Sixties Tracks Everyone Should Own

Choosing the three best songs of the sixties is like choosing which hotel has the best dinner buffett in Las Vegas. They're all good but for their own unique reasons. When trying to narrow down 60s pop music, one has to look at the decade like two different eras. The early 60s were dominated by the Sun Records musicians of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash. sixties Phil Spector countered with the girl groups, The Crystals, The Shangri-las, and The Ronettes and his wall of sound. Then came those lovable hooligans from Liverpool who turned American 60s pop music on its ear. For two years, the Beatles were the favorite of teenagers and young adults. The early 60s gave us soul music from Detroit on a label that has endure for 50 years. Motown would become synonymous with sixties soul music. Artists such as The Supremes, Four Tops, and The Temptations generated hit after hit across the entire decade. Towards the end of the decade, sixties soul music expressed the growing unrest of the Civil Rights Movement. Beginning in 1965, 60s music began to change. Starting with The Mamas and the Papas, pop music began to take on the persona of the hippy movement from Haight Asbury area of San Francisco. The last half of the decade gave us hard rock from the Rolling Stones and the beginnings of the psychedelic sounds from the Doors and Led Zeppelin. The late sixties also gave us the original guitar god, Jimi Hendrix. To choose three songs would serve a disservice to the reader. So we'll pick four. The four songs are "Runaway" by Del Shannon, representing the early 60s, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles, to represent the British invasion, "Where Did Our Love Go" by the Supremes, to represent Motown, and "Light My Fire" by the Doors, to represent the late 60s.