Al Martino is riding high with his version of “Lili Marlene,” which is another song I knew before I knew that I knew it, absorbed and remembered thanks to Mother and Dad’s radio, same as “The Look of Love” by Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, and Sammy Davis Jr.
#Top easy listening songs 2013 full#
However, apart from the Hot 100 hits, the Easy Listening chart is full of stuff with mainly adult appeal, the sort of thing that would have been a staple of shows like Dick Whittinghill’s on KMPC in Los Angeles, mentioned in my earlier post. It would have not been remotely uncommon for a teenager to walk out of a record store with “Lady Madonna,” “Mony Mony,” and “Honey” during this week. The distinctions we’d make today between the kids’ music and older styles weren’t always the distinctions the kids made themselves in 1968. “This Guy’s in Love With You” by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, new on the Easy Listening chart in this week, would spend a month at #1 on the Hot 100 in the summer.
Robinson.” “Honey” and “Love Is Blue” had been #1 on the Hot 100. But there are no Beatles, no Motown stars, and no Laurel Canyon folkies on the list.īut wait a minute: five of the top 11 songs on Easy Listening during this week were also in the Top 10 of the Hot 100: “Honey,” “The Good the Bad and the Ugly,” “The Unicorn,” “Do You Know the Way to San José,” and “Mrs. A trippy hippie might gravitate to the folky/ethnic sound of “The Unicorn,” or to “Master Jack” by Four Jacks and a Jill, Spanky and Our Gang’s “Like to Get to Know You,” and “Goin’ Away” by the Fireballs. Robinson” and “Scarborough Fair,” but that’s it. Simon and Garfunkel have two hits on the list, “Mrs. The list is extremely light on the pop stars we remember as the titans of the age, the ones favored by the kids who grew up to write the histories of 1968. (As always, click to embiggen.) Consider it the soundtrack for everyday people, born in the first third of the 20th century, going about their lives with the radio on. Behold the Billboard Easy Listening chart dated May 18, 1968, pictured at the top of this post. The greatest stars were at the peak of their powers, from London to Detroit to Los Angeles.īut just as each day did not feel like an entry in the history books to those who were living them, daily listening didn’t necessarily feel like it either.
As for the music of 1968, we remember it as a wildly creative time. Millions of Americans worked their jobs and raised their families and went on day-by-day without feeling continually buffeted by the currents of history. Earlier this week, I wrote that the way we perceive 1968-as a time of turmoil and change-is not necessarily the way it felt to many people living through it.
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