The Beatles and Change: Annivyrsary 1964
ISSUE #270
Something preposterous happened in 1964: On the week of April 4, one artist had the top five songs on the Billboard Hot 100:
“Can’t Buy Me Love”
“Twist and Shout”
“She Loves You”
“I Want to Hold Your Hand”
“Please Please Me”
It’d never happened before and it hasn’t been matched since. Mere weeks before, in the warming days of March, America found that no fewer than 60% of all records sold were songs by the Beatles. Popular music took an absolute knuckle sandwich to the face; the next week, there were suddenly 14 spots on the Hot 100 occupied by the cheeky buggers. The Rolling Stones released their first album only five days later—by then, it was too late.
Three times that February, the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the first was to a broadcast audience of 73 million people—34% of the entire country at the time—tuning in to see these little guys shake their crazy haircuts. With television in one hand and radio in the other, Change had traded its reaping scythe for a shiny new bulldozer.
But the British Invasion wasn’t as easy as it’s often portrayed, and one of the reasons change happened so fast is because the floodgates remained closed for longer than necessary. Capitol Records knew about the Beatles—they were already a smash across the Atlantic—and still they were reluctant to release their records. It was a DJ in Washington, D.C., who was persuaded by a fan to play an imported copy of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, that finally changed the world. The first person to spin John, Paul, George, and Ringo did so on a smuggled copy. It was an instant sensation—it would spend 7 weeks at #1.
The Beatles were pissed about Capitol’s dragging of their feet, and they found a contract loophole that allowed them to release soundtrack albums on a different label. So they signed a three-movie deal with United Artists, who agreed to release their soundtrack albums, and the classic A Hard Day’s Night was born. This was a brilliant year for film, filled with monuments like Kubrick’s breakthrough Dr. Strangelove—which ended with the beautiful “We’ll Meet Again,” which I’ve included here because it’s just that good—along with musical masterpieces like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Mary Poppins, highest-grossing film of the year. Despite being made largely as a technicality, A Hard Day’s Night holds its own in this busy year, becoming a great addition to the tradition of cinematic musicals and practically inventing the music video in the process.
Who knew why those dumbasses at Capitol wouldn’t release a Beatles record. Instead, it was a small label that took the lead—Vee-Jay Records in Chicago, one of the first Black labels to start releasing hits. They were the ones who actually released the first Beatles record in American, and—surprise—the vultures smelled blood and they got screwed out of it when Capitol realized their mistake and started finally putting out the Fab Four.
Thus is Black America in microcosm, of course, a story told over and over again. But there were triumphs, too. This was a booming time for Motown Records in Detroit, a label built from almost nothing— founder Berry Gordy’s father was the grandson of a slave and slave master, who moved from Georgia to Detroit to find work in the city’s auto factories—that would eventually be home to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and some the greatest session musicians in American history. (It can’t fit here, but the story of Detroit is essentially the story of America over the twentieth century—see Jeffrey Eugenides’s great novel Middlesex or, surprisingly, the film Barbarian).
Motown had had some hits before 1964, but it was the Supremes that went on the score five consecutive #1 singles and finally put Motown on the map. With Diana Ross as their lead, they have become one of American music’s greatest stories. This is no techie starting a company in a garage with inherited money—nobody to fall back on, no diamond-mine fortune; this was the closest you get to the American dream, a community of artists building one of the most successful Black businesses.
At the end of the year, Sam Cooke was shot and killed in Los Angeles under freak, mysterious circumstances. Right afterward, “A Change is Gonna Come” was released (for my money, the best song of that year) and its lyrics spoke to the crimes of civil rights that Black Americans were fighting against. A change did come—but not enough, and not nearly as quickly as the Beatles. History makes their rise look more like sleight of hand, a symptom of what happens when shit gets bad—we deflect. We look frantically for the next craze.
The fact that that craze happened to be the fucking Beatles is not their fault and also speaks to the alchemy of the 60s. John Lennon, for all his flaws and crimes, still used his fame to stir up good trouble and push for a worldwide cease-fire. The times they never seem to be changin’, no matter how hungry for it we get.
When I started gathering my research for this Annivyrsary back in January, one thing became clear—1974 was not a good year for music. This was very much a puberty period, an awkward personality vacuum that comes between shedding the old and fully realizing the new. This was to be my Waterloo.
Something preposterous happened in 1964: On the week of April 4, one artist had the top five songs on the Billboard Hot 100. It’d never happened before and it hasn’t been matched since. Mere weeks before, in the warming days of March, America found that no fewer than 60% of all records sold were songs by the Beatles.
Safe to say three of the most consequential albums of my life came out in 2013, and that list doesn’t even touch the dozen other nearly perfect albums from this year—Trouble Will Find Me, Modern Vampires of the City, Cupid Deluxe, Yeezus… 2013 changed music as we know it, and a lot of the biggest artists today cemented their status or debuted this year, from The 1975 to Beyoncé.
I do remember that this is the year I got a Nintendo Power subscription though. And I do remember one day, flipping through said Nintendo Power in the back seat of the family van, my parents slid a revolution into the CD player. That was the day I first heard Now!That’s What I Call Music! 14.
So for me, ‘93 was the first year of the 90s, and its evidence lies in several places: in the birth of the Riot Grrrl movement and third wave feminism with Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl”; in Nirvana’s dyspeptic final album before Cobain’s untimely death; and in Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the harbinger for the soon-to-be golden age of hip hop.
Some stories of note in 1983: the invention of Detroit techno, as embodied by the single “Clear” by Cybotron; the birth of English indie rock as we know it with The Smiths debut and follow up singles (“Hand in Glove” and “This Charming Man,” respectively); and the birth of American indie rock as we know it with R.E.M.’s Murmur.
If you want a little taste of what 1973 was like, go watch Licorice Pizza, the title of which refers to the old LP, a.k.a. the vinyl record—and boy, was this year firmly the middle of the Album Empire.
It’s time for the first of our Annivyrsaries, my favorite history class, and we’re starting with the sounds of 1963. So naturally, I want to focus on something that hasn’t been touched as much by scholars—the rise of the Surf Song.
It was the year the world was supposed to end. For music, in a own way, it did. As the 2009 class of indie darlings delivered underwhelming follow ups (Shields, Centipede Hz, Swing Lo Magellan—many now, in ten years time, seen as unsung greats), critics were reckoning with the rise of poptimism.
In 2002, I was listening to All That You Can’t Leave Behind from the backseat of a minivan while I flipped through the pictures in Nintendo Power. I thought all songs debuted through Now That’s What I Call Music! I was Coldplay’s perfect mark—I had no idea what a cliché even was.
I must’ve gotten my hands on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004, when I was 10 or 11 years old. Grand Theft Auto maintains a dual reputation as one of the greatest video games of all time as well as one of those Matrix-level Y2K-era youth corruptors.
The first time I went crowd-surfing was in a stranger’s dark living room to “Come On Eileen.” I remember being lifted on shaky hands and the warm breeze borne from the drunken crowd. It was during that thumping chant of the bridge, every foot moving to the brow-beating stomp. My nose scraped the ceiling as I sang along.
At the height of his fame, David Bowie forged Ziggy Stardust to help him withstand the heat of the limelight. He quickly came to resent it. He was starting to think that he was Ziggy. He even went as far as trying to kill Stardust off one summer in London. “That fucker would not leave me alone for years,” he once said.
Pretend it’s 1962. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring hits The New Yorker in June. In a month, heavy smog descends upon London; the first Walmart rears its head in Arkansas. Another month, and Marilyn Monroe is dead. The world could collapse any day now.
Summer morning doesn’t strike the Midwest sky so much as it subdues it. The sun will lay the night down gently—first with the grip of firm, pink fingers, then a whispered command in daffodil light.
It's 2001: CDs are excessive. Packing 1.4 million bits into a single second of stereo? In reality, we need only 128,000—a mere twelfth the size of what we were sold.
In 1991, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine spent three years making their second record, held up by perfectionism and his visionary sound—thousands of pedals to make the guitars shimmer, a mirage of pitch-bent tremolo effects.
She and I stood face-to-face—cheeks rolling as we chewed in calculated fury—in a bathroom flooded so many times you could see from peeling paint the location of each waterline. Moments ago, we’d scoured the concrete for bright strips of green between the rippling sheet of the Mississippi River and the faded auditorium where we now conspired.
At 11:59 p.m. on the first day of 1971, families watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson witnessed the last ad for cigarettes ever broadcast on television. 60 seconds dedicated to Virginia Slims. Those who preferred CBS’s Merv Griffin saw the same but for a different pack—Marlboros. Dick Cavett fans got Benson & Hedges.
1961 was what MAD Magazine called an Upside-Up year. It’s strobogrammatic, rotationally symmetric—flip it upside-down while no one’s looking and the number appears to have remained the same. If 1969 is the year that changed everything, we ought to christen 1961 as the year the world flipped upside-down, unnoticed; no one seemed to be paying any attention.
The real reason I had no time to write was I got so sucked in to making the damn playlist. It had to be longer this time, both because I had so much material (it was the year of my musical awakening) and because we could all use a longer escape.
This Valentine's Day, Hulu released a new TV version of High Fidelity. I told myself I wouldn't watch it. Its existence felt like a trick, its timing too convenient. It only took me two nights to cave. I set down the movie to watch the whole thing twice; some will disagree, but I think it's fantastic.
1990 was the year that the Pale Blue Dot photo was beamed back to Earth by Voyager 1—as it left the Solar System, Carl Sagan told NASA to have the craft turn its camera around and take one last photo of the Earth against the black canvas of space. In the shot, our planet is barely bigger than a pixel.
In 1980, a Japanese manufacturer of electronic instruments launched its first line of drum machines. Instead of pre-recorded samples, this machine made its own sounds—particularly, a booming bass drum that sounded like Flubber hitting a trampoline.
Ten years is as far as you can stretch in time while still holding your sense of self. Walk back through each week, however, and it's exhausting to see just how far time's canyon will reach. The decade is the standard unit of change.
In 1960, America was adjusting to being the empire. Our version of love was designed to support structures of power, and myths of supremacy reigned. Threatened by a liberated woman, male culture doubled down and curdled into the mess it is today.
2009: the last good year, or the first bad one? Less depends on the events of the past, and more on how young you are when they happen.
We narrowly avoided this being the single worst playlist I've ever put together, just by how crazy pop music had become in 1999. Maybe Y2K had us losing more of a grip than we thought; whatever the reason, it was a year that a lot of the lamest songs of all time were released.
Let me bring you back to 1989: the number, another summer, sound of a funky drummer. Ten years after "Rapper's Delight," hip hop was in full-roaring-force ramping up to the Golden Age of the 1990's, and one of the biggest works of art that year was Spike Lee's incendiary Do the Right Thing.
1984 has been called the greatest year in pop, and I think it might still be true. If 1974 was music’s fallow period, ten years later was its opposite. We danced in the dark beneath the killing moon and under purple rain—this was the year the critics and the people met in the Minneapolis streets.