10 Best Songs of the 1960s

Image via Columbia Records Published Jul 24, 2026, 5:05 PM EDT Jeremy has more than 2600 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows. His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings). When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account. He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas. Sign in to your Collider account The 1960s was a decade and there was music in it. Lots of good music, actually. Albums really exploded as a way in which to deliver a lot of music at once, and have it work together to form some kind of narrative, or capture a set of emotions. Many of these were concept albums, and though the earliest concept albums debatably pre-dated the 1960s, the idea of this kind of album did take off in the 1960s. What about individual songs, though? Yeah, they were great, too. It’s harder to summarize the 1960s as it relates to single tracks, because it was generally a good decade for pop, rock, folk, and some other broad – and maybe even timeless – genres. What follows is a rundown of 10 of the best songs of the 1960s, and it’s hard to pick just 10, so brace yourself for snubs. And there will be a limit of one song per artist (sorry, The Beatles). 10 "Space Oddity" (1969) David Bowie David Bowie was on a whole other level in the 1970s, compared to any other decade when he was active, but he did establish himself in the 1960s, with at least one amazing song snuck into that decade before it was over. It is, of course, “Space Oddity,” which more or less established Bowie… but saying that isn't entirely fair, because Bowie was about as chameleonic and versatile as artists have ever been. So, maybe it’s fairer to say that one side of David Bowie was well established with “Space Oddity.” He’d return to singing about space and other ambitious things at various points throughout the rest of his musical career, and then as late as “Blackstar,” he was still exploring such things (especially in that song’s music video). “Space Oddity” is, overall, an incredible track; that should also be stressed. It’s remarkable on its own, and when considered as a small but essential piece within David Bowie’s eventually vast body of work. 9 "Good Times Bad Times" (1969) Led Zeppelin Like David Bowie, Led Zeppelin had a more fruitful 1970s than they did the 1960s, but that’s only because the band was formed – and put out its first two albums – right near the decade’s end. The best of Led Zeppelin did come later on, therefore, but those first two albums are both great, and if a highlight has to be singled out… it’s not easy to do that, actually. But why not go with the first track on the first album? You get a good idea of their energy, sound, and style here, so it works as an immense mission statement for the band overall. “Good Times Bad Times” is that song, and it’s a fantastic distillation of Led Zeppelin into less than three minutes. You get a good idea of their energy, sound, and style here, so it works as an immense mission statement for the band overall, even if later songs by the band mix things up a little (it’s not an AC/DC situation where the band kind of plays the same song over and over again for decades upon decades). 8 "Desolation Row" (1965) Bob Dylan Easily the longest song here, “Desolation Row” unfolds over about 11 minutes, and serves as an amazing finale for Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. An honorable mention should also go out to “Like a Rolling Stone,” which opens that same album and is another legendary Dylan song. That one’s probably more popular, and the one you'd expect to appear here, but “Desolation Row” is something special. It’s got a whole other level of ambition, and really succeeds at keeping your attention throughout, with some of Dylan’s best lyrics and storytelling here (by design, it’s hard to know entirely what the song’s about, but Bob Dylan at his best does the whole “leave things up to interpretation” thing very well). Similarly great – and also just similar – is the closing track on Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” which is another highlight of the singer-songwriter’s expansive discography. 7 "All Along the Watchtower" (1968) The Jimi Hendrix Experience Speaking of Bob Dylan, but also not entirely speaking of Bob Dylan, here’s “All Along the Watchtower,” which was originally a Dylan song, but the version by The Jimi Hendrix Experience is the one going here. He kind of Hey Jude-d this, taking a rad song and making it better. It becomes more theatrical in its sound, and goes from being a folk rock song to more of a psychedelic/hard rock one. Of course, the quality of Bob Dylan’s lyrics is retained, but there are different ways you can interpret them in this version by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, just because the energy of the whole thing is shifted. Both takes on the song are legendary, sure, but the Hendrix version perhaps just a little more so. 6 "A Change Is Gonna Come" (1964) Sam Cooke There’s an opportunity to keep yapping about Bob Dylan now, because he wrote one of the definitive “change is in the air” anthems of the 1960s, literally called “The Times They Are a-Changin'.” That was from the album of the same name, released in 1964, and then that same year, Sam Cooke also released his signature song, with a similarly in-your-face title: “A Change Is Gonna Come.” It’s easy to look back on the 1960s as a decade of change and all, socially, politically, and artistically, but when people at the time were commenting on change, that does validate the whole notion of viewing the decade this way. It’s not just people looking back on the 1960s and broadly calling it “the decade of change.” It well and truly earned such a term. As for “A Change Is Gonna Come,” it’s a perfect and hugely emotional song, and it’s hard to do justice to it with mere words. Hence the rambling and further yapping about Bob Dylan. Trying to break down this song in a proper way would come off mawkish and maybe even pretentious, which the track itself most certainly isn't. 5 "In My Life" (1965) The Beatles So many songs by The Beatles, and so little time. You can do a massive ranking (say… top 50? Imagine someone being crazy enough to attempt that) and still end up with snubs. That’s particularly surprising when you consider that The Beatles really weren’t around for all that long, and if not for Let It Be, all the band’s music would be relegated to the 1960s (though much of the recording for Let It Be was done in the 1960s, as The Beatles: Get Back shows). The band can’t help but feel like a defining one for the 1960s overall, and there are plenty of songs that are worthy of being highlighted here, but here’s “In My Life.” This one’s from the essentially perfect album that is Rubber Soul, and it’s lyrically, emotionally, and musically mature in ways that felt like a real step forward for the band at the time. Even today, it still might well be the single most emotional song The Beatles ever recorded. 4 "Waterloo Sunset" (1967) The Kinks It’s pretty easy to recommend The Kinks to anyone who’s a fan of The Beatles, and though the latter band had more outright great albums, it’s the former band that might well have had the best single song. That one’s “Waterloo Sunset,” which concludes the band’s more-than-solid 1967 album Something Else by the Kinks. But nothing else on Something Else by the Kinks is anywhere near as spectacular as “Waterloo Sunset.” This one’s uniquely emotional in ways that are hard to put your finger on, standing as one of those moving sorts of songs that can sound any level of bittersweet, depending on your mood. Like, sometimes it feels like it’s heavy on the bitter, and a little light on the sweet, and, at other times, more sweet than bitter. Even among all the great songs released in the 1960s, “Waterloo Sunset” feels like a particularly special kind of great. 3 "God Only Knows" (1966) The Beach Boys Standing out as the best of all The Beach Boys songs is really saying something, but the song is “God Only Knows,” and that song definitely is something. It’s one of the ultimate love songs, even if it begins with the line, “I may not always love you,” going for something a bit more complex and nuanced than a good many love songs at the time. Or, even, more complex than a good many love songs nowadays, too. As far as the production goes, “God Only Knows” is also phenomenal, sounding particularly great on an album (Pet Sounds) that already sounds great overall. When “God Only Knows” was released as a single, it was technically the B-side to “Wouldn't It Be Nice,” but given how great both those songs are, it’s more of a double-A-side kind of single, really. 2 "Stand by Me" (1961) Ben E. King Even if it had never inspired the name of a beloved movie (which was based on a story with a different title), “Stand by Me” would well and truly feel like one of the greatest songs ever. Maybe the movie helped give it some more attention, especially because the track was memorably used at the film’s end, yet still… what a song, you know? What else can be said? “Stand by Me” has endured and been covered so many times, and some of those covers are good, sure, but none really touch the Ben E. King original. It does everything you could expect a song to do in approximately (and only) three minutes, and even if it’s technically the oldest song in this ranking, it endures in a particularly hard-to-deny way all these decades later. 1 "Be My Baby" (1963) The Ronettes The entire landscape of popular music would probably look different today if not for “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes, which is a song that also doubles as a textbook definition of “perfect pop.” If you hear it once, it’ll probably remain in your head forever. Nothing it does lyrically is too complex, but those lyrics still work, for a love song… it’s more the other side of this track that makes it incredible. Production-wise, “Be My Baby” still sounds about as good as music can sound. There’s some otherworldly stuff going on here, with it being so booming and in-your-face, and maybe even borderline epic in sound, which is wild considering it’s “just” a pop song that goes for 2 minutes and 41 seconds. But it’s arguably the best 2 minutes and 41 seconds in music history. That’s got to count for something (or everything).