Had to throw my vote to The Temptations as it looks like this is about the last gasp for soul music. Won’t be long before they, along with the 4 Tops, become a lounge act. I guess their time is up, but it’s a crying shame that the new music replacing them is such ditty bop shit as Freddy and the Dreamers, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Hang on Sloopy, etc. Well, let’s see what 1966 brings us.
You say that as if it were a bad thing…
The Temptations went on to have three more #1 hits: “I Can’t Get Next To You” (1969), “Just My Imagination” (1971) and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (1972). Plus an additional 11 Top 10 Hits from 1966 to 1973. I think most groups would kill for a “last gasp” like that.
The Four Tops had a less impressive but hardly “lounge act” level career of one more #1 hit (“Reach Out, I’ll Be There”, 1966) and four additional Top 10 hits in 1966-67 and 1973. As late as 1981, they were able to land a Top 20 Pop/#1 R&B hit with “When She Was My Girl.”
At least the Beach Boys aren’t winning.
Could’ve went either way between Help! and Satisfaction; I’m a bit of a Beatles partisan, so I went with the former. I’m not too torn up to see the latter taking the lead for this year, though. 
Satisfaction - The cutting almost anti social lyrics really started something that continues on until today
Ticket to Ride narrowly edges out Yesterday for my vote.
This wasn’t as good a year for the Beatles as either 1964 or 1966 were, at least IMHO. “Yesterday” and “Ticket to Ride” are O.K. but not great in my book, and “Eight Days a Week” is one of the few Beatles songs that will actually get me to change the station; I find it totally boring.
A part of me would like to vote for either “My Girl” or one of the Byrds’ two big hits, but let’s face it: “Satisfaction” simply crushes it out of the park. Looks like I’m not the only one who feels that way.
Current tally is Beatles vs. Stones: 44-51
I put “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but that was actually because I was thinking of Bob Dylan’s original version, which is one of my favorite songs of all time. Dylan’s original version is infinitely better than what the Byrds did with it—they omitted a big chunk of the lyrics and fancied it all up, when I think a great deal of the song’s power is connected with the simplicity of Dylan’s spare arrangement. Still, it was cool that thanks to the Byrds people were introduced to one of the greatest songs ever over the radio waves, and many then sought out the origin of it.
That video (not discounting the quite interesting visual content!) is a really weird Frankenstein monster I’ve discussed at length on YouTube…I’m not sure if it was in the comments for this particular posting (I’m not about to scroll through 1,213 of them to see!) or elsewhere.
The video was shot sometime in the mid 70s (see Rick Derringer’s long hair) to accompany a remake of the song for one of Derringer’s solo albums. The YouTube poster has mated it with the McCoys’ version of “Hang on Sloopy”*, which is why the visuals don’t match up (look at what happens just before the solo) with the singing.
So you’re hearing, but not seeing The McCoys.
*However, the original McCoys’ version has been futzed with in some fashion. I believe the stand I took in the comments section was that this is the original vocal track of the first-recorded album version of “Hang on Sloopy” (note that the single version excised the second verse), but that the instruments have been re-recorded. The horns sound more like synths to me, and while it’s a close approximation of the original single track, it’s definitely different.
It would certainly not be unusual for the original vocal and guitar solo to exist independently, as the basic music track for “Hang on Sloopy” was first used in a version by The Strangeloves, who were the producers of the track.
When they got wind that the Dave Clark 5 planned on releasing a version of “Hang on Sloopy,” they beat them to the punch by overdubbing new vocals by The McCoys’ and Derringer’s guitar solo on top of their own basic music track. And the rest is history.
Sorry for all this detail, but we obsessives have got to obsess!
This is where my interest in music really starts to take off. I am a huge Beatles fan, but Satisfaction takes the prize.
Get off my Cloud has an unnaturally low vote total, since all the Stones fans are voting Satisfaction. Would have been my second choice.
I had to watch it a second time to make sure that was Rick Derringer. Yeah, that’s why I watched it twice! :rolleyes:
Rick’s hair is long for '65, and my block didn’t have any girls who looked like that (yet) in '65, but since they were all 11 like me that isn’t surprising.
Get off my Cloud is a good song, but it has a very repetitive drum line that bugs me.
I’m not a musician but the repetitive “da da da da dadaliddledada” over and over is a little annoying.
I love Pet and “Downtown” still makes my heart soar every damn time, particularly from when she sings “happy again.” Sometimes a brother just needs to be happy.