When I scan through the 14 albums from 1965 that were selected for the best 1,000 albums ever, one thing pops out right away.
To take a step back, the best 1,000 albums ever is a massive five-year project focused on the music that has meant the most to me throughout my life, each album getting a pop culture-meets-memoir spin.
The thing that pops: there are multiple 1965 albums included from some of the great bands and artists of the classic rock era.
The Beatles, The Byrds, Bob Dylan. All with two albums a pop selected from 1965 alone. Iconic musicians producing albums at a prolific rate by today’s standards.
What an era for music.
Rubber Soul leads the charge, with other albums covering jazz, various pockets of rock, including an early hard rock classic by The Who, and soul.
Here’s the best 14 albums from 1965 ever, each a selected pull quote from the associated best 1,000 albums ever piece for each.
1) The Beatles – Rubber Soul (#28 of the best 1,000 albums ever)
When I take myself back to that experience as a content editor for that start-up—now lost to the digital sands of time – I think about how hard it is to pin down what Rubber Soul really is at its center: slippery, the rubber of its musical soul, I suppose. I connect that slipperiness to how I felt about myself back then, and in many ways still do.
2) The Beatles – Help! (#50)
Perhaps 10 or 15 years ago, I embarked on a reassessment of the “early” Beatles period. Brought on in part by the “maturity” of streaming digital music services like Spotify, part of my astonishment and delight here was that there was not just Beatles material, but stunning and earth-shattering Beatles songs I’d only vaguely known — or in some cases, never recalled hearing at all.
3) Lee Morgan – Cornbread (#200)
Cornbread is jazz bliss for your mental headset. It’s good, man. It’s really good. (And Bill Hader thinks so too, so there’s that.)
4) The Zombies – Begin Here (#265)
There’s a pure and rich and deeply compelling mid-‘60s British Invasion sound on Begin Here that is both sensational and maddening from the perspective of wondering why The Zombies never had the breakthrough popularity in the U.S. to put them in the same league as The Who or The Rolling Stones (or even those four other lads from Liverpool way).
5) The Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn! (#321)
“It Won’t Be Wrong” is… an absolute gem of folk music fused with Southern California-flavored mid-1960s rock. And its harmonies are among the best The Byrds ever produced.
6) The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man (#332)
It’s kind of wild that while he wrote and released the song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” in 1965, The Byrds went ahead and not only covered it, but also named their entire album after it.
Both versions of the song are pretty great, though The Byrds’ cover version has more of an iconic and gloriously pretty sheen to it, I’d say. And if Spotify plays have anything to say about it, The Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” trails only “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)” as their most popular song of all time.
7) The Who – My Generation (#392)
When I was much younger, I thought the line, “I hope I die before I get old,” was kind of funny from the standpoint of thinking: I wonder what The Who will think when they DO get old?
And these days, you know what? I don’t find that notion quite as funny!
8) The Easybeats – Easy(#474)
With The Easybeats and Easy, it seems wrong to start with any other song except “It’s So Easy.” I’m sure I’m biased to an extent, but it really feels like these guys mainlined the sophisticated songwriting and chord changes The Beatles rolled out, especially on A Hard Day’s Night (an album I revere), and produced an original and great tune leaning on that influence.
9) Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home (#580)
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” was among the first Dylan songs that truly got my attention when I was in high school, a time period in which I was looking to find my own identity in classic rock (and apart from the hair metal scene that was ascendant around that time). There’s something so innately catchy, rhythmic, driving, and compelling about it, the clever phrases and rhymes piling upon one another in such a delightful way.
10) Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – Going to a Go-Go (#608)
“Tracks of My Tears” had the deepest influence. There’s something about the power and emotion of the song – sad and soothing at the same time – and the dark themes from Platoon that kind of fused together for me. When I listen now I’m still blown away: it holds up magnificently, and “Tracks of My Tears” is flat out one of my all-time favorite soul and Motown songs.
11) The Yardbirds – Having A Rave Up (#639)
“Heart Full of Soul” is the perfect example of conservative mod-in-music. It’s got a dusting of psychedelic rock influence while overall it’s a fun, stomping rock ‘n roll ride with great soaring vocals from the band.
12) Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (#649)
One term I’ve borrowed from the U Talkin’ U2 To Me? podcast is the notion of a song as a Stone Cold Classic (or SCC for short). And in the context of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, there are many ways to praise the album and its nine songs, but I’m going to easily slap the SCC label on the opening track, “Like a Rolling Stone.”
Not only is it a great song in its own right, but it serves as a pop cultural marker in the United States of the coming counterculture pivoting into the mainstream as Dylan himself pivoted from being an acoustic guitar-based folk singer to being an electric guitar-wielding rock star.
13) The Yardbirds – For Your Love (#761)
I’m a sucker for that mid-1960s British Invasion sound, and then throw in a groovy hook and a harpsichord and a chorus you can super easily sing along to and… yeah, that’s “For Your Love,” The Yardbirds’ best song and, as it happens, a truly fantastic one.
14) The Beach Boys – The Beach Boys Today! (#895)
Probably at some point my Beatles obsession broadened into learning about how Brian Wilson’s real obsession with the Fab Four and Sgt. Pepper’s caused him to push himself to the point of madness and at the same time new musical heights for the band that seemed more suited to accompany Beach Blanket Bingo – a Beach Boys era itself that I appreciate much more as I’ve gotten older.
Which brings us to The Beach Boys Today, which really comes just in between those two eras, before Pet Sounds but after the early hits. What I hear in this album is Brian Wilson and the Boys getting into more mature, interesting, and nuanced territory than the early stuff.