Singing Nuns and Green Tambourines Edition Part 2

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History, Music Commentary

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When you think of music in the 1960s, some groundbreaking artists probably come to mind: Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and the Jefferson Airplane, for example. But the pop charts paint a very different picture of that decade, which embraced easy listening, groovy bubblegum, novelty and instrumental records—even a guitar-strumming Belgian nun. In other words, the soundtrack of the era was more like Mad Men and less like Forrest Gump. Join Chris Molanphy as he unearths forgotten hits from Bobby Vinton, Kyu Sakamoto, Jeannie C. Riley, and other unlikely chart-toppers, on a still-strange trip through the ‘60s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So, you want to be a marketer. It's easy. You just have to score a ton of leads and figure out a way to turn them all into customers.
0:08.0	Plus manage a dozen channels, write a million blogs and launch 100 campaigns all at once.
0:12.5	When that's done, simply make your socials go viral and bring in record profits.
0:16.7	No sweat. Okay, fine. It's a lot of sweat.
0:20.5	But with HubSpot's AI-powered marketing tools,
0:23.2	launching benchmark-breaking campaigns is easier than ever. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers.
0:30.1	Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs.
0:34.9	Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business
0:39.0	with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your
0:43.8	products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time, from startups to
0:48.6	scale ups, online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you.
0:54.6	Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.
1:19.5	Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast.
1:28.3	I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series on our last episode. Inspired by a rewatch of the classic premium TV show Mad Men, which depicted a fictional advertising agency in the 1960s and resurrected dozens of forgotten 60s songs,
1:43.3	I identified whole categories of hits from that peak
1:48.0	boomer decade, from easy listening and pre-rock crooners, to instrumentals, novelties,
1:55.0	and hippie bubble gum. And now we're going to walk through the 60s, era by era, to capture the decade as it really played out on the charts.
2:07.7	As we walk through these eras of hits, I'll acknowledge the bangers, bops, and, let's just say it, classics that marked the 60s.
2:17.3	The decade really did produce more than its share
2:20.8	of all-time great songs, but we'll focus more of our time on the forgotten hits, the kits,
2:28.0	the kitsch, the cheese, and even the curios that should be better remembered as classics, but maybe aren't.
2:36.2	I'm going to divide the 60s into three eras, early, middle, and late 60s.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.