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
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1963
Showing 16 songs from 1963
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
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
She Loves YouThe Beatles
She Loves You
1963 · From The Beatles' Second Album
Lennon and McCartney started it on a tour bus after a Newcastle show; Martin thought the sixth-chord ending corny.
★ 8.8
Ring of Fire
1963 · From Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash
Anita Carter cut it first, her sister June wrote it with Merle Kilgore, and Cash added the mariachi trumpets.
★ 8.6
Louie Louie
1963
Ely shouted on tiptoe at a mic hung overhead, and the FBI spent thirty-one months failing to decode him.
★ 7.8
Heat Wave
1963
Holland-Dozier-Holland over a gospel backbeat, Mike Terry's baritone sax break, and Reeves hollering the Vandellas to a Grammy nomination.
★ 7.3
In Dreams
1963
Seven sections in under three minutes, no chorus repeated, and a melody Orbison said arrived while half asleep.
★ 7.1
Then He Kissed Me
1963
Larry Levine stumbled onto that echo by accident, and LaLa Brooks sings a whole courtship in under three minutes.
★ 7.0
Da Doo Ron Ron
1963
Nonsense syllables meant to be replaced by real words, La La Brooks on lead, and Spector's Gold Star thunder.
★ 7.0
Please Please MeThe Beatles
Please Please Me
1963 · From Please Please Me
Eighteen takes in one November session, a Lennon ballad sped up, and Martin calling their first number one.
★ 7.0
I Saw Her Standing There
1963 · From Please Please Me
Martin spliced McCartney's count-in from take nine onto take one, and rock and roll never had a better doorway.
★ 6.8
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) (Darlene Love)
1963 · From A Christmas Gift for You
Cut at Gold Star in 1963, a commercial flop, then Love sang it for Letterman nearly every December until 2014.
★ 6.8
In My RoomThe Beach Boys
In My Room
1963 · From Surfer Girl
Three Wilson brothers on the first verse, singing harmonies worked out in the Hawthorne bedroom the song describes.
★ 6.6
Baby I Love You
1963 · From Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica
Ronnie sang it alone at Gold Star while the group toured, so Spector stacked Cher and the Blossoms behind her.
★ 5.8
My Boyfriend's Back
1963
Feldman overheard a schoolgirl brushing off a boy, and the Angels' demo for the Shirelles went out as is.
★ 4.2