What was the best-selling single of 1963?
They say that when it comes to music, a decade never begins on the year that ends with zero. The first year of every decade is still the one that came before it, with any band, artist and trend that defined it still going strong.
For instance, the biggest-selling artist of 1980? AC/DC, keeping the hard rock flame of the 1970s alive for one more year. 1970? Simon and Garfunkel, the commercial titans of 1960s folk still holding out for a few more years before the riff takes over. Moreover, there is arguably no better way of illustrating this than the difference between 1960 and 1963.
The first two years of the decade that changed pop culture are really quite shocking. All the worst parts of the 1950s still going strong, and decent music desperately thin on the ground. There was some fun to be had from the rock ‘n’ roll veterans still going like Ray Charles and Fats Domino, along with the earliest Motown productions, and anyone who had a problem with The Shirelles had God to answer to. However, it was mostly folks learning all the wrong lessons from Elvis Presley, the artist included.
Then 1963 happened. Stevie Wonder (still ‘Little Stevie’, but it counts), Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, and The Ronettes doing the actual ‘Be My Baby‘. As Tracy Turnblad herself would say: ‘Welcome to the 60s, except, surely there’s someone missing from that list? Surely there’s another band who sum up everything great about the 1960s even more than each of those classic acts?
Well, you’d be right to be suspicious. That band being missed comes from the fact that all those artists come from the Billboard Year-End Hot 100, which calculated the best-selling singles on the Billboard Hot 100 for that year, from the first day of December 1962, to the final week of November 1963. The band really changing things that year weren’t actually having hit records in the US just yet, especially when you consider how much they were popping off across the pond.
So, what happened to The Beatles in 1963?
As I mentioned earlier, the cut-off point for the Year-End Hot 100 is the final week of November. While a few singles by The Beatles had actually been released in 1963, for some ungodly reason, classics like ‘Please Please Me’, ‘From Me to You’ and even ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ didn’t become hits in the US originally. This is a stark contrast to the UK where Beatlemania was in full force and each of those singles were colonising the charts.
It probably comes as no surprise that the biggest-selling single of 1963 in the UK charts was ‘She Loves You’. While the sheer nuclear power of Beatlemania probably made The Fabs a commercial force to rival anyone in the US of A, the expanse of the American market dwarfed anyone else, especially in the early 1960s. Thus, of the 100 entries in the 1963 Year-End Hot 100, none of them are Beatles records.
Which isn’t to say that another icon of the 1960s didn’t top it. In fact, it’s possible that when I was asking who that missing band could possibly be earlier, you were thinking of this other band in the first place. After all, they were hitmakers before The Beatles and as American as apple pie behind a white picket fence, so those in the know would have thought they’d be on top long before the mop-tops colonised the country. And, they’d be right.
Sitting pretty at the number one spot of the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 was ‘Surfin’ USA’ by The Beach Boys. The biggest hit of the biggest music market in the world, and a brilliant song, you say? A fine candidate for the best-selling single of 1963.
