What was the best-selling song of 1966?
In between the sharp suits and cropped hair-dos of the British Invasion, and the LSD haze of the counterculture age, 1966 was something of a transitional year within the most revolutionary decade of the 20th century, and with that transition came a truly groundbreaking musical output.
Perhaps more so than ever before, the singles charts of 1966 were an expansive melting pot of wildly different sounds and sensibilities. Of course, The Beatles were still very much at the forefront of proceedings, arguably reaching their creative peak in 1966 with the release of the revolutionary Revolver, along with planting the seeds of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Even still, the experimental sounds of the Merseyside ‘Mop Tops’ barely scratched the surface of the year’s offerings.
Meanwhile, Motown Records, coming out of its most successful year in 1965, continued its pop domination. Berry Gordy’s infallible hit factory showed no signs of slowing down as the early stems of counterculture started to infiltrate the charts, and flagship acts like The Supremes or the Four Tops continued to amass solid gold hits to take back to Detroit. 1966 was also the year that Motown asserted its global dominance, having broken into the UK charts the year prior, thanks to its adoption by the British youth.
Youth, as the case tends to be throughout musical history, is palpable in the singles charts of 1966. Not only do you have the likes of Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and even Question Mark and the Mysterians establishing the raucous youth rebellion of the era, but you can even witness the dethroning of an established musical monarch; 1966 was the year that Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots Were Made For Walking’ outsold anything released by her old dad, Frank.
Despite that generational victory, though, neither Sinatra nor her father managed to summit the best-selling songs of that year. Nor, bizarrely, did The Rolling Stones with their rock and roll masterpiece ‘Paint It Black’, or The Beach Boys with any one of the groundbreaking efforts taken from Pet Sounds. Instead, the music-buying public of the United Kingdom flocked to one man and one man only, Tom Jones.
It was the Welshman’s rendition of Curly Putman Jr’s country classic ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ that earned him the best-selling song of the year, having heard Jerry Lee Lewis’ recording of the track while touring in the United States earlier in the year.
Although the recording failed to break into even the top ten in the States, it lasted for seven weeks at the top of the pop charts in old Blighty, managing to outsell even the behemoth of The Beatles.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the pop standings were a little different, and Jones’ legendary baritone had yet to reach its commercial peak. There, it was the blossoming realm of hippiedom that outsold everybody else, with The Mamas and the Papas topping the Billboard Year-End chart with their defining record, ‘California Dreamin’’, which would remain on the airwaves throughout the blistering heat of the counterculture years.
Perhaps the strangest entry into the American Year-End charts sat at number two, though, with Question Mark and the Mysterians’ garage rock wonder ‘96 Tears’ outselling a litany of comparative goliaths. Seemingly, regardless of where you looked, the musical landscape was certainly shifting back in 1966.
