Ramases – ‘Life Child’

Perhaps one of the most interesting artists to come out of the psychedelic movement, after being convinced that he was the reincarnated version of the Egyptian God Ramses, Ramases left behind his day job and started making music, resulting in his first record, Space Hymns, which is now praised as an underrated psychedelic gem. 

While every track on this album bends the realms of rock, one of the most exciting is the opener, ‘Life Child’. It sets the tone for the album wonderfully, with a catchy hook, layered instrumentation, and a song structure which is operatic in its separate parts, such that it’s hard not to become obsessed with the entire album the moment that you hear this track.

Jimi Hendrix – ‘Bold as Love’

Jimi Hendrix was once critical of psychedelic musicians, saying that he didn’t like it when they tried to be experimental for the sake of it, worried that a lot of songs within the genre lacked depth and structure. “Here’s one thing I hate, man,” he laid out. “When these cats say, ‘Look at the band. They’re playing psychedelic music!’ All they’re doing is flashing lights on them and playing ‘Johnny B Goode’ with the wrong chords. It’s terrible.”

There was a way that you could merge the limitless possibilities of psychedelic music and still give your songs form, and it was Hendrix himself who was a good example of this. You can hear it on plenty of his tracks, but perhaps the most evident is on ‘Bold as Love’, where the listener is thrown straight into this track, which triples up as a love song, a masterclass in guitar solos, and a haphazard psychedelic mix.

Cream – ‘Sunshine of Your Love’

Cream is celebrated as a supergroup that helped pioneer genres such as prog rock and psychedelic rock before either style had a label.

“A more progressive approach, which had been the latter part of ’66, listening to people like Graham Bond, who had at that point in his band Jack Bruce on bass and Ginger Baker on drums. In many ways, Graham Bond was kind of a precursor of that thing that became progressive rock,” said Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull fame, “And, of course, Cream in its way, when those two guys left Graham Bond and set out as Cream, that became something that moved Eric Clapton along from just being a blues guitarist.”

Cream has plenty of great songs which we can hold up as excellent examples of psychedelia, but perhaps their most popular is ‘Sunshine of Your Love’. Sometimes, tracks become mainstream for a reason, and that’s exactly the case with this hit song, which is a treat from start to finish, as it’s layered in a way that only psychedelic music could be, but it also champions the energy and gumption of rock.

The Beatles – ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’

What you get if you combine the childhood memories of John Lennon and some of the greatest psychedelic music of all time is ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, which is considered one of The Beatles’ best tracks, and for good reason. It’s a trip, but because of the fact it comes from a real place, it’s also filled with sincerity, and this is a balance that only a mind like Lennon’s is capable of.

“Strawberry Fields is a real place,” he said. “We owned a house and had a garden […] Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house near a boys’ reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid with my friends Nigel and Pete we would go there and hang out and sell lemonade bottles for a penny. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that’s where I got the name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields Forever.”

The Pretty Things – ‘Bracelets of Fingers’

Because of how limitless psychedelic rock is, people use the genre to tell stories, crafting complex narratives within this style of music, blending different movements and using captivating lyrics in a bid to really throw listeners into a brand new world. If you’re truly looking for escapism, psychedelic music is the best genre to find it in, and The Pretty Things are one of the greatest examples of that.

Their album SF Sorrow is widely considered one of the greatest concept albums of all time, and as a result, it’s difficult picking one song to highlight from it, given it should be consumed as a whole, but regardless, the second track, ‘Bracelets of Fingers’, with its unique vocal melody paired with how the rhythm and tone are constantly shifting, makes for a pretty intriguing piece of music, even aside from the narrative context.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre – ‘Anemone’

While the 1960s and ‘70s were some of the most popular periods for psychedelia, we shouldn’t limit our scope for 20th-century classics to just those two decades. The truth is that the sound continues to be championed by bands, and there are plenty of great musical outfits out there who are able to not only pay homage to it but put their own spin on such a beloved kind of music. 

One of these bands is The Brian Jonestown Massacre, who created one of the most wonderful psychedelic songs of all time with ‘Anemone’, which contains no thrills or spills, just a couple of chords and a pocket of music to sit in. It’s a simpler side of the genre, but nevertheless a side that can become something beautiful so long as you have the right minds contributing to it.

The Doors – ‘Light My Fire’

When Alice Cooper spoke about Jim Morrison, he said that it was always obvious he wasn’t long for this world. “He would eat pills like you might eat Skittles, and he was a big drinker,” recalled Cooper. “He could have died 100 times. He was a risk-taker, fearless. You’d be at a party and see him standing on the edge of a 300-foot-high building, balancing himself with a whisky bottle in each hand: that was a normal day for him.”

Despite the fact The Doors lead singer passed away at 27, there is no escaping just how much of an impact he was able to have on the genre over what was a relatively short period of time. Perhaps one of the band’s best offerings was on their classic hit ‘Light My Fire’, which is considered a classic in psychedelia and for very good reason, as it remains one aspect out of many that celebrates Jim Morrison’s legacy.

T Rex – ‘Child Star’

You may know T Rex as the big-sounding glam rock band responsible for hits like ‘Get It On’ and ‘Jeepster’, but they didn’t start out like that, with some of their earlier offerings being much more psychedelic in nature and also stripped back, as their sound was made up of just some light percussion and an acoustic guitar.

Despite having such a minimalist sound, the band were able to make something incredibly special on their debut, My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair… But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows. One of the stand-out tracks from this LP is ‘Child Star’, which is incredibly psychedelic in the atmosphere it creates and permeates throughout, and it’s so thick you could float on it.

Pink Floyd – ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’

Choosing a Pink Floyd song for this list is borderline impossible; there is no doubt they should be on here, but given they’re a band who are celebrated as psychedelic greats and have a discography filled with interesting concept albums that champion the genre, picking only one song in isolation is incredibly difficult.

Possibly every Pink Floyd fan reading this will disagree with the choice of track on some level, and if anything, that’s a testament to how much excellent work they did within this style. In choosing ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’, I asked myself, what song would I show someone to get them into psychedelic music, and it had to be this vocal-heavy masterpiece. There is nothing quite as captivating as this piece, and it’s one of the best representations of psychedelic music of the 20th century.

Grateful Dead – ‘That’s It For The Other One’

Grateful Dead may well be the greatest psychedelic band of all time, and I say this not just because of their studio albums, but also because of the excellent live shows they put on, where they continued to showcase the very best of the artistic movement.

Lenny Kaye once spoke about their attitude to live music and how revolutionary it was. “A list of song titles would mean very little in terms of what actually goes on inside the album,” he said, “Like the early Cream, the Dead in concert tends to use their regular material as a jumping-off point, as little frameworks that exist only for what can be built on top of them.”

Their song ‘That’s It for the Other One’ is one of the greatest champions of psychedelic music, both studio and live, out there. The whole track is made up of sonic snippets from various gigs and recording techniques, truly highlighting how much the band are masters of their craft, and not only does it sound transcendental but it’s also a piece of music that highlights every aspect of psychedelia and then some.