the 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960's - Democratic Underground

mark414

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Sat Aug-19-06 04:14 PM
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the 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960's

according to these snobby bastards: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com (it's a pretty damn good list though)

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/37886/The_200_Greatest_Songs_of_the_1960s

some choice selections:

196. Irma Thomas: "Time Is on My Side"
Though Thomas is widely acknowledged as the Soul Queen of Nola, I've always thought she never got a fair shake (e.g. neither "Ruler of My Heart" nor "Don't Mess With My Man" made this list). The Rolling Stones eventually made this song a smash, but all they did was jack Thomas' steez in full, changing nary a note, save one small thing: They could never belt like her. -- Sean Fennessey

140. Donovan: "Season of the Witch"
Better known as a dippy, soft-spoken mystic, Donovan's claws came out for "Season of the Witch". This psych-pop seether indicts the singer's own folkie utopia ("Beatniks are out to make it rich," he growls) with toothy licks and an organ sheen that may or may not have been courtesy of Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. --Brian Howe

90. The Angels: "My Boyfriend's Back"
Not so much about a boyfriend than about one boy coming home to beat the living hell out of another boy, this 1963 single, originally meant for the Shirelles, is one of the most flat-out mean girl-group tracks ever. College coeds will forever sing it when their high school beaus come to visit, but unless said beau is punching a few suitors in the face on arrival, he's missing the spirit of the whole thing. --Zach Baron

39. Rolling Stones: "Sympathy For The Devil"
It was a ballsy move for Mick Jagger to sing about Satan in the first person, and it was even ballsier to make him so damn likable, a charming rake with a sense of decorum and a way with words. "Sympathy" may be Jagger's finest lyrical moment; in a few quick strokes, he weaves the Crucifiction, the Hundred Years' War, the October Revolution, World War II, and the assassinations of the Kennedys into an interlocking tapestry of human cruelty, and then he takes credit for all of it. Even ballsier may be the Stones' use of the sort of rippling African grooves that palefaced rockstars usually deploy when they're trying to sound warm and life affirming. It's an exhilarating piece of work, especially as the song builds and Keith Richards starts using his guitar the same way the Bomb Squad used sirens, a trebly fuzzbomb exploding into the sinuous mess. --Tom Breihan

8. Johnny Cash: "Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison"
"Hello. I'm Johnny Cash." That opening line, so deadpan and needless-- everybody, especially in Folsom, knows who Johnny Cash is-- may be the genesis of the Man in Black myth, even more so than the song "Man in Black". Making such a humble introduction, Cash sounds larger than life-- definitely larger than prison-- and he delivers an electric, excited performance on his signature Sun hit.

Egged on by W. S. Holland's driving snare and Luther Perkins' breakout guitar solos, Cash gives a shout-out to the Razorbacks ("Soo-ey!") and after the second verse laughs a playful heidi-ho. But as the song progresses, his freewheeling energy becomes hurried and dogged, and he sounds like a truly desperate man, as haunted by the idea of confinement as any of the inmates-- a measure of how deep his identification with his audience went. The fear in his voice still resonates decades later, long after the man has died and the Man in Black has become a canonical American figure. --Stephen M. Deusner