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
A Fistful of Dollars
Directed by Sergio Leone
1964 · Italy
The spaghetti western became a genre with this, and Clint Eastwood became a star: Ennio Morricone's whistle, a poncho and a cheroot, and a drifter who tells nobody what he wants.
★ 6.5
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
1964 · 146 pages
Five golden tickets get five children inside Willy Wonka's factory, and only Charlie Bucket, half starved and poor, is neither glutton nor brat. Dahl trusted children to relish the punishments.
★ 6.4
Out to Lunch!
1964
There is no piano on it, just Bobby Hutcherson's vibraphone holding the harmony loosely enough that the tunes never quite settle.
★ 6.4
My Guy
1964
Three days after Wells turned twenty-one, Smokey Robinson's tune gave the Motown label its first number one.
★ 6.4
Understanding Media
The Extensions of Man
1964 · 365 pages
The medium is the message, McLuhan wrote in 1964: a technology reshapes perception regardless of what it carries. Everyone arguing about what screens do to us is working inside the frame he built.
★ 6.3
The Way You Look Tonight
1964 · From Sinatra Sings Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River, and Other Academy Award Winners
Kern's melody took the 1936 Academy Award; Nelson Riddle's 1964 arrangement made Sinatra's the most imitated reading.
★ 6.3
Goldfinger
Directed by Guy Hamilton
1964
Everything the Bond series still does was fixed here: the Aston Martin, the title song belted over the opening credits, the death trap the villain explains, and a henchman with a signature weapon.
★ 6.3
Baby I Need Your Loving
1964
Jamerson's bass, Levi Stubbs pleading, Holland-Dozier-Holland at the board, and the Four Tops' first million seller.
★ 6.3
Flowers (Warhol)
1964 · Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
Four flat hibiscus blossoms on green, silkscreened from an ordinary photograph and reproduced in any color, over and over, on demand.
★ 6.1
Band of Outsiders
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
1964 · France
Tarantino named his production company after this film: three young Parisians run through the Louvre in nine minutes and dance the Madison in a cafe, and Godard makes crime look like play.
★ 6.1
Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)
1964 · From Leader of the Pack
Shadow Morton had never written a hit when he cut this demo, seagull effects and all, to prove he could.
★ 6.0
Cantaloupe Island
1964 · From Empyrean Isles
Hubbard on cornet, Van Gelder engineering, June 1964; Us3 later looped Hancock's vamp into the Top 10.
★ 5.9
Come See About Me
1964
Nella Dodds's cover reached shops first, so Motown rushed theirs out; the Supremes took it to number one.
★ 5.9
Chapel of Love
1964
Red Bird's first single, written by Barry, Greenwich and Spector, and it knocked the Beatles off number one.
★ 5.7
Walking in the Rain
1964 · From Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica
Thunder and lightning cut into the mix, a Mann and Weil melody, and Ronnie daydreaming the boy she hasn't met.
★ 5.5
Lunch Poems
1964 · 76 pages
O'Hara wrote these on lunch breaks from the museum, turning an ordinary Manhattan hour into art. "The Day Lady Died" runs through his errands until Billie Holiday's face on a newspaper stops everything.
★ 5.5
Suicide of the West
1964 · 364 pages
Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide, Burnham argues: not the cause of the retreat but the creed that lets elites feel virtuous while surrendering ground. American conservatism took its diagnosis from him.
★ 5.4
Meet the Beatles!
1964
Capitol assembled it themselves from a British album and some singles. The half-shadowed cover photograph came from a hotel session that took barely an hour.
★ 5.4
The Sidewinder
1964
Chrysler used the title track in a television advertisement without asking, and the record sold well enough to steady Blue Note's finances for years.
★ 5.4
Pop. 1280
1964 · 256 pages
Nick Corey, sheriff of a dirt-poor Southern county, plays the harmless fool while killing people, and his cheerful drawl carries you far before you see what you are laughing at.
★ 5.1
Time is On My SideIrma Thomas
Time is On My Side
1964
A B-side cut in April 1964, with Jimmy Norman adding lyrics at the session; Jagger later copied her ad-libs.
★ 5.1
My Fair Lady
Directed by George Cukor
1964
Audrey Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon and Julie Andrews was passed over for the part she created on stage: the Cecil Beaton costumes remain the most beautiful ever filmed.
★ 4.9
The Honored Society
1964 · 265 pages
Lewis walked postwar Sicily and found monks running extortion from the confessional and Mafia bosses installed as mayors by American liberators, whose invasion, he argues, restored what Mussolini had nearly destroyed.
★ 4.7
The Chill
1964 · 279 pages
A husband hires Lew Archer to find the bride who fled their honeymoon, and the trail runs back decades into two families' history. In Macdonald's California, crimes are inherited rather than committed.
★ 4.6
The Giving Tree
1964 · 57 pages
A tree loves a boy. She gives him her apples, then her branches, then her trunk, until she is a stump he sits on. Readers still cannot agree whether that is love.
★ 4.4
Folk Singer
1964
Chess had him put down the electric guitar to chase the folk revival, and the result became a record audiophiles use to test their equipment.
★ 4.4