The Biggest No. 1 Rock Songs of the ’60s

As this list of the biggest No. 1 rock songs of the decade shows, the ’60s weren’t always as revolutionary as you might think.

Sure, there was the revolution of the British Invasion, when the Beatles, the Who, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones changed everything in rock. They’d been inspired by American music from the ’50s, but took it to places no one could have imagined. At the same time, American groups were setting their own standards, from the Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel to the Byrds.

The latter part of the decade saw a second revolution, with this one defined by free love and psychedelia. The Beatles were at the vanguard of this one too, along with Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and others. Along the way, there were era-defining moments including a presidential assassination, the peak of the Civil Rights movement, the Moon landing, and Woodstock.

Yet, despite all of that, the biggest No. 1 rock songs of the ’60s often remain doggedly mainstream. For all of its reputation as a time of change, the era’s charts were still dominated by songs that were happy, fun, even (gasp!) safe. (Seriously, guys … Bobby Goldsboro? In 1968??)

See for yourself, as Stacker looks back at the biggest singles of the decade. To qualify, the track had to top the Billboard Hot 100 for three or more weeks. The list was then filtered by genre using the University of Waterloo‘s MusicBrainz encyclopedia:

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