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Great Singles Of 1969

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1969 isn’t the best for albums, at least not compared to the previous four years, but its singles are plenty and very wonderful.

We did a thread on the singles of 1968 last year but I reckon 1969 could be even better. Then, I started off with Simon & Garfunkel. I’ll do same now.

The Boxer, featuring Hal Blaine.

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Comments

    • What a collection of bad hair! Charlie’s being the worse. Jagger sounds as though he’s singing live and has a bit of a frog. Gosh! They haven’t changed much in fifty years.

      • Abbey Road is rubbish?!? No it’s not. It’s brill, especially with headphones on, as there is so much going on in songs like Here Comes The Sun and Come Together. Probably my second favourite album after The Man-Machine by Kraftwerk. A nice reissue of Abbey Road in the style of the Sgt. Pepper and White Album sets would be lovely.

        • All you really need from Abbey Road is the Come Together/Something single. Most of the songs are incomplete, pastiches or ill-thought-through. The ‘medley’ is a technique to make the crap smell of roses. Here Comes The Sun is the third best song, which was largely ignored for decades because it is twee. Golden Slumbers is a great poem set to music, sadly not McCartney’s poem. You Never Give Me Your Money is a poor imitation of A Day In The Life and don’t get me started on Because and Sun King. The production is dazzling, possibly George Martin’s best.

          • Ah, not the German version though, just for that weird noise Ralf makes when he’s singing Das Model. But I think The Man-Machine is the only flawless album there’s been. There are a couple of dozen of albums I’d give 20 out of 20 to (that’s how I’m scoring albums for my ranking project), but it doesn’t make them flawless.

      • By Beatles standards I would say they are extremely average. The only great single they released in 69 was Something, but other bands released far better ones.

        I like Abbey Road, but I also believe it is somewhat overrated. Can’t agree with @Tiggerlion about “You Never Give Me Your Money” though, one of Macca’s greatest.

        • Don’t Let Me Down is immense. Ballad and Shoe have a certain charm, a Beatles characteristic sadly lacking in most of 1969. Not ‘too shabby’ is a fair assessment, I reckon.

          • There’s one live version of Cold Turkey that I like way more than any of the others. Haven’t listened to it for ages though, so without checking I can’t remember which it is. I think it’s the one on Live Peace in Toronto. Whichever it is it’s electric.

  20. Number 1 on my birthday. Loved it and still do. Ah ha ha ha. Love the referential lyrics:

    You talk like Marlene Dietrich
    And you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire
    Your clothes are all made by Balmain
    And there’s diamonds and pearls in your hair, yes there are
    You live in a fancy apartment
    Off the Boulevard St. Michel
    Where you keep your Rolling Stones records
    And a friend of Sacha Distel, yes you do

    You?

    • Complete belter; I too loved it them and still love it today.

      I spent hours finding out what all the references were, and marvelled at the sheer chic European glamour and sophistication of it all. It helped to open provincial eyes to a world that otherwise only existed in “continental” cinema or in the pages of cheesy books – even the Bond films were heavily focused – inevitably – on the caribbean, with only an occasional spin at Monaco, but Peter was obviously STEEPED in the stuff, I mean, just look at that moustache. And most thrillingly of all, that European culture was only a ferry ride away!

  27. I only heard about this thread through the grapevine, but just the mention of that Peter Sarstedt song brought me out in a cold sweat as it reminded me of my no pop radio childhood when PS and that f*cking mouse with clogs on got played to death.
    Before my time, but I note that this was the year that The Temptations moved from the standard Motown themes and four-to-the-floor rhythm of Get Ready to the conscious soul of Cloud Nine:

  29. Not making any claims for it as one of the singles of the year. But this certainly brings back memories.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwxfsOXq2w8

    I remember going to a church hall disco in North Harrow and suddenly the local skinheads turned up.

    Only three of four of them, but being more Walter the Softy than Dennis the Menace, I was scared shitless. One burly teen psychopath, nicknamed Scotty, was notorious. Look at him for a second in the wrong way and you were toast.

  30. As a mere 9 year old in ‘69 I really hadn’t developed a particular interest in popular music, but listening to many of the above it is striking how substantial and enduring most of those songs are.

  31. 1969 was a year for me when my people were fair and we wore flowers in our hair. You don’t see me doing that these days.

    Let’s have a few more of the Yasgur’s Farm Hitmakers.

    Santana

    Jefferson Airplane

    And this ridiculously charismatic chap: Richie Havens.

  35. A slightly mad story line about a loss of senses promoting the ability to play pinball, but it changed them from a singles band to one of the biggest rock bands in the world

    Pinball Wizard

                    • Overture,
                      Its a Boy
                      Amazing Journey
                      Christmas
                      Pinball Wizard
                      Go to the Mirror
                      Tommy Can your Hear Me
                      Im Free
                      We’re not Going to Take it

                      ….. Comes to 33 mins. Thats enough for me. Of course big chunks of the actually story are missing (the cure for instance) but no great loss

                    • Overture 5:21
                      It’s A Boy 0:39
                      Amazing Journey 5:04
                      Christmas 4:35
                      Cousin Kevin 4:06
                      Eyesight To The Blind (The Hawker) 2:15
                      Pinball Wizard 3:01
                      Go To The Mirror 3:48
                      Sensation 2:27
                      Miracle Cure 0:13
                      I’m Free 2:39
                      We’re Not Gonna Take It 7:08

                      42 minutes and maintains the story, just about. Eyesight To The Blind shifted into The Acid Queen slot. The transition from Amazing Journey to Christmas needs smoothing out.

                    • Hmmm. On reflection I think I would be fairly savage – my version ends up being about half an hour.

                      I’m not sure I could have Amazing Journey without it going into Sparks, but we’re well shut of Underture, which just tediously repeats that bit from the end of Sell Out.

                      As I do not give a monkeys about the story, I’m not sure I would keep Christmas, but I would have 1921. I’ve always liked the idea of Eyesight to the Blind but it’s actually just very pedestrian blues rock. Stick it on the b-side of Pinball Wizard. Cousin Kevin can fuck off too.

                      Acid Queen can stay off – even Tina Turner’s OTT version couldn’t make it a decent tune, and Pete’s vocal is terrible (I know it is on 1921 too but there it kind of suits the song).

                      And yes @sniffity , it does need a bloody good remix – when you consider how Live At Leeds and Next just roar out of the speakers, Tommy does sound weedy. Although I think the later records to an extent pick up the gauntlet from Led Zep – specifically Bonzo.

                      I’ve always found Quadrophenia quite muddy, but maybe that’s just me.

                    • Single Tommy

                      Overture  
                      It’s a Boy  
                      Amazing Journey  
                      Sparks  
                      Christmas  
                      Cousin Kevin
                      The Acid Queen  
                      Pinball Wizard  
                      Sensation  
                      I’m Free  
                      We’re Not Gonna Take It  

                      41 minutes

                      Cousin Kevin stays so John Entwhistle gets a credit.

                      Acid Queen stays to bulk the time to 40 minutes, and because it’s the best if the jettisoned bunch

                      1921 nearly made the cut

              • I really don’t know it that well, and mainly from the film. I need to give it a proper listen. When it was du jour to play I always found my attention wandering after 10 minutes.

      • What Tommy needs is a decent remix – it’s a mystery how Townshend showed with Something In The Air that he had the producing chops and yet could let something so thin sounding as Tommy be released.

        Come on, Pete – giz a 50th Anniversary Remix set.

        • Am I the only one on here that loves Tommy..?

          The original version is a bit thin sounding for sure.

          The 1996 single disc version was a remix, and the later double disc was remixed for 5:1 for SACD (which I assume was also used for the stereo version on the CD layer) – they do sound much better, but the original production is quite spare anyway because of the instrumentation.

          By the way – the recent live version from the RAH is pretty dreadful in my opinion, and I love Tommy and the Who! Townshend is reading the lyrics off a music stand for Christ’s sake.

        • Kit Lambert was the producer, wasn’t he?

          Do The Who still have the original tapes? My impression is that everything The Beatles recorded has been carefully preserved but that’s an exception in Rock. Giles has lots of material to play with. Would a Tommyremxer have similar?

        • Daltrey said when they recorded the Tommy album, the material was still new to them and they didn’t have a full appreciation of Townshend’s vision for it. It was only after they played it live several times that they, and especially Daltrey, grew into it.

          So for me, the version to listen to is the one on the Deluxe Edition of Live at Leeds.

  40. I am glad you are brave, Tigger. It is a stupendous pop record.

    I saw the second part of the documentary on TV yesterday and it was grim. And I am feeling very confused. I can’t just simply airbrush out one of the most popular pop artists and pretend he never happened,

    The only answer is to listen to Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly aka the Humblebums.

  42. Scott Walker took a further step away from commercial Pop and edged closer to the abyss. I think Scott 4 is his best album and one of the few truly great albums of 1969. The Seventh Seal was its lead track and a single.

      • Domestic update: I just sang the line “A boy child rides upon your back” a la N S Engel on the way downstairs. Mrs Moose, normally pretty merciless about my singing and my impressions*, said it was rather good. She then added “Shame you don’t look like him… in 1969, anyway”.

        (*Sample quote: “No matter who you’re impersonating, it always ends up sounding like Mike Yarwood’s Harold Wilson”)

  43. James Brown more consistently brought the funk in 1969, hardening the sound ever further to the point where we would get Sex Machine and Funky Drummer the following year. A lot of the time “songs” as an idea were jettisoned in favour of pure groove.

    Singles in 1969 included the brilliant slowburner Ain’t It Funky Now and this, which is even better.

    • That series of 2 CD compilation albums from about 10 years ago – James Brown The Singles – each of which covered 2 years of his career were astonishing. They all had 2 hours of music that left me thinking that hardly anyone had made this much great music in their entire recorded output, But JB managed it in just 2 years.

      • That’s just the singles. He was stupendously productive. We tend to think that the “hardest working man in showbusiness” slogan refers to his punishing live schedule. It wasn’t just that – he was churning out four or five albums a year, and when we get into the seventies we’ve got all his production work with the JBs, Maceo parker, Lyn Collins et al.

        There were a lot of shit ballads on his albums, and there was also a lot of quite incredible music.

  44. This was a single – as was, insanely, The Partisan. Most people at the time will have heard it on the album Songs From a Room.

    Perhaps The Partisan was aimed at the people who bought Where Do You Go To my Lovely. A ha ha ha.

  46. Here’s a curiosity. Two years before Sticky Fingers, Marianne Faithfull sang Sister Morphine for a B side. It took her a long time to get a songwriting credit for it.

  47. Released in 68, Race with the Devil by The Gun was still in the charts in many parts of the world in 1969. What a thoroughly exciting piece of music!

    More vintage riffing from Spooky Tooth…

  51. In that Leeds Carnival article about the growth in popularity of West Indian music, Georgie Fame is mentioned as a prime mover. Not much evidence of that in this tuneful hit which reached #16 in the charts.

    Sounds slight Bacharachian.

    Hal and Burt were turning out the pearls of pop perfection very effectively in 69.

    I’ll never fall in love again

    Raindrops keep falling on my head which was specifically written for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

    Popular films had a big influence on the pop charts and vice versa in the late 60s.

    Thunderclap’s hit was used in The Magic Christian and The Strawberry Statement

    Serge Gainsborough, Georgie Fame and Desmond Dekker all either wrote songs about Bonnie and Clyde or referred to the gangster couple.

    And ska and calypso started to make waves when they were used in Dr No in 1964.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AdtmH_a44E

  58. This is a classic – Brainbox ‘Down Man’, issued on Parlophone in 1969 in the UK (to little avail). But we can all hear the genius of Jan Akkerman, which started bothering the hit parage two or three years later…

  62. If anyone in the class wants some extra homework……

    And now something scandalous. The sublime Time of the Season from the Zombies’ magnum opus Oracle and Odyssey in 1969 was a #1 hit in Canada, #3 in the and #2 in South Africa. Despite being released twice it never charted in the UK.

  67. The full-length album version, because I couldn’t find the single edit on YouTube.
    Just start fading it a little bit after the 3 minute mark and that’s pretty much it.

    .
    An all-star recording session.

    Billy Preston – vocals, piano, organ, tack piano.
    George Harrison – electric and acoustic guitars.
    Eric Clapton – electric guitar.
    Keith Richards – bass.
    Ginger Baker – drums, tambourine.
    Doris Troy – backing vocals
    Madeline Bell – backing vocals

  70. Vincent just paid tribute to the late, great Andre Williams.

    Here is one of his singles from 1969.

    We don’t many songs about girdles these days. Spotify scarcely seemed to know what it was.

  72. The Lizard King complete with a rather substantial brass section.

    Touch me (from the Soft Parade). Their third most successful single!

    Footage from the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which “was considered a bastion of liberal thinking” according to the comments.

  73. The Kinks have already been mentioned on this thread. But I’m going to have to add this brilliant number from 1969, originally the B-side of “Drivin'”. It’s probably my favourite Dave Davies song ever (and there’s plenty of competition): “Mindless Child of Motherhood”

  74. Phil Spector went quiet after River Deep, Mountain High flopped and he married Ronnie. Black Pearl by Sonny Charles and the Checkmates was something of comeback, warming his production fingers up nicely before working with Lennon and Harrison the following year.

    • I was just reading Phil Spector’s Wikipedia page a few hours ago. Not a lot of activity from him in ’69, apart from his cameo as a drug dealer in “Easy Rider”. I don’t think any of the ER soundtrack music was released on singles that year.

  79. You are all going to shoot me down in flames for this one: it’s not exactly Walk On By

    But it was an enormous hit at the beginning of the year.

    Personally, I’m up for a warts n all glimpse of the Zeitgeist. And anyway this quite a jolly little tune.

    The Scaffold were household names in the later part of the 60s and early 70s.

    https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/Scaffold

    • Anyone know why “Fire” (titled “Let Me Light Your Fire” on the label) was released as a 45?

      Would have made more sense, not much more sense, but more sense, to have put out “If 6 Were 9” as it appeared in Easy Rider.

    • A nice straightforward love song from The Bonzo Dog Band (they lost the ‘Doo-Dah’ in 1968 and only found it again in 2007). You can hear The Rutles in it, can’t you.

      I Want To Be With You

            • I have that Cornology box which gathers together the five original albums plus a few odds and sods like Alley Oop and Button Up Your Overcoat. I sometimes think it’s all the music I’ll ever need.

              So therrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre etc

  85. The interesting oddities continue to pop up. I don’t go looking for them. They just find me.…

    Indian Giver – 1910 Fruitgum Company feat Lady Penelope and Parker

    From Birmingham, Peel favourites Blossom Toes

    The Idle Race were another name that kept cropping up when listening to the Venerable John. Now I can join the dots and make several connections.

  87. Erm … has anyone mentioned Quicksilver Messenger Service yet?
    No?
    OK, I will, then.

    Here’s a 1969 single by Quicksilver Messenger Service. It’s their white-hot, supercharged version of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love”?

  88. We seem to be straying away from the single format here. Not that I mind.
    Here’s some live Jefferson Airplane from ’69 (but not from a single AFAIK).

    (3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds)

    • I love that track so it is going on the playlist anyway.

      This thread is a marvellous illustration of the values of a slow cooking approach.

      Hathaway, Quicksilver, Zappa, Country Joe: all these fine artists who are very much of 69 but perhaps are not the very first thing one thinks of.

      • Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw His Face is a good example of a slow cook. Originally on her debut album of 1969, First Take, it was finally released as a single (slightly adjusted) in 1972 on the back of a Clint Eastwood movie.

    • Suggs – no fool he – picked Is That… on Desert Island Discs. Not that surprising given the resigned melancholy of later Madness. He also, brilliantly, picked A Blind Man by John Betjeman.

      • Professor Von Moosenstein, did you know that Peggy’s song, written by Lieber and Stoller, was inspired by a 1893 short story by Thomas Mann? Enttauschung (Disappointment).

        I suspect that the Magic Mountain Hitmaker did not inspire too many pop songs.

        • No, but the film of Death in Venice brought the music of Gustav “Bring the Noise!” Mahler into a lot of people’s lives.

          (The 1969 link here is that that film is referred to in the Withnail, set in that year . “Boy Lands Plum Role With Top Italian Film Director” etc)

    • Very much the wrong Bring the Noise. That’s the beginning of Nu Metal right there. Ugggh.

      Mahler spent his life in pursuit of maximum volume. When he visited Niagara Falls he joyfully proclaimed, “At last – Fortissimo!!”

      If he comes back from the dead, take the dude to see Sun O))). He’d be made up.

  91. What a quote!

    Gazelle-like, you leap effortlessly from Betjeman to Sun o))) and then from Public Enemy to Mahler via Withnail. You are truly polymath of the week. Polymooth perhaps_

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