This article includes an overview of the events and trends in popular music in the 1960s.
In North America and Europe the decade was particularly revolutionary in terms of popular music, continuing the shift away from traditional pop that began in the 1950s. The 1960s saw the evolution of rock and the beginnings of the album era. At the beginning of the 1960s, pop and rock and roll trends of the 1950s continued; nevertheless, the rock and roll of the decade before started to merge into a more international, electric variant. In the mid-1960s, rock and roll in its purest form was gradually overtaken by pop rock, beat, psychedelic rock, blues rock, and folk rock, which had grown in popularity. The country- and folk-influenced style associated with the latter half of 1960s rock music spawned a generation of popular singer-songwriters who wrote and performed their own work. Towards the decade's end, genres such as Baroque pop, sunshine pop, bubble gum pop, and progressive rock started to grow popular, with the latter two finding greater success in the following decade. Furthermore, the 1960s saw funk and soul music rising in popularity; rhythm and blues in general remained popular. The fusion of R&B, gospel, and original rock and roll was a success until the mid-part of the decade. Aside from the popularity of rock and R&B music in the 1960s, Latin American as well as Jamaican and Cuban music achieved a degree of popularity throughout the decade, with genres such as bossa nova, the cha-cha-cha, ska, and calypso being popular. From a classical point of view, the 1960s were also an important decade as they saw the development of electronic, experimental, jazz and contemporary classical music, notably minimalism and free improvisation.
In Asia, various trends marked the popular music of the 1960s. In Japan, the decade saw the rise in popularity of several Western popular music groups such as The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The success of rock music and bands in Japan started a new genre, known as Group Sounds, which was popular in the latter half of the decade.
In South America, genres such as bossa nova, Nueva canción and Nueva ola started to rise. Rock music began leaving its mark, and achieved success in the 1960s. Additionally, salsa grew popular towards the end of the decade. In the 1960s cumbia entered Chile and left a long-lasting impact on tropical music in that country.
United Kingdom
Beat music and the British Invasion
In the late 1950s, a flourishing culture of groups began to emerge, often out of the declining skiffle scene, in major urban centres in the UK like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London. This was particularly true in Liverpool, where it has been estimated that there were around 350 different bands active, often playing ballrooms, concert halls and clubs. Beat bands were heavily influenced by American bands of the era, such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets (from which group the Beatles derived their name), as well as earlier British groups such as the Shadows.W. Everett, The Beatles as musicians: the Quarry Men through Rubber Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 37–8. After the national success of the Beatles in Britain from 1962, a number of Liverpool performers were able to follow them into the charts, including Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Searchers. Among the most successful beat acts from Birmingham were the Spencer Davis Group and the Moody Blues. From London, the term Tottenham Sound was largely based around the Dave Clark Five, but other London bands that benefited from the beat boom of this era included the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and the Kinks. The first non-Liverpool, non-Brian Epstein-managed band to break through in the UK were Freddie and the Dreamers, who were based in Manchester, as were Herman's Hermits. The beat movement provided most of the groups responsible for the British Invasion of the American pop charts in the period after 1964, and furnished the model for many important developments in pop and rock music.
By the end of 1962, the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles drawing on a wide range of American influences including soul music, rhythm and blues and surf music.R. Stakes, "Those boys: the rise of Mersey beat", in S. Wade, ed., Gladsongs and Gatherings: Poetry and its Social Context in Liverpool Since the 1960s (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), , pp. 157–66. Initially, they reinterpreted standard American tunes, playing for dancers doing the twist, for example. These groups eventually infused their original rock compositions with increasingly complex musical ideas and a distinctive sound. In mid-1962 the Rolling Stones started as one of a number of groups increasingly showing blues influence, along with bands like the Animals and the Yardbirds. During 1963, the Beatles and other beat groups, such as the Searchers and the Hollies, achieved great popularity and commercial success in Britain itself.
British rock broke through to mainstream popularity in the United States in January 1964 with the success of the Beatles. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the band's first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, starting the British Invasion of the American music charts."British Invasion" Encyclopædia Britannica, retrieved 29 January 2010. The song entered the chart on January 18, 1964, at No. 45 before it became the No. 1 single for 7 weeks and went on to last a total of 15 weeks in the chart.H. Bill, The Book of Beatle Lists, (Poole, Dorset: Javelin, 1985), , p. 66. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show February 9 is considered a milestone in American pop culture. The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for an American television program. The Beatles went on to become the biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed by numerous British bands.
During the next two years, Chad & Jeremy, Peter and Gordon, the Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs, and Donovan would have one or more No. 1 singles. Other acts that were part of the invasion included the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five.T. Leopold, "When the Beatles hit America CNN February 10, 2004", CNN.com, retrieved 1 February 2010. British Invasion acts also dominated the music charts at home in the United Kingdom.[ "British Invasion"], AllMusic, retrieved 29 January 2010.
The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success.[ "Britpop"], AllMusic, retrieved 11 October 2006. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols, that had dominated the American charts in the late 1950s and 1960s.K. Keightley, "Reconsidering rock" in, S. Frith, W. Straw and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), , p. 117. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis Presley.F. W. Hoffmann and H. Ferstler, Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound, Volume 1 (New York, NY: CRC Press, 2nd edn., 2004), , p. 132. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters.R. Shuker, Popular Music: the Key Concepts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2nd edn., 2005), , p. 35.
British blues boom
In parallel with Beat music, in the late 1950s and early 1960s a British blues scene was developing recreating the sounds of American R&B and later particularly the sounds of bluesmen Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. It reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1960s, when it developed a distinctive and influential style dominated by electric guitar and made international stars of several proponents of the genre including the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, the Yardbirds, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin.
A number of these moved through blues rock to different forms of rock music and as a result British blues helped to form many of the subgenres of rock, including psychedelic rock and heavy metal music. Since then direct interest in the blues in Britain has declined, but many of the key performers have returned to it in recent years, new acts have emerged and there have been a renewed interest in the genre.V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra, S. T. Erlewine, eds, All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues (Backbeat, 3rd edn., 2003), p. 700.
British psychedelia
British psychedelia emerged during the mid-1960s, was influenced by psychedelic culture and attempted to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of hallucinogenic drugs. The movement drew on non-Western sources such as Indian music's ragas and sitars as well as studio effects and long instrumental passages and surreal lyrics. Established British artists such as Eric Burdon, the Who, Cream, Pink Floyd and the Beatles produced a number of highly psychedelic tunes during the decade. Many British psychedelia bands of the 1960s never published their music and only appeared in live concerts during that time.
North America
Folk music
The Kingston Trio, the Weavers, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Odetta, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Carolyn Hester, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Dave Van Ronk, The Mamas and the Papas, Tom Rush, Simon & Garfunkel, Fred Neil, Gordon Lightfoot, Ian and Sylvia, Arlo Guthrie and several other performers were instrumental in launching the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
Rock Roy Orbison was one of rock's famous artists who wrote ballads of lost love.
In the early part of the decade, Elvis Presley continued to score hits. For most of the 60s, Presley mostly released films. Presley decided to get away from films by 1969; his last #1 song on the charts was Suspicious Minds which was released in 1969.
By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of the American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, utilizing traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments.G. Mitchell, The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945–1980 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), , p. 95. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics. In the early sixties figures such as Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, and Joan Baez had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters.G. Mitchell, The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945–1980 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), , p. 72. Dylan had begun to reach a mainstream audience with hits including "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "Masters of War" (1963), which brought "protest songs" to a wider public,J. E. Perone, Music of the Counterculture Era American History Through Music (Westwood, CT: Greenwood, 2004), , p. 37. but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences.