What was the ‘song of the summer’ in 1969?
1969 is often seen as a year in which the world changed significantly, and its summer was perhaps as stacked with culturally defining events as any other throughout modern history, let alone the 1960s.
From the Apollo XI mission that saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first men to set foot on the moon to the Stonewall riots that led to LGBTQ+ activists protesting for civil rights in New York City, many major news stories unfolded that changed the world forever, and that’s not to mention how much the ongoing war in Vietnam was continuing to mould Western society even from afar.
The summer of 1969 was also hugely significant in the history of music, with the inaugural edition of Woodstock Festival taking place with many of the biggest names in music performing to enormous crowds in what is perhaps still one of the most important live events of all time. On top of this, several albums that are now regarded as classics in the canon of rock, pop and jazz were first released, with The Who’s rock opera, Tommy, Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica and Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way all coming out in a matter of months.
However, a lot of this cultural shift had clearly been coming, and the signs were all there long before, with the emergence of more experimental styles of music entering the mainstream and plenty of protest songs that rallied against the atrocities of war in Southeast Asia. Popular music had long been on the verge of having a watershed moment, or perhaps plenty at once, and 1969 seemed like a prime time for this to happen.
Despite this, it’s questionable whether or not the summer of ‘69 actually had more impact on the world of music than any other summer in modern history in terms of the songs that dominated the singles charts on either side of the Atlantic, even if Bryan Adams did have a major hit in the 1980s extolling the virtues of this incredibly specific time period.
With that in mind, what could be argued as having been the song that defined the summer that year, and why are people so quick to glamorise this year’s hottest months as having been a golden period for music?
So, what was the song that defined the summer of 1969?
Staying at the top of the UK charts for a total of five weeks, and managing to do the same in the US for four weeks was The Rolling Stones’ ‘Honky Tonk Women’, which is frequently regarded as one of the band’s finest and most successful singles, and while perhaps not the most ubiquitous song released that year, it was certainly the most dominant sound to have come out during the summer months of 1969.
However, rivalling it for top spot is a truly unique song in the form of Zager and Evans’ ‘In the Year 2525’; a song that journeys to the future through the next 7000 years of civilisation, with damning indictments of how technology will take over humankind and lead to our eventual extinction. The song was number one in the US for six weeks, and replicated its chart position for three weeks in the UK, making Zager and Evans one of the only examples of a group to land a one-hit wonder in both countries.
There could have been other songs that would have benefited from better timing, and had The Beatles chosen to release ‘Get Back’ a few months later, that could well have been the song that defined the summer of 1969, rather than these two songs. Whether they’re the truest reflection of what this particular summer was all about is up for debate, but they’re ultimately what the vast majority of people were actively choosing to listen to and purchase copies of during one of the most seismic periods in the 20th century.
