1965

Did I forget to mention that for the last year, I’ve been a member of the Pop Rocket podcast? Oops.

But check it out, the other week, we celebrated our 50th episode by revisiting the year in pop culture for 1965. For the occasion, I scoured the thousands of soul songs that came out that year, picked out a slew of my personal favorites…and then looked to see which of ’em where on Spotify.

I’ll say this much about ’65. On the one hand, it’s not my favorite year of the ’60s in terms of music. Motown and Stax needed a year or so more to mature into the eras of their respective sounds I most enjoyed. Atlantic’s Aretha moment was still a couple of years away. Funk wasn’t a household term yet.

But below the top of the charts, I was reminded of how great every year of the decade was for R&B. Some of my all-time favorite soul songs came out in ’65: The Manhattans’ “Follow Your Heart,” Holly Maxwell’s “Only When You’re Lonely,” The Mar-Keys’ “Grab This Thing“, Allen Toussaint’s “Go Back Home“, et. al. Even though it took a long ass time for me to sift and compile this, I’m very much tempted to do this again, maybe for ’66 or ’67 (or ’64 or ’63, or…)