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
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1964
Showing 135 works across all media from 1964
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
For the loser now will be later to win, For the times they are a-changin'.
The Times They Are a-Changin' (song) · 1964
My GirlThe Temptations
My Girl
1964
Smokey Robinson wrote it for his wife Claudette, then handed David Ruffin his first Temptations lead vocal.
★ 9.0
A Love Supreme
1964
Coltrane recorded it in one December session and meant it as a prayer. On the last movement he plays a psalm he had written out.
★ 9.0
You've Lost That Lovin' FeelinThe Righteous Brothers
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin
1964
Spector printed 3:05 on the label of a 3:45 record, and it became the century's most-played song on American radio.
★ 8.8
Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
1964 · From Bringing It All Back Home
Bruce Langhorne's giant Turkish frame drum gave Dylan the image, and the Byrds' cover turned it into folk rock.
★ 8.4
Dancing in the Street
1964
Gaye co-wrote it and cut an early version; Reeves heard block parties in it and needed two takes.
★ 8.4
House of the Rising SunThe Animals
House of the Rising Sun
1964
Hilton Valentine's arpeggio, one take at De Lane Lea, and four and a half minutes when singles ran two.
★ 8.4
You Really Got MeThe Kinks
You Really Got Me
1964 · From Kinks
Dave Davies took a razor blade to his little Elpico amp's speaker cone, and distortion arrived on British radio.
★ 8.3
Oh, Pretty Woman
1964
Claudette said she was going out, Dees answered that a pretty woman never needs money, and the riff followed.
★ 8.2
The Times They Are A-Changin'
1964 · From The Times They Are A-Changin'
Dylan set out to write an anthem on purpose, borrowing the cadence of Irish and Scottish ballads, and got one.
★ 8.1
A Hard Day's Night
1964 · From A Hard Day's Night
Starr's slip of the tongue supplied the title, and the opening chord is still argued over by musicologists.
★ 7.9
The Girl From IpanemaAstrud Gilberto
The Girl From Ipanema
1964
Never a professional singer, Gilberto sang at the 1963 session because she spoke English; Record of the Year followed.
★ 7.8
Herzog
1964 · 371 pages
Moses Herzog, a professor whose wife left him for his closest friend, comes apart and writes furious unsent letters to philosophers, ex-wives, and the dead. Bellow makes a breakdown enormous fun.
★ 7.8
Fly Me to the MoonFrank Sinatra
Fly Me to the Moon
1964 · From It Might as Well Be Swing
Howard wrote a waltz; Quincy Jones swung it into four for Basie, and Apollo crews played it in orbit.
★ 7.7
Twist and Shout
1964 · From Please Please Me
Last song of a twelve-hour day, Lennon's throat gone, one usable take, and the Beatles' only million-selling cover.
★ 7.7
Come mothers and fathers, Throughout the land And don't criticize What you can't understand.
The Times They Are a-Changin' (song) · 1964
Walk On By
1964
A B-side until Murray the K's listeners voted it up, cut live at Bell Sound with Warwick barely raising her voice.
★ 7.5
The Son of Man
1964 · Private collection
Magritte called the floating apple a kind of self-portrait, about how much we want to see the thing that is being hidden.
★ 7.5
All Day and All of the NightThe Kinks
All Day and All of the Night
1964
Ray Davies's publisher wanted to sue the Doors over the riff; Davies declined, and the snarl outlived the argument.
★ 7.4
Can't Buy Me Love
1964 · From A Hard Day's Night
Two point one million American advance orders, and behind them a Paris hotel upright where McCartney wrote it.
★ 7.4
Where Did Our Love Go
1964
Holland and Dozier said the Marvelettes turned it down; Ross sang lower over Mike Valvano's foot stomps to number one.
★ 7.4
Don't Worry Baby
1964 · From Shut Down Volume 2
Wilson heard Be My Baby, resolved to answer it, and took the title phrase from his girlfriend Marilyn Rovell.
★ 7.3
Baby Love
1964
Gordy asked for another Where Did Our Love Go, and Holland-Dozier-Holland answered with footstomps, a sax break, and Ross cooing.
★ 7.3
The Problem We All Live With
1964 · Private collection
The girl is Ruby Bridges, walking into a New Orleans school in 1960 between four marshals whose faces Rockwell cut off at the shoulders.
★ 7.2
Leader of the Pack
1964 · From Leader of the Pack
Shadow Morton's teenage melodrama, a motorcycle revving through the mix, and a BBC that refused to play it.
★ 7.0
She's Not ThereThe Zombies
She's Not There
1964 · From Begin Here
A minor key, a Hohner Pianet solo, and a debut single Argent wrote to fit Blunstone's upper range.
★ 6.9
Dr. Strangelove · 1964
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) (Marvin Gaye)Marvin Gaye
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) (Marvin Gaye)
1964 · From How Sweet It Is to Be Loved by You
Holland-Dozier-Holland gave Gaye a rare uncomplicated love song, and that rolling piano and the Andantes carried it to number six.
★ 6.9
One-Dimensional Man
1964 · 260 pages
Marcuse argues that rich societies control people by satisfying them. The needs advertising invents get met, dissent gets absorbed and sold back, and the capacity to imagine a different arrangement quietly withers away.
★ 6.8
You Never Can TellChuck Berry
You Never Can Tell
1964 · From St. Louis to Liverpool
Written in federal prison, cut at Chess in January 1964, and the happiest wedding song rock and roll made.
★ 6.8
A Moveable Feast
1964 · 256 pages
Paris in the 1920s, where a young writer works in cafes, borrows books from the bookseller Sylvia Beach, and takes the measure of Gertrude Stein and Scott Fitzgerald. Hunger sharpens everything he sees.
★ 6.8
Under the Boardwalk
1964
Rudy Lewis died the night before the session; Johnny Moore took the lead, and the güiro shrugs it all off.
★ 6.8
Everybody Needs Somebody to Love
1964
Burke's own band was at the session, so Tom Dowd cut it, and Burke delivered it as a sermon.
★ 6.7
I Can't Explain
1964
Straightforward Kink copying, by Townshend's own admission, with the Ivy League on harmonies and Shel Talmy at the desk.
★ 6.6
Linus and Lucy
1964
A piano vamp, Budwig's bass, Bailey's drums, taped in San Francisco in 1964 and welded to Peanuts ever since.
★ 6.6