Jul 4, 2016 5 min read

Few periods in pop music history resonate as memorably as the summer of 1966.

Its string of indelible No. 1 songs, including “Paint It Black,” “Paperback Writer,” “Hanky Panky,” “Wild Thing,” “Summer in the City” and “You Can’t Hurry Love,” survived and thrived through the end of the 20th century, and are occasionally even heard today – 50 years later.

Despite its buoyant, blissful bundling of music genres, that summer signaled the first notes of the death knell for AM Top 40 radio. And few knew it at the time.

Fifty years ago, AM radio, with its “we-play-anything” Top 40 format, ruled. FM radio existed, but it primarily aired classical music or simulcast its AM sister station’s programming. To be sure, that AM programming was exceptionally diverse, and if you were of a certain age in 1966, you no doubt recall many other hits of that summer. The tin-can, scratchy speakers of transistor radios and community pools everywhere blared “I Saw Her Again” by the Mamas and Papas, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” by the Temptations, “Cool Jerk” by the Capitols and “Dirty Water” by the Standells. It was unpretentious pop at its best.

Given the world events of the time, the false euphoria emanating from the radio was a calming soundtrack for June, July and August – that final, politically innocent summer for millions of Americans.

At the time, most Top 40 radio stations were still owned and operated by businessmen who knew much more about money than music, and the decade-old formula of mixing the best of various genres was profitable. So playing the Ray Conniff Singers, Sam the Sham, Herb Alpert, Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan in a 15-minute set didn’t even raise an eyebrow. (Those corresponding summer of ’66 songs were, by the way, “Somewhere My Love,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Work Song,” “Strangers in the Night” and “I Want You.”)

The primary objective seemed to be fashioning a format of hummable tunes, no matter their musical genre or content. Even songs that dealt with sorrow and separation had oddly upbeat tempos: “Paint It Black,” “Red Rubber Ball,” “Don’t Bring Be Down” and “See You in September” among them.

But as summer progressed, music adopted a more serious tone, and the thin line between pop and rock widened to a crevice. The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” might have shoehorned its way into Top 40 because it did, after all, bounce right along, but the drug-themed, edgier “Mother’s Little Helper” was a different story. And was there really something about Mary – just what was the Association’s “Along Comes Mary” really about?

The nation’s politics also crept into the Top 40, with

Stevie Wonder’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and the Beatles offered a complex (for the time) “Eleanor Rigby.”

Even if radio station owners didn’t notice, the public winced when it heard Sinatra and Dylan back to back.

If a few concerned parents began questioning lyrics, a few teens were starting to have questions of their own. Why were they “forced” to listen to Sinatra, Conniff and Alpert when they really preferred a spicier menu of acts such as the Raiders, Standells and Stones? And why wouldn’t most Top 40 stations play the “garage rock” or “psychedelic music” that was finding a home on college stations?

Still, rumblings from a few disgruntled radio listeners were just that, and the summer of 1966 skipped along quite nicely, running the breezy gamut from “Sweet Pea” and “The Pied Piper” to “Sunshine Superman” and “See You In September.” Radio station owners continued to prosper, but the Beatles, who reignited the Top 40 format in 1964, were about to alter it forever.

Suffice it to say that traditionally lightweight summer music would never be the same again. By 1967, ensuing political rage over Vietnam filtered its way into the music, and the June release of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and California’s “Summer of Love” movement, flying high with Jefferson Airplane and company, forced AM stations to play nonformula, cerebral singles and even album cuts, which turned off many listeners. Adult-oriented Top 40 radio, which had mostly played the same songs as teen stations, quickly became more discerning with their playlists. In 1968, for instance, Pittsburgh’s KDKA abruptly changed to a safer, easy listening format.

The same city’s KQV, which had been simulcasting on its FM, followed the new FCC regulation to split programming by adding the alternative music, all-rock “Love” music format, which eventually became WDVE. And as soon as those rebellious teens – particularly males – could purchase a new radio, they split to the FM side of the dial.

AM Top 40 music survived into the mid-1970s, but it never again had that all-encompassing, happy-go-lucky feel of the summer of 1966. That was indeed a summer to remember.

July 4, 1966 – Billboard Magazine

1. “Paperback Writer” – The Beatles

2. “Red Rubber Ball” – The Cyrkle

3. “Strangers in the Night” – Frank Sinatra

4. “Hanky Panky” – Tommy James

5. “You Don’t Have To Say” – Dusty Springfield

6. “Wild Thing” – The Troggs

7. “Cool Jerk” – The Capitols

8. “Little Girl” – The Syndicate of Sound

9. “Paint It Black” – The Rolling Stones

10. “Along Comes Mary” – The Association