161) The Rolling Stones – “Paint It, Black”

The Beatles, ever the pop pioneers, introduced the sitar to rock and roll on the song “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” released at the end of 1965 on the album Rubber Soul.* The exoticism of George Harrison’s sitar complements John Lennon’s worldly-wise sketch of a casual affair, each in its own way signifying the expanding horizons of the 1960s. Harrison wouldn’t start studying with Ravi Shankar until the following year, but he had already begun to take the instrument seriously. Brian Jones, on the other hand, had no such pretensions to authenticity or mastery of the instrument. The sitar appealed to The Rolling Stones because it sounded foreign, and by extension sinister and unsettling. If the sitar in “Norwegian Wood” represented knocking down established boundaries, in “Paint It Black” it captures the feeling of being stranded in an alien culture, fearful for your life and unable to find your way home.

The hell that the song’s narrator finds himself trapped in is existential despair provoked by his girlfriend’s sudden death. The song marks the point where The Rolling Stones’ juvenile negation of the world in “Satisfaction” and “Get Off of My Cloud” withers into absolute nihilism, its pitch-blackness prefiguring the flirtation with the occult that would culminate in Their Satanic Majesties Request and “Sympathy for the Devil.” “Paint It Black” may not feint at satanism, but the classical Indian instrumentation and Jewish/Arabic/Persian-inspired vocal lines evoke a mysticism far beyond the borders of genteel Britain and its institutional Anglicanism.

Like several of the preceding number-ones, “Paint It Black” casts off the standard verse-chorus song structure, instead alternating between two rival sections. Part A is the Eastern half of the song, driven by sitar and invoking Southwest Asian percussion and melodic styles. Jagger looks inside himself and finds only blackness; outside himself, the only things he can see are hearses and dead flowers. His all-consuming despondency starts to spew out to the world around him. He wants to drain the color of everything – to paint the red door black – and make the rest of the world match his own darkness. Part B is the song’s Western half, driven by guitar and adhering to a more familiar rock format. This is the part of the song where the living dwell: newborn babies, girls in summer clothes, people who avert their eyes from the funeral procession. Here, Jagger can recognize that there’s light out of the blackness (summer, the sun), and that what feels to him like the earth shattering “just happens every day.” “Paint It Black” is driven by this tension between Jagger’s competing options, whether to rejoin the rest of the world or disappear inside himself. The band rage against the darkness, trying to outmenace the menace – note especially Charlie Watts’s cymbal-heavy thrash, the manic counteracting the depressive – but Jagger chooses to “fade away,” reneging on a promise from more innocent days. The only living thing left is an imaginary version of his love, a vision of whom he can almost make out in the vanishing sun. Soon he even wants to blot that out, and the song gives way to the abyss, fading out as he fades away. 9

*The Yardbirds had experimented with the instrument in the sessions for the 1965 single “Heart Full of Soul,” but the final version replaced the sitar with an electric guitar.

Hit #1 on June 11, 1966; total of 2 weeks at #1
161 of 1018 #1′s reviewed; 15.82% through the Hot 100

160) Percy Sledge – “When a Man Loves a Woman”

Southern soul had been a commercial force since the beginning of the decade, but its rawer, more groove-focused sound kept it trailing behind Motown’s hit-driven commercial polish. Memphis-based Stax Records netted a handful of big hits at the beginning of the ’60s – Carla Thomas’s Chantels-ish ballad “Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)”; her father Rufus Thomas’s dance novelty “Walking the Dog”; a pair of funky instrumentals by the label’s house band (The Mar-Keys’ “Last Night” and Booker T. & the M.G.’s’ “Green Onions”) – but by 1966, the label still hadn’t produced a breakout artist who could rival The Supremes or Marvin Gaye. Stax’s biggest star, Otis Redding, had yet to reach the Top 20 of the pop charts. Atlantic Records up-and-comer Wilson Pickett, who recorded at Stax, had a bit more luck, hitting #13 in March with “634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.).” But the singer who finally gave Southern soul its monster crossover hit was an unknown unaffiliated with the Memphis scene. Percy Sledge worked days as a hospital orderly when he recorded his debut single at Norala Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama. Atlantic quickly picked up the single, and within months “When a Man Loves a Woman” became the label’s first gold record, almost single-handedly establishing the Muscle Shoals region as a capital for soul music.

The churchy organ line that opens the song announces immediately that this is something completely different from any R&B- and soul-flavored pop hit that had come before it. That Farfisa, along with the backing choir vocals, betrays soul’s origins in gospel music, while the twangy guitar could have been ripped from a country song. Sledge’s secular testifying seems freeform and off the cuff, yet carves out a melody as indelible and resilient as any hymn or Tin Pan Alley tune. The song starts out like an ode to devotion: “when a man loves a woman / can’t keep his mind on nothing else / he’ll trade the world for the good thing he’s found.” But for all its romantic slow-dance potential, “When a Man Loves a Woman” is less about love than it is about heartbreak and self-ruin. As the song progresses, the admirable aspects of a relationship begin to warp into their carnival-mirror images. The infatuated man’s imperception of his lover’s flaws reveals itself as fatal blindness; his willingness to sacrifice deteriorates into masochism; his loyalty mutates into codependency. Sledge begins the song in the third person, singing about a generic man and woman, but the pretense of distance drops away in the bridges: “I gave you everything I had,” “I know just how he feels.” The use of “man” and “woman” also universalizes the song, making the relationship between the two feel more like the rule than an unfortunate exception. This is how love always is, Sledge seems to be singing. Even if the woman isn’t worth the pain, the man is doomed to suffer anyway. By the time the slightly out-of-tune horns show up in the final few seconds, they sound as broken as the singer’s spirit.  8

Hit #1 on May 28, 1966; total of 2 weeks at #1
160 of 1016 #1′s reviewed; 15.75% through the Hot 100

159) The Mamas & the Papas – “Monday, Monday”

Like The Byrds, the members of The Mamas & the Papas started out as mid-level folkies who found success blending their native style of music with modern pop. But whereas The Byrds primarily drew from the up-to-the-minute sounds of Bob Dylan and The Beatles, The Mamas & the Papas seemed equally comfortable in the present and the past, aligning themselves with the burgeoning folk-rock scene but also reaching back to 1950s vocal groups (particularly the boy-girl harmonies of The Fleetwoods), the soft orchestral arrangements of easy listening and the dramatic flair of vaudeville. Their purified version of folk-rock filtered out its rough edges and political streak while retaining its immediacy and autumnal beauty. The group’s warm yet crystal-clear harmonies and immaculate folk-classical production set the template for sunshine pop, but many of their best songs seemed more partly cloudy, as if their perpetual optimism had developed as resistance to the undercurrent of melancholy coursing through their music. The tension within the group frequently seeped into their lyrics, giving even their more upbeat songs an air of fragility.

“Monday, Monday” isn’t as bleak as The Mamas & the Papas’ previous single, “California Dreamin’,” but nevertheless it captures a similar uncertainty and ambivalence. Monday is the day for returning to regular life, the pleasures of the weekend reduced to nothing more than memories and perhaps some lingering aftereffects. It marks both an end of something that may or may not have been good, and a fresh start that may or may not be welcome. “Monday, Monday” neatly splits the difference between these conflicting emotions: in the left channel, it’s all uplifting ba-da-da harmonies; in the right, it’s Denny Doherty’s plaintive lead and a rolling harpsichord line. The opening line of each verse alternates between anticipation (“Monday, Monday / so good to me”) and dread (“can’t trust that day”). In turn, the mellow sway of the verses are twice split by a faster, more driven bridge, where the melancholy tips over into outright misery (“but whenever Monday comes / you can find me crying all of the time”). Like the preceding number-one, the intensity of “Monday, Monday” is heightened by a false ending. But whereas the stop in “Good Lovin’” is like a blown fuse, the song’s relentless scramble gone into overdrive, the one in “Monday, Monday” stems from a reluctance to move forward. But time marches on and so does the song, concluding on a note of acceptance if not enthusiasm: “Monday, Monday / it’s here to stay.” Rather than coming to a fully resolved ending, the song fades out in a cycle of harpsichord and harmonies. There will always be more Mondays. 8

Hit #1 on May 7, 1966; total of 3 weeks at #1
159 of 1016 #1′s reviewed; 15.65% through the Hot 100

158) The Young Rascals – “Good Lovin’”

Even long after rock and roll had established itself as its own genre, rock bands continued to borrow from R&B as a reliable source for danceable material. Covering an R&B single rather than a song by another rock group also allowed bands more flexibility to remake a song in their own image. Oftentimes, as The Dave Clark Five demonstrated, this resulted in rock groups ironing out the R&B track’s idiosyncrasies to conform to a narrow definition of what rock is supposed to sound like. Occasionally, though, a good band could apply rock’s rawness and urgency in a way that complemented the original without blanding it out.

On the surface, The Young Rascals’ version of “Good Lovin’” doesn’t change too much from the 1965 original by The Olympics, apart from a slightly faster tempo, more prominent guitar and an organ solo. But whereas The Olympics relax into a steady groove, the Rascals’ version accelerates relentlessly. Every element of the arrangement propels the song forward, from the frantic “one-two-three!” that kick-starts the song, to the push-pull call and response between Felix Cavaliere and his bandmates in the verses, to the rising tide of “yeah”s in the bridge, culminating in the cries of “GOOD LOVE!” punctuating the chorus. Gene Cornish’s guitar cycles restlessly under the verses and fills transitions with a riff like the revving of an engine, ready to go for another round. The momentum builds: a guitar riff bleeds into a scream into an organ break, the notes fluctuating then building, until the tension snaps – silence. Then, just as suddenly, another “GOOD LOVE!” (now rather breathless, sounding more like “hooh love”) and the boys are making up for lost time. The band thrashes through one more chorus (devolved into “love love / love love love love love”), one more guitar rev, one more organ build, then silence again.

The lack of release (musical or otherwise) could potentially be exhausting, but the band leavens the urgency with easygoingness and good humor. (It’s a fever, yes, but not a matter of life and death.) Much of this ease stems from the band’s experience and self-assurance. Three-quarters of the Rascals had met touring as part of Joey Dee and the Starliters; the fourth, drummer Dino Danelli, had played with Lionel Hampton. So while it lacks the dumb-luck lightning in a bottle of the best garage records, “Good Lovin’” bears the imprint of professionals who know exactly how to move a song forward without feeling rushed or overcrowded. They’re confident enough that they don’t need to show off (even the organ solo isn’t exactly complex) or stretch the song out past its welcome. The result is a record that isn’t risky but still thrills – an exemplar for how rock music could be polished without sacrificing its spark. 7

Hit #1 on April 30, 1966; total of 1 week at #1
158 of 1016 #1′s reviewed; 15.55% through the Hot 100