Hello everyone.  Sorry to make you wait two weeks for this installment in my project to discern my Peak Music Year.  It won’t happen again.  Unless it does.  Anyhoo, here goes.  We are now up to 1969 – if you wish to catch up on 1965-1968 you can just scroll down, down and further down or click here for 1965, here for 1966, here for 1967 and here for 1968.  I’ll wait while you get caught up……all caught up or don’t care?  Well, you must care at least a little or you wouldn’t be reading this far.  So good.

Let’s go:  the 1969 BillBoard Hot 100.

I have a feeling that this may be my peak music year simply by looking at the roster of #1 songs and seeing how many of these are among my favorites and are songs that are currently in my collection, on my playlists, or have been featured on my blogs as a Music Friday subject or as part of another post.  Of the 17 different songs that charted at #1 in 1969, I regularly listen to 15 of them.  The two exceptions are Sugar, Sugar by The Archies (who were not even a real band) and In The Year 2525 by Zager and Evans, though the latter is somewhat of a classic in it’s own right and was the subject of a previous Music Friday post.  Another surprise – The Beatles don’t win walking away.  It’s kind of a tie with The 5th Dimension since both groups had two #1 songs that year.  The 5th Dimension edge out The Beatles slightly in total weeks at #1 since their two songs spent a total of nine weeks at #1, and The Beatles’ two songs spent a total of 6 weeks at number one.  However…I am going to have to call it for The Beatles, because of the iconic status of their #1’s.  While The 5th Dimension’s songs, though representative of the music of the period, are really just footnotes to the history while the Beatles’ tunes are the history.  So the winner is…..drumroll…..The Beatles!  Big Surprise, I know.  I also know that I haven’t told you the titles of the songs.  Don’t worry – I’ll tell you the titles and you can listen to them too.  I’ll present all four songs – two by The Beatles, and two by The 5th Dimension and you tell me if I made the right choice.

I’ll do this like they do the Miss America Pageant – we’ll start with the “runners up”.  Should the winners be unable to fulfill their obligation, the runners up will be named the winner.  Not really, but I’ve always wanted to say (write?) that.  Here goes:

Second runner up is The 5th Dimension’s Wedding Bell Blues, sometmes A.K.A. Marry Me Bill:

First runner up is The 5th Dimension’s Age of Aquarius / Let The Sun Shine In which I featured in a previous blog post titled Was That The Dawning Of The Age Of Aquarius?

Not bad, but when was the last time you heard either one of those songs?  Not recently, I bet unless you are me.  And you’re not.  Now for the Winners:  The Beatles’ (featuring Billy Preston on keyboards) Get Back which spent six weeks at #1:

And The Beatles’ Come Together / Something which spent only one week at the top spot in 1969.  What I don’t understand is that the BillBoard chart lists as a medley what I believe are two individual songs, even though two songs can’t share the number one spot.  Or can they?  Anyway, here are both songs :

So there you have it.  1969 winners are The Beatles.  They are on a roll…a rock and roll?  Sorry, bad pun.  But they’re looking hard to beat, but since they broke up in 1970 they can’t win more than one more year.  And 1971 – 1975 will be wide open!  Hope you enjoyed…stay tuned for the obligatory encore post following right behind this one.  Or right above this one.  Or something.