Since the beginning of the year, on Mastodon, we’ve been voting on our top twenty records of the 1950s and 1960s. Through a series of elimination polls, we established a top twenty, then matched each record to produce this “definitive” chart.
As you can see, Space Oddity claimed the number one spot. Due to the number of votes Space Oddity received in the qualifying rounds, I regarded David Bowie’s superb record as the number one seed. When Space Oddity easily out-polled Good Vibrations in the first round, I thought that the eventual number one position was never seriously in doubt.
Again, because of the high number of votes Respect received in the qualifying rounds, I regarded this record as the number two seed. However, the popularity of Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever took me by surprise simply because this record qualified through the repêchage, and not as an individual year winner.
I’m pleased that the repêchage system worked – three of the top ten: Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever, Paint it Black and I Can’t Get No Satisfaction qualified through the repêchage.
I’m also pleased that records such as Respect, The Dock of the Bay and Son of a Preacher Man featured in the top ten because I feel that these records add credence to the chart – the voters weren’t only interested in ‘the usual suspects’.
In general, records from the middle and late 1960s faired better than records from the early 1960s and 1950s. Maybe this had something to do with the voters holding a personal connection to these records, or maybe improvements in recording technology throughout the 1960s make these records sound better to modern ears.
My personal top five from the top twenty, in no particular order: Summer in the City, Fever, Then He Kissed Me, Do Doo Ron Ron and Hey Jude. Each, in its own way, captures something magical about the pop record.
I would like to thank the administrators on Tŵt Wales and all the people on Mastodon who participated in the polls. Around 19,000 votes were cast during the course of the Top Twenty Poll. It would take me several hours to count the thousands of votes cast in the qualifying rounds.
I feel that the compiling of this chart was a great community effort displaying social media at its best. Now on to the 1970s…
Hannah Howe 