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Song of the Day #1,458: ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’ – Bob Dylan

Best Albums of the 60s – #5
Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan (1965)

It never ceases to amaze me that Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited was released just five months after Bringing it all Back Home. And to top that off, The Beatles released Help! and Rubber Soul in the four following months.

How amazing must it have been to be a music fan in the mid-60s? Not just every year but seemingly every month brought some new masterwork by a rotating cast of artists who were in the process of defining popular music.

Kids today get what? Justin Bieber and Katy Perry?

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Song of the Day #1,457: ‘Requiem’ – Jump

Some bands show all the signs of numbering among my favorites and then just stop dead in their tracks.

When I first heard Jump, Little Children, on their first studio album Magazine, it was love at first listen. The band’s sound was unique and rich — a product of their choice of instruments: guitar, upright bass, cello, accordion and drums. Lead singer Jay Clifford’s vocals sweetened every song like rough honey.

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Song of the Day #1,456: ‘Reckoner’ – Radiohead

I could see loving or hating this song. In fact, I could see loving this song and hating this song depending on when you were hearing it.

It certainly has a vibe — a vibe that might make it more effective if paired with visuals. In a very dramatic and disturbing movie scene, for example.

Or if you’re 16, misunderstood, angry at life — I could see playing this through headphones while lying on the floor of your bedroom in the dark.

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Song of the Day #1,455: ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ – The Rolling Stones

Best Albums of the 60s – #6
Let it Bleed – The Rolling Stones (1969)

Let It Bleed is the third Rolling Stones album on this list and the last record listed that isn’t by either (spoiler alert!) Bob Dylan or The Beatles.

The title song was a play on The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be,’ which had been recorded but not officially released when this album came out. I love how artists during the 60s were constantly tweaking and drawing inspiration from each other. The Stones and The Beatles wrote their share of Dylan-esque tunes, inspired by his example, while Dylan returned the favor (his ‘4th Time Around’ was a direct response to ‘Norwegian Wood‘).

John Lennon once said that everything innovative The Beatles ever did would show up six months later on a Rolling Stones record.

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Song of the Day #1,454: ‘She Belongs to Me’ – Bob Dylan

Best Albums of the 60s – #7
Bringing It All Back Home – Bob Dylan (1965)

I discovered Bob Dylan during my sophomore year of high school. I’d heard of him before, and was familiar with his greatest hits through my parents (when I was a kid, they’d played that album on a reel-to-reel player — the iPod of its day), but I’d never listened to any of his albums in full.

I started my collection on vinyl, buying whichever records I could find for a good price at the Tower Records in nearby Washington, D.C. And of those records, it was Bringing it all Back Home that truly opened my mind to Dylan’s genius.

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