70) The Shirelles – “Soldier Boy”

One of the problems I have writing this blog is that of objectivity.  Of course, the question of whether or not a record is any good is oftentimes subjective; I know from reading the statistics on my blog that many people stumble upon this blog via Googling songs that they clearly like a lot more [...]

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69) Elvis Presley – “Good Luck Charm”

Before the U.S. Army shipped Elvis overseas in 1958, he recorded a bundle of tracks to be parceled out as singles in his absence.  The intent was to keep him in the pop music scene so that he would still have a career when discharged – even the King of Rock and Roll couldn’t survive [...]

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68) Shelley Fabares – “Johnny Angel”

Generations, in the over-arching cultural sense, are roughly delineated in 20-year segments.  But in pop music, the passage of time is accelerated.  Never was this truer than in the 1960s, when “revolutions per minute” could refer not only to a lone record on a turntable, but to pop radio as a whole.  Connie Francis may [...]

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67) Connie Francis – “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You”

While researching this entry, I was surprised to learn that Connie Francis had the most successful chart run of any female solo singer of the 1960s.  Over the 40 years since the decade ended, collective cultural rewriting of the ‘60s has caused it to become associated with singers like Janis Joplin, Diana Ross, and Grace [...]

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