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The Music of 1964: A weekly look at America’s top singles in the year that The British Invasion changed pop music forever

1964 was, without a doubt, one of the most influential years in the history of popular music in America. The arrival of The Beatles changed everything. Following their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by a record TV audience, the course of pop music, and pop culture, was forever altered. The Beatles dominated the Hot 100 singles chart like no act had done, placing 6 songs at #1 in 1964. Remarkably, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote all of them as well as a seventh for Peter and Gordon. This was while most of their contemporaries were charting with cover versions. The Beatles famously held the top 5 positions on the April 4 1964 chart and the following week had 14 chart entries in total, The unprecedented success of The Beatles opened a flood gate of talent from the UK. Among the acts from Britain reaching the Hot 100 charts for the first time in 1964 were The Dave Clark Five, The Rolling Stones, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Billy J Kramer with The Dakotas, The Kinks, The Hollies, Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Marianne Faithfull, The Swinging Blue Jeans, The Searchers, The Animals, Manfred Mann and Herman’s Hermits. Despite the success of the British Invasion artists, one might forget that Bobby Vinton had two #1 hits in 1964, and songs by Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong and Lorne Greene also reached the top spot. Al Martino, Barbra Streisand, Al Hirt and The Singing Nun also had Top 10 hits.1964: A weekly look at America’s top singles in the year that The British Invasion changed pop music foreverexamines the Hot 100 chart for each week in 1964. Each chapter examines a single week beginning with the #1 song, the rest of the Top 10, songs that were quickly moving up the chart and a sampling of the new entries. The rest of each chapter focuses on different aspects of the chart that week, sometimes about the songs, sometimes the songwriters or the artists, sometimes about famous artists before they were famous and sometimes strange coincidences and amusing trivia. For example, A

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