Best Song: The Four Seasons - Opus 17
There's a good chance that by the time you read this I'll have changed my mind. There were several candidates that were very hard to choose between, but this one just pips it for no particular reason. This was the 7th Top 40 hit for The Four Seasons and maybe the first that isn't that well known. Generally speaking I'd say the lesser known Four Seasons hits are the better ones.
Worst Song: Frank Sinatra - Strangers In The Night
I've heard many times what a great showman Frank Sinatra was, how his music is timeless etc. I've just never liked this sort of music and probably never will. It also seems very out of place in this Top 40, it's almost as if Frank Sinatra has heard the term "Swinging Sixties" and assumed it meant his swing music was in again. It did top the charts though, so maybe it was. Not for me though.
Top 40 Review
Once again we have no Motown records in the Top 40.
There's no shortage of good records though. On the soul front you have records like "River Deep, Mountain High" by Ike And Tina Turner, "When A Man Loves A Woman" by Percy Sledge and "It's A Man's Man's Man's World" by James Brown. From the UK we have "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love" by Petula Clark which could easily pass for a Motown record.
Elsewhere we almost have the who's who of British 60s groups with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Hollies, The Animals, Yardbirds, Troggs, Herman's Hermits, The Small Faces and Manfred Mann all being in this particular Top 40.
One of the best song contenders in there is the Rolling Stones cover "Out Of Time" by Chris Farlowe. This was one of the stand out number ones of the 60s when I was listening through them several years ago.
Aside from the Frank Sinatra record, this does very much feel like a 60s chart which should be expected really given how far into the decade we've got.
The records that I do not like are in the minority. Given that there were a number that I simply found OK though, it doesn't quite get a score of over 50%. But given some of the Top 30s in the early 90s don't get more than 50%, this is an impressive score.
Score: 19.5
Table
The 60s are getting better as the years go by post-Beatles, but the score for 1966 will take some beating if this was to continue.
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