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1
I Say a Little Prayer
Aretha Franklin
03:36
2
(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay
Otis Redding
02:43
3
Nothing But A Heartache
The Flirtations
02:41
4
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (Titles)
Ennio Morricone
02:42
5
Young Girl
Gary Puckett & The Union Gap
03:14
6
Mony Mony
Tommy James & The Shondells
02:46
7
Everlasting Love
Love Affair
03:02
8
I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Marvin Gaye
03:16
9
Fire
Arthur Brown
02:54
10
Jumpin' Jack Flash
The Rolling Stones
03:37
11
Do It Again - Remastered 2001
The Beach Boys
02:26
12
Love is Blue
Paul Mauriat
02:36
13
This Guy's In Love With You
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
03:59
14
Mrs. Robinson - From "The Graduate" Soundtrack
Simon & Garfunkel
04:04
15
Darlin' - Remastered
The Beach Boys
02:14
16
Classical Gas
Mason Williams
03:04
17
My Name Is Jack - Mono Version
Manfred Mann
02:48
18
Sunshine Of Your Love
Cream
04:10
19
Hello, I Love You - 2018 Remaster
The Doors
02:16
20
You're All I Need To Get By
Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell
02:53
21
Born To Be Wild
Steppenwolf
03:30
22
Valleri
The Monkees
02:20
23
For Once In My Life
Stevie Wonder
02:48
24
All Along the Watchtower
Jimi Hendrix
04:00
25
On The Road Again
Canned Heat
03:26
26
Love Child
Diana Ross & The Supremes
03:01
27
Step Inside Love - 2003 Remaster
Cilla Black
02:23
28
Hey Jude - Remastered 2015
The Beatles
07:05
29
What A Wonderful World
Louis Armstrong
02:17

1968 in Singles

1968 continues to resonate as a landmark year for rock, pop and soul. Discover our best singles of the year.

History records 1968 as a year of turmoil; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Prague Spring, the Paris riots, and worldwide student protests as Vietnam rolled on. But you wouldn’t know this from the year’s big pop hits and that’s our business here (the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” isn’t released as a single in the UK and in the US it barely grazes the top 50).

The thirty tracks here comprise of monster hits in either the UK, or Stateside, or both, plus one that slipped by unnoticed at the time but has become a classic over the years, The Flirtations’ “Nothing But a Heartache”. 

As usual in the world of pop, it’s a rum old mix; good time pop and rock party favourites rub shoulders with Motown and soul classics, psychedelia, Baroque reworkings (“Classical Gas” and “Love is Blue”, the latter being the second biggest single of the year in the US), film themes, songs that catch on with the older generation (“This Guy’s in Love With You” and “What a Wonderful World”) and Jimmy Webb’s bizarre description-defying mini-epic “MacArthur Park” sung by actor Richard Harris.

The year’s masterpiece, in my humble opinion, is Aretha Franklin’s working of Bacharach and David’s “I Say a Little Prayer”, quite simply, one of the top five singles of all time. Actually, this isn’t an opinion, it’s a FACT. One of my earliest memories is of going to breakfast in a huge restaurant at a Butlin’s holiday camp in September 1968 and hearing the song being played over the radio. Over the decades I’d imagined I’d invented the memory as I was only three and a half at the time, but go and Google when Aretha took this into the UK chart…

Into the masterpiece bracket you can also add The Stones’ malevolent yet majestic “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, Marvin Gay’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and Otis Reading’s “Dock of the Bay”, which would have been a wistful classic anytime, but was loaded with poignancy by his tragic death just days after recording it. 

I give the Beach Boys two tracks, because, well, how can you choose between “Darlin’” and “Do It Again”? I even had to drop The Kinks’ “Days” and The Beatles’ “Lady Madonna” from the final cut as an indication of how great the quality is.

But 1968 also marks the year where the album begins to take prominence, at least among the rock-buying age group, and we’ll examine the year’s big albums in another list. Thanks for listening.

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