up and dancing, or crying right away. This one would bring her tears, as a power ballad. So, yes, we all loved this one back in 1974 even if his current singles were pretty crappy by that point. Would it make the hypothetical 2021 list? No. It's still rousing, but it's also a bit cheesy, and cheesy has to be singalong fun. Sweet Caroline, f'rinstance. Everyone loves Sweet Caroline, it sells on itunes every week in 2021, pops in and out of the weekly sales charts (and does pretty well on streaming to boot) and EVERYONE knows it. Sweet Caroline is not on this list, nor are any other Neil Diamond tracks or songs.