{"id":869985,"date":"2026-10-04T01:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T01:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869985\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T01:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T01:38:16","slug":"4-songs-that-high-schoolers-in-1968-knew-every-word-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869985\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Songs That High Schoolers in 1968 Knew Every Word To"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh, to live in a time when The Beatles, <a href=\"https:\/\/americansongwriter.com\/remember-when-the-rolling-stones-closed-out-the-mick-taylor-era-with-an-aggressive-album-in-1974\/\" id=\"https:\/\/americansongwriter.com\/remember-when-the-rolling-stones-closed-out-the-mick-taylor-era-with-an-aggressive-album-in-1974\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">The Rolling Stones<\/a>, and so many classics were mainstream radio. Here are some 1968 hits. You definitely sang these obsessively if you were a teenager at the time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey Jude\u201d by The Beatles<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tPlay video<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791077893_969_hqdefault.jpg\" alt=\"Play\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Written by Paul McCartney, \u201cHey Jude\u201d was meant to be a song of comfort during what would have likely been a difficult time for John Lennon\u2019s son, Julian. Lennon and his first wife, Cynthia, were in the midst of their divorce, and McCartney was on his way to visit the family when he came up with the song.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tVideos by American Songwriter\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBorn To Be Wild\u201d by Steppenwolf<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tPlay video<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791077895_36_hqdefault.jpg\" alt=\"Play\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I could totally imagine a rebellious teenager scream-singing this in the car. \u201cBorn To Be Wild\u201d demands that its listeners go out and live life in a big way, even saying, \u201cFire all of your guns at once and explode into space\u201d in the first verse. \u201cBorn To Be Wild\u201d was Steppenwolf\u2019s third song released and first major hit. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.songfacts.com\/blog\/interviews\/john-kay-of-steppenwolf\" id=\"https:\/\/www.songfacts.com\/blog\/interviews\/john-kay-of-steppenwolf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Songfacts<\/a>, it was also the first song to use the phrase \u201cheavy metal,\u201d which partly describes Steppenwolf\u2019s sound.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leading man John Kay explained, \u201cFor me, heavy metal music had its beginnings in Led Zeppelin and beyond. We always considered Steppenwolf to be a hard rock, blues-based band, with some exceptions in terms of the material.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBuild Me Up Buttercup\u201d by The Foundations<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tPlay video<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791077895_635_hqdefault.jpg\" alt=\"Play\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you\u2019ve ever been a teenager, you know that half the time you\u2019re falling in love. The other half of the time you\u2019re putting yourself back together after heartbreak. That\u2019s kind of what \u201cButter Me Up Buttercup\u201d by The Foundations feels like. In hindsight, this song sounds like a classic case of what the kids call love-bombing to me. You know, the situation where someone \u201cbutters you up\u201d just to leave you stranded. Writers Mike d\u2019Abo and Tony Macaulay might not have had that term in mind back then, but they were definitely accurate in their description of it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(Sittin\u2019 On) The Dock Of The Bay\u201d by Otis Redding<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tPlay video<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791077896_898_hqdefault.jpg\" alt=\"Play\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As with many artists of this era, Otis Redding drew inspiration from The Beatles when writing \u201c(Sittin\u2019 On) The Dock Of The Bay\u201d. The popular boy band had just released Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band\u00a0in 1967, and Redding was apparently obsessed. This was also the first posthumous hit in the United States, fun fact, as Redding recorded it about three days before he died in a plane crash.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Photo by: Fox Photos\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oh, to live in a time when The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and so many classics were mainstream&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[24911,88,216,17172,2156],"class_list":["post-869985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1960s","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-pop-music","tag-rock-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}