{"id":490388,"date":"2026-03-23T05:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T05:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490388\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T05:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T05:02:09","slug":"the-two-novelty-songs-that-dominated-1969s-pop-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490388\/","title":{"rendered":"The two novelty songs that dominated 1969’s pop charts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Charts<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ NASA \/ Uwe Conrad)<\/p>\n

Mon 23 March 2026 1:00, UK <\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t too many musical years that immediately beam such a storied glow as the late 1960s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Just as 1977 is the year that punk broke, and 1988 is acid house\u2019s free rave heyday, the final 12 months of 1969 burn with a bristling tumult. Perhaps coloured by a US-centric popular culture, but it\u2019s hard not to defer to the year\u2019s rolling image carousel cycling through projected images of civil strife, political upheaval, Vietnam nightmares, and the symbolic death of the hippy idyll.<\/p>\n

It was reflected in the music too. Iggy Pop conjured the era\u2019s alienation in The Stooges\u2019 starkly titled \u20181969\u2019 anthem, The Rolling Stones soaked up all the dark thunderstorms on \u2018Gimme Danger\u2019s apocalyptic doomerism, and \u2018Bad Moon Rising\u2019 saw Creedence Clearwater Revival bottle the disquiet that hung in the countercultural air once peace and love had lapsed into a hopeless dream.<\/p>\n

Yet, as ever, most people\u2019s record collections were on a different planet. Lauded by Rolling Stone and the critical consensus, the actual singles flying off the shelves were firmly affixed to the mainstream, set to score a good time over illustrating the country\u2019s social turmoil.<\/p>\n

Such lighter escapism is reflected in Billboard\u2019s Top Records of 1969. Collating data from weekly chart positioning and length of time on the charts over actual sales figures, the publication identified The 5th Dimension\u2019s \u2018Aquarius\/Let The Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)\u2019 Hair<\/a> medley as that year\u2019s most successful single, with two massive novelty songs sitting comfortably in the Top Five.<\/p>\n

So, which novelty numbers were huge in 1969?<\/p>\n

In at five is a sci-fi time travel single that travels across 7,000 years in its efforts to salvage humanity from its technological hubris and eventual extinction. Released in April, the folk rock whimsy of Zager and Evans\u2019 \u2018In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)\u2019 topped the charts in six countries, including the UK and US, and stayed at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for a whopping six weeks.<\/p>\n

Taking silver medal ahead of The Beatles\u2019 \u2018Get Back\u2019 and The Rolling Stones\u2019 \u2018Honky Tonk Women\u2019 was one of the quintessential singles of the decade\u2019s bubblegum pop<\/a>. Plucking fictional Riverdale characters from the long-running Archie Comics series, the namesake Archies band scored a massive global hit with their defining \u2018Sugar Sugar\u2019, an infectious slice of candy pop scoring young love as akin to a sickly sweet treat, The Archies\u2019 defining cut standing as the late decade\u2019s premier pop gem.<\/p>\n

Of course, they were a virtual band. Written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, the pair scored pop gold with \u2018Sugar Sugar\u2019, topping the charts in as many as 16 countries, including the UK and US, and staying number one on the Hot 100 for four weeks. Its success quite literally reached into space, astronaut Alan Bean bringing a cassette of the song out during his Apollo 12 mission.<\/p>\n

While The Stooges and MC5 may soundtrack the underground, most kids were spinning The Archies and Zager and Evans during those months\u2019 chaotic close of the 1960s.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ NASA \/ Uwe Conrad) Mon 23 March 2026 1:00, UK There aren\u2019t too many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[19405,143168,96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-490388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1960s","tag-143168","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}