Like a Rolling Stone
1965 · From Highway 61 Revisited
A snare crack, a sneer, and Kooper's uninvited organ swirling through the song that split rock open.
★ 10.0
Browse by time · decade
1960s
1960 – 1969
Showing 1,164 works across all media from the 1960s
Respect
1967 · From I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You
Aretha takes Otis Redding's song away from him for good, spells out the demand, and never gives it back.
★ 9.9
Pet Sounds
1966
Brian Wilson made it with session players while the rest of the band toured, using bicycle bells, dog whistles and a Coca-Cola can.
★ 9.9
A Day in the Life
1967 · From Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Two unfinished songs bolted together, an orchestra climbing to nothing, and the last piano chord in pop.
★ 9.9
Revolver
1966
On Tomorrow Never Knows, engineers held five tape loops on pencils and mixed them live. No Beatle plays an instrument on Eleanor Rigby.
★ 9.9
2001: A Space Odyssey
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1968 · United Kingdom
Kubrick took the audience from the first bone tool to the far side of Jupiter, explained almost nothing, and made every science fiction film since look domestic by comparison.
★ 9.8
(I Can't Get No) SatisfactionThe Rolling Stones
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
1965 · From Out of Our Heads
Keith dreamt the fuzz riff, taped it half-asleep, and woke up holding the sound of teenage frustration.
★ 9.8
Good Vibrations
1966 · From Smiley Smile
Brian Wilson's pocket symphony, months and a fortune spent chasing one shimmering theremin line into the sunlight.
★ 9.8
Highway 61 Revisited
1965
Al Kooper was not the organ player and sat down at it anyway, which is the sound everybody remembers from Like a Rolling Stone.
★ 9.8
Lawrence of Arabia
Directed by David Lean
1962 · United Kingdom
There is no better argument for seeing a film on the largest screen you can find: Lean's desert swallows the frame, and a British officer dissolves inside it over nearly four hours.
★ 9.8
Strawberry Fields Forever
1966 · From Magical Mystery Tour
Two takes in different keys and tempos spliced into one, a Mellotron haze over Lennon's Liverpool childhood.
★ 9.7
A Change is Gonna ComeSam Cooke
A Change is Gonna Come
1964 · From Portrait of a Legend
Cooke wrote it after a motel turned him away, and sang it like a hymn he already knew by heart.
★ 9.7
God Only KnowsThe Beach Boys
God Only Knows
1966 · From Pet Sounds
It opens by admitting doubt and spends the next two minutes refuting it; McCartney still calls it the greatest.
★ 9.7
Abbey Road
1969
The last album they recorded together, with side two stitched out of songs nobody had finished. The cover shoot took about ten minutes.
★ 9.7
Whole Lotta Love
1969 · From Led Zeppelin II
Page's riff, Plant's howl, and a theremin freakout in the middle that still sounds like the roof coming off.
★ 9.7
I Want to Hold Your Hand
1963 · From Meet the Beatles!
Handclaps, that leaping chord under "I can't hide," and five weeks later America belonged to them.
★ 9.6
Dr. Strangelove
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1964
Nuclear annihilation has never been this funny, and never will be again: Kubrick worked out that the strategy was already absurd, and simply let his generals talk.
★ 9.6
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
1967
It took about seven hundred hours of studio time when their first album took one day, and no singles were released from it.
★ 9.6
Here Comes the Sun
1969 · From Abbey Road
Harrison wrote it in Clapton's garden while skipping a business meeting, and it sounds exactly like that relief.
★ 9.6
One Hundred Years of Solitude
1967 · 417 pages
Seven generations of one family in Macondo, where insomnia comes as a plague and the rain lasts four years. García Márquez reports the impossible as plain fact.
★ 9.5
Hey JudeThe Beatles
Hey Jude
1968
Seven minutes, four of them just na-na-na, and somehow nobody has ever wanted it to end sooner.
★ 9.5
Psycho
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
1960
The film that invented modern horror: Hitchcock broke an unspoken rule about how a story is meant to behave, and every thriller since has been working in the space he opened.
★ 9.5
Yesterday
1965 · From Help!
McCartney dreamt the melody, called it "Scrambled Eggs" for weeks, then let a string quartet make it immortal.
★ 9.5
The Velvet Underground & Nico
1967
Andy Warhol's only real production instruction was to leave the mistakes in. It sold badly enough that the band were dropped soon afterwards.
★ 9.4
Gimme ShelterThe Rolling Stones
Gimme Shelter
1969 · From Let It Bleed
Merry Clayton's voice cracking on "murder" is the sound of the sixties ending, mid-take, in one syllable.
★ 9.4
The Sound of Silence
1965
A folk flop until a producer secretly overdubbed electric guitars, and the duo heard their number one on the radio.
★ 9.4
Stand By Me
1960
That four-note bassline, a gospel hymn turned into a promise, and one of the warmest vocals ever recorded.
★ 9.4
Blonde on Blonde
1966
The Nashville session men sat around for hours while Dylan finished writing. Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands was cut at four in the morning.
★ 9.3
Be My Baby
1963 · From Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica
Hal Blaine's four-beat drum intro is the most imitated in pop, and Ronnie Spector owns everything after it.
★ 9.3
I Heard it Through the Grapevine
1968 · From In the Groove
Motown shelved Gaye's version for over a year; it came out sounding like paranoia set to a Funk Brothers groove.
★ 9.3
Are You Experienced?
1967
Hendrix cut it on four tracks in stolen studio hours between gigs, and nobody had heard a guitar do any of it before.
★ 9.3
Rubber Soul
1965
Norwegian Wood has the first sitar on a pop record. The stretched cover photograph happened when a slide slipped during the projection.
★ 9.3
8.5
Directed by Federico Fellini
1963 · Italy
Fellini could not think of a film to make, so he made one about that: the result is a circus of memory and fantasy that every artist since has borrowed from.
★ 9.2
For the loser now will be later to win, For the times they are a-changin'.
The Times They Are a-Changin' (song) · 1964
All Along the Watchtower
1968
Hendrix took Dylan's parable and lit it, and Dylan has played it Hendrix's way ever since.
★ 9.2
The White Album
1968
Ringo Starr quit for two weeks during the sessions and Paul played drums in his absence. The cover is plain white with a stamped serial number.
★ 9.2
Blowin' in the Wind
1963 · From The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Nine questions, no answers, and the song the civil rights movement adopted whole and never gave back.
★ 9.2
I Want You Back
1969
A child singing about regret over the springiest bassline Motown ever cut, and selling it completely.
★ 9.1