Welcome back to Turntable Talk! As by now, regular readers know, that’s when I have several interesting guest writers sound off on one topic related to the music that we look at here daily. This is our seventh round of it, and if you’re new here, I recommend taking a look back at some of the earlier topics we’ve covered like why the Beatles are still relevant, or “did video kill the radio star?” or the one dealing with one hit wonders we ran at the start of last month.
This month, a simple category…but one which is challenging and should bring up some interesting memories : Those Were The Days My Friend. Simply put, we’re asking the contributors to write about “music’s best year.”
Obviously, that’s a pretty subjective choice. A few executives might try to look at sales charts and give a statistical answer based on album sales or concert grosses, but to most it comes down to the year that seemed to be when the best music was played, or when the most really good records came out. We’ve not limited it but I would expect that most are going to pick a year from the ‘rock era’ in the second half of the ’70s. But if someone opines it was 1804 because that was when Beethoven started working on his 5th Symphony, that’ll be interesting to read about. Today we have Lisa from Tao Talk, where she combines her interests in music, movies, poetry and philosophy. So far we’ve seen 1969 and ’71 lauded. Will Lisa keep that theme going, or talk about a year from another era?
Dave has come up with creative ideas for posts on and around music, some easier to write about than others. This time he has given us the challenge to come up with what we each think was the best year for music. If that isn’t a tall order that runs the risk of being also chosen by someone else, especially if you know who those others’ favorite musicians are, I don’t know what is. The biggest challenge for me was trying to figure out a process to go through mass quantities of possibilities for songs over all time. I quickly realized that just wasn’t possible. Instead I set some parameters for myself and chose them within my parameters. Of course zillions of choices were excluded by the limits, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
My first parameter was to focus only on the rock and roll genre, using that term loosely.
My second parameter was to choose a finite number of my favorite musical groups or individuals. As time is the great arbiter of all, those were limited to, in no order of preference:
The Kinks
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Led Zeppelin
R.E.M.
U2
Joni Mitchell
Pearl Jam
Jethro Tull
George Harrison
The last parameter was years, which I limited to between 1964 and 1990. What I did then was go through the studio discographies of each of them and put check marks in each column for each group/person if they had an album that year. Sadly, although Pearl Jam is one of my favorite groups of all time, their first album wasn’t released until 1991. This excluded them from consideration. The albums each group had in 1991 and beyond varied, with top 3 in quantity being Pearl Jam at 11, REM at 9, U2 at 8.
Adding up all years for all albums within the group and year parameters, three years tied for the most, at 9: 1964, 1965, and 1969. As the audiophile readers undoubtedly know, three groups skewed the numbers for those years: The Kinks, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones, with The Beatles being the main culprits for 1964 with six studio albums! 1965 had a more even distribution with those three groups: Kinks (2,) Beatles (3,) and Stones (4.)
Because of that more even distribution, I’m going to say 1965 was the best year for music. Taking a gander at the songs from those albums, my favorites:
Kinks – Tired of Waiting for You, Dancing in the Streets, Where Have all the Good Times Gone
Beatles – In My Life, I Need You, I’ve Just Seen a Face,
The Rolling Stones – What a Shame, Heart of Stone, Off the Hook
I got to my choice for best year for music in a semi-scientific way and based that choice on three of my favorite groups. None of my other favorite groups had albums released in those years. Just to add a little oomph of support for the year, I looked at playbackfm for their top 100 songs of 1965 and was not too surprised to see so many Stones, Beatles, and Kinks tunes, with some not on the albums released that year:
I Can’t Get No Satisfaction
Help!
Yesterday
Ticket to Ride
Get Off my Cloud
The Last Time
Day Tripper
Rock n Roll Music
Eight Days a Week
A Well Respected Man
You can check out the list at that link and lists for several other years if you would like to. From that hundred, my supporting evidence that 1965 was THE BEST includes (and you will be amazed at how many great tunes came out of this year):
“In the Midnight Hour” – Wilson Pickett
“Unchained Melody” – Righteous Brothers
“Downtown” – Petula Clark
“Wooly Bully” – Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs
“Mr. Tambourine Man” – The Byrds
“Like a Rolling Stone” – Bob Dylan
“My Girl” – The Temptations
“Turn, Turn, Turn” – The Byrds
“Goldfinger” – Shirley Bassey
“For Your Love” – The Yardbirds
“California Girls” – The Beach Boys
“I Got You” – James Brown
“The Tracks of My Tears” – The Miracles
“We Gotta Get Outta This Place” – The Animals
“Positively Fourth Street” – Bob Dylan
“I Hear a Symphony” – The Supremes
“Gloria” – Them
“It’s My Life” – The Animals
In conclusion, I’d like to thank Dave for the challenge he gave each of us. Going through it, I realize there is no real contest about which year is the best. It is more about the process of how we each chose how we chose and why. I look forward to reading each of your posts because I want to see what your process was in choosing. For anyone who also chose 1965: you’ve got great taste!