1964 was, without a doubt, one of the most influential years in the history of popular music in America. The arrival of The Beatles changed everything. Following their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by a record TV audience, the course of pop music, and pop culture, was forever altered. The Beatles dominated the Hot 100 singles chart like no act had done, placing 6 songs at #1 in 1964. Remarkably, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote all of them as well as a seventh for Peter and Gordon. This was while most of their contemporaries were charting with cover versions. The Beatles ...

The British Invasion of the Hot 100 in 1964 really was an invasion of the American pop chart by British acts that no one could have foreseen. In 1963, only one British act reached #1 on the American singles chart. It was The Tornados with their instrumental hit, ‘Telstar’. It was released in 1962 and spent a single week in 1963 at #1. Many #1 records in 1963 don’t even seem like pop records, at least not the kind you would find on the Hot 100 a scant few months into 1964. You were more likely to find a lot of these records in the parents’ record collections than with America’s ...

Radio listeners in 1970 would be treated to some of the greatest hits of the coming decade. They would marvel at the soaring vocals of Art Garfunkel on Simon & Garfunkel’s #1 smash recording of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. They may have shed a tear upon hearing the melancholy last single and record-setting 20th #1 Hot 100 hit from The Beatles, ‘The Long And Winding Road’. Many would celebrate the joyful sound of the uber-talented Jackson 5 and their four #1 hits in 1970. The AM airwaves would be filled with the soft pop hits of the brother and sister act, Carpenters, big hits ...

As the decade comes to an end, the AM dial is filled with hits from almost every musical genre imaginable and that variety is captured by Billboard’s ranking of the Year End Hot 100 Singles Of 1969 that had ‘Sugar, Sugar’ by the cartoon band, The Archies, at #1. After that, and in order, we see ‘Aquarius’/‘Let The Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)’ by The 5th Dimension, ‘I Can’t Get Next To You’ by The Temptations, ‘Honky Tonk Women’ by The Rolling Stones, ‘Everyday People’ by Sly & The Family Stone, ‘Dizzy’ by Tommy Roe, ‘Hot Fun In The Summertime’ by Sly...

Amidst the political turmoil in America in 1968, the music you heard on the radio was as eclectic a concoction as anyone could imagine. It’s sappy ballads, bubblegum records, psychedelic hits, instrumental hits, country tunes, hard rock, power pop, soul, Motown classics, protest songs, novelty records and, as always, or at least since 1964 in America, the genius of The Beatles. Even among just the #1 songs of the year, the variety is mind-blowing, from ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Honey’, ‘Green Tambourine’, ‘Love Is Blue’, ‘Grazing In The Grass’ and ‘Harper Valley P.T.A.’ to ‘...