4 songs from 1966 you can still sing without thinking — even if you hated them the first time
There's a specific kind of song that doesn't ask permission. It gets into the house through a car radio in 1966 and it's still there sixty years later, folded into the part of your brain that also stores your childhood phone number.
Every generation has a few. Boomers have a whole shelf. These four are on it whether they like it or not.
Some of them, from what I gather, did not like it.
"California Dreamin'" — The Mamas & The Papas
This is the one where you get to choose your part. The lead, the answering echo, the harmony that comes in underneath — pick a lane and the rest of the car will fill in the others.
The song was moodier than people remember. Grey skies, a church, a sort of restlessness that didn't quite fit the sunny image it got stuck with. It became the sound of late-sixties pop by being slightly sad about the weather, which is a very relatable way to become famous.
"These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" — Nancy Sinatra
Lee Hazlewood wrote it for himself and used to sing it at his own shows. Nancy Sinatra heard it and had to argue him out of it. Her case, which she has laid out in detail: a man singing that song sounds like he's threatening someone. Whereas, in her words, "with a girl singing it, it becomes coy and kind of cute."
She won. The record went to No. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, she went blonde, and the go-go boot became a personality.
The famous studio note attributed to Hazlewood — that he told her to sing it like a 14-year-old girl who goes with truck drivers — is one of pop music's great pieces of lore. Sinatra has said for years that he never actually said that to her face. Hazlewood kept telling the story anyway. Both of them, in their own way, were right about the song.
Sixty years on and "Boots" is still the most polite revenge anthem ever recorded. It sounds like a threat delivered with a smile and a very good manicure.
"Wild Thing" — The Troggs
Three chords, a chorus you could teach a parrot, and an ocarina solo, because 1966 was a lawless time.
Fun fact for the next dinner party: The Troggs weren't first. A New York band called The Wild Ones cut it in 1965 and nothing happened. Then a bunch of guys from Hampshire recorded it the following year and it went to No. 1 in the U.S. Sometimes the song is just waiting for the right people to shout it.
The reason it lives in everyone's head is that there is almost nothing to remember. Say the title to anyone over 60 and watch them complete the next line on reflex. It's less a song than a call-and-response with the entire Western world.
"Yellow Submarine" — The Beatles
The Beatles diehards will tell you it's not even the best Beatles song from 1966, and they're correct, and it does not matter. The chorus is a children's song, a pub song, a football chant and a lullaby at once, which is why every single person born before 1970 can sing at least eight bars of it against their will.
What most people don't know is that it started out gloomier. Lennon's early sketch had a distinctly melancholy tilt before it got turned into the cheerful, seasick singalong we all know. Somewhere in there is a lesson about how sadness plus Ringo equals joy.
You did not choose to know "Yellow Submarine." It was installed. Like a software update you can't decline.
The songs you didn't ask for
Here's the thing about hating a song in 1966: it didn't help. The radio played it anyway, your older cousin played it anyway, it leaked in under the door and set up permanent residence.
Which is why a 70-year-old who spent 1966 rolling their eyes at "Wild Thing" can, today, sing every word of it while looking for their reading glasses. Resentment is temporary. The chorus is forever.
