Two of rock's biggest albums are 60, but what else happened in music in 1966? - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Many of the records released in 1966 literally changed music. (Digital image by ABC's Lindsay Dunbar)

When you think about the biggest albums of 1966, two records stand head and shoulders above the rest.

The Beatles' Revolver and The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds have tended to overshadow everything else released that year.

But the mythology surrounding the albums has also overshadowed the actual music on the records themselves.

So, let's dive into the sounds of 66 to get a better understanding for where music was at 60 years ago.

Oh, I almost forgot the obligatory historical context of 1966: Harold Holt was sworn in as prime minister in January (almost two years before his fateful swim), Australian currency went decimal, The Sound Of Music and Doctor Zhivago dominated the Oscars, England clinched its only FIFA World Cup, and St Kilda won its lone AFL/VFL grand final.

While there was much more to the music of 66 than just Revolver and Pet Sounds, you can't ignore these records. They literally changed music.

In his detailed day-by-day breakdown titled The Complete Beatles Chronicle, Mark Lewisohn wrote: "In 1965 the Beatles' recordings had been progressing quite nicely, but here was a quantum jump into not merely tomorrow but sometime next week."

He was writing about Revolver, but specifically Tomorrow Never Knows, the album's insanely adventurous closing track which, Lewisohn wrote, displayed "an unrivalled musical progression [and] The Beatles' willingness first to observe the boundaries and then smash right through them".

Revolver was a pioneering example of using the recording studio as a musical instrument itself, and nowhere better exemplified this than Tomorrow Never Knows, a whirling hallucinogenic groove unlike anything ever heard before.

The Beatles weren't always the first to use particular recording techniques attributed to them, but they typically popularised them by combining little-known studio tricks with the canny songwriting skills of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison.

On Revolver they used such unheard-of or rarely used ideas as tape loops, artificial double tracking, backwards tracking, sampling, varispeed recording, plugging the bass directly into the mixing desk to record it, and the bold move of putting microphones as close as possible to the instruments and amplifiers (something that caused conniptions among the lab-coated technicians at Abbey Road Studios).

All this made Revolver sound unlike any other record, but it meant nothing without the tunes to back it up.

Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, Yellow Submarine, I'm Only Sleeping, Here, There & Everywhere, She Said She Said, Got To Get You Into My Life and Tomorrow Never Knows are all among the best songs The Beatles ever recorded (and that's not to mention Paperback Writer and Rain, which were recorded during the Revolver sessions but carved off for a standalone single).

Revolver pointed the way towards so many new musical styles by incorporating psychedelia, Indian music, and sampling, and pushed the recording studio to new extremes.

It also just so happens to be a collection of damn fine songs from a band that was quite rightfully the biggest on the planet 60 years ago.

The story goes that The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson heard The Beatles' late 1965 record Rubber Soul and decided to top it with Pet Sounds.

A work of unrivalled beauty in pop music at the time, Pet Sounds saw the band ditch their surf rock roots and beach party vibes for something deeply introspective and hymnal.

Wilson worked closely with lyricist Tony Asher (and, occasionally, bandmate Mike Love) to compose a suite of songs that hinted at Wilson's increasingly fragile, questioning and insecure state of mind; That's Not Me, I Know There's An Answer, and I Just Wasn't Made For These Times are two key examples.

Elsewhere the album is an ode to love.

Wouldn't It Be Nice, You Still Believe In Me, Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), and Let's Go Away For A While are all paeans to devotion, affection and connection, illuminated by the beautiful melodies, harmonies and accompaniments that go with them.

But perhaps best of all is God Only Knows, generally (and rightly) regarded as one of the greatest songs of all time.

Like other songs on the record it combines typical rock and orchestra instrumentation, plus some unusual ones such as harpsichord, accordion and sleigh bells, all working in service of Carl Wilson's angelic vocal performance, and Brian Wilson and Asher's tender heartfelt lyrical ode to eternal undying love.

Wilson would later use the term "teenage symphony to God" when describing his unsuccessful and unfinished follow-up Smile, but the words fit just as beautifully as a descriptor for Pet Sounds.

Painstakingly crafted, the songs remain among the most harmonically and melodically rich of not just the 60s, but any era in music.

While Pet Sounds sounds decidedly square compared to the likes of The Beatles, Dylan and The Rolling Stones, it set a benchmark for beautiful pop music and was an important step in its evolution.

As Paul McCartney put it, "no-one is educated musically till they've heard that album".

The mid-60s were a strange time in music, particularly in America.

Jazz was still big, the crooners (Frank, Tony, Dean and co) still held some sway, and one of the biggest bands in America was Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass.

Meanwhile rock music was 10 years old, the invasion of British bands had started to peter out, folk music was still popular though morphing in new and strange ways, and everyone still wanted to be The Beatles three years on from their worldwide explosion.

Seriously, it's crazy how many albums from 1966 featured a Beatles cover.

But the end result in the US was a wild melting pot of sounds, perhaps best exemplified by these six albums.

The folk duo of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had effectively broken up in mid-1965.

But then a forgotten song on their 1964 debut album Wednesday Morning, 3AM became a belated surprise hit.

The Sound Of Silence, with new added rock'n'roll overdubs, went to number one and became the title track of a thrown-together follow-up album released by the hastily reunited Simon & Garfunkel in January 1966 to capitalise on their new-found success.

But it was the follow-up album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, released in October 1966, that really showed the breadth of the duo's talent and fittingly catapulted them to fame.

From the haunting medieval beauty of Scarborough Fair/Canticle to the jazzy The 59th Street Bridge Song, from the pretty For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her to the sad longing of Homeward Bound, it's an album that packs a lot into its 29 minutes.

Just about every rock'n'roll trope can be found in the short but influential career of The Mamas & The Papas.

Drugs, affairs, dodgy record deals, infighting, studio obsessing and sackings are all part of the folk-pop group's story.

But more importantly, their first album helped shape the California sound and the following year's Summer of Love with its sunshine harmonies, jangly folk guitars, beat rhythms and teen-targeted lyrics about "somebody groovy" and hanging with the "in" crowd.

The big singles are Summer of Love anthem California Dreamin' and the Grammy-winning Monday, Monday, both of which helped propel If You Can Believe… to number one in the US and top five on the NME and Melody Maker charts in the UK, but in between are decent Beatles homage Straight Shooter and the freewheeling Go Where You Gonna Go.

By his seventh album, Dylan had well and truly gone electric. He'd also dispensed with his spokesman-for-a-generation mantle and was deep into building his own mythology.

Blonde On Blonde is stacked with material that's kept Dylanologists busy for 60 years, as he paints incredible lyrical images and dips in and out of his own relationships from one song to the next.

Featuring the much-acclaimed Visions Of Johanna, the aching Just Like A Woman, the high-as-a-kite Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, and the epic romance of Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, this hefty double album is one of Dylan's best, capping off an incredible trilogy of rock records after Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited.

Buffalo Springfield's rise was rapid and fascinating.

Within five days of meeting they were playing at a top Hollywood club. Within a few weeks they were the house band at Whisky A Go Go. Within a few months they had a record deal. Within six months they had released their first album. And within a couple of years they were no more.

Neil Young and Stephen Stills would go on to even greater success, but their self-titled debut is a solid and influential effort featuring groovy rocker Sit Down I Think I Love You, the jangly Burned, and Young's early psychedelic gem Out Of My Mind.

But the best track was recorded on the day the album came out and only added to the track listing months later when it became a hit single: For What It's Worth (aka Stop, Hey What's That Sound) became not only Buffalo Springfield's defining song, but a defining song of the 60s.

Of all the bands trying to ape The Beatles, none did it as successfully as manufactured TV show band The Monkees.

Its self-titled debut was the first of four consecutive US number-one albums released in just 13 months.

While The Monkees had no creative control over their first two records and were largely forbidden from playing instruments, Mickey, Davy, Mike and Peter nonetheless became the biggest thing since John, Paul, George and Ringo.

The only single off their self-titled debut is the iconic Last Train To Clarksville (easily among their greatest tracks), but there's also the similarly Beatlesy Saturday's Child, Let's Dance On, and Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day. 

However tracks like This Just Doesn't Seem To Be My Day and Sweet Young Thing are among the more interesting numbers here.

Frank Zappa released 62 albums in his lifetime (and another 70 and counting since his death).

But Freak Out! is the first and one of his most important, kicking off a career that was one of the most fascinating and vital in American music.

Considered one of the first double albums and concept albums by a rock band, Freak Out! was a biting satire on American society and unlike anything else released at the time.

A lot of the songs are spot-on parodies of the inane presentation of teen culture in pop music (Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder, How Could I Be Such A Fool, and You Didn't Try To Call Me), while much of the rest of the album is an excoriating take-down of the United States.

Check out songs such as Who Are The Brain Police?, Hungry Freaks, Daddy, and the blistering attack on America's systemic racism Trouble Every Day (key line: "I'm not black, but there's a whole lotta times I wish I could say I'm not white").

The Beatles had kicked open the door to the US for English acts, and every Tom, Mick and Eric was clambering to follow suit.

But the so-called British Invasion, which saw the US Billboard charts successfully infiltrated by UK bands, had started to wane by 1966.

Regardless, some fascinating sounds were continuing to emerge from the British Isles.

Some of the soon-to-be-biggest bands in the world were taking interesting steps in some intriguing directions.

It's not the greatest Stones record, but Aftermath is an important step forward for the band nonetheless.

It hasn't aged well. Some of the album's more misogynistic lyrics were bad enough in 1966, let alone 60 years later.

But The Rolling Stones' fourth album was the first to feature nothing but Jagger-Richards compositions, and sees some musical experimentation yielding two of their best early tracks — Under My Thumb (sadly, one of the worst lyrical offenders) and Out Of Time — as well as the intriguing tale of suburban drug use Mother's Little Helper and the medieval Lady Jane.

Aftermath is the sound of The Rolling Stones stretching out and occasionally finding gold, but is ultimately a stepping stone towards bigger and better things.

The blues came back in a big way in the UK in the 60s, led by the new wave of rock'n'roll bands like The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds, who tapped into their love of everyone from Muddy Waters to Robert Johnson.

Eric Clapton had experience with the new blues-rock sound via The Yardbirds and a short stint with John Mayall's Blue Breakers, but took the idea to new levels by teaming with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker to create Cream.

Fresh Cream, the first of four albums in four years for the short-lived, volatile band, is as good an example of what they did: loud, rocking, jammy blues that's a cornerstone for fans of the genre.

Outside their gorgeous 67 single Itchycoo Park, Small Faces' impact in the US was minimal.

But to those in the know, their debut record is a fantastic album that provides a bridge between the Beatlesy rock'n'roll of the British Invasion bands and the harder/heavier rock sound that would follow in the UK in the late 60s and 70s.

Led Zeppelin certainly owe a debt; Whole Lotta Love steals outright from You Need Loving, which was a Willy Dixon song Small Faces nicked via a Muddy Waters cover.

But right from the opening chord of Shake, Small Faces brought distortion, pace, attitude and the powerful wail of Steve Marriott to the masses.

The Kinks used their fourth album to change gears.

One of the great UK bands of the 60s, Face To Face saw them go from being an awesome beat band to a songwriting powerhouse.

Led by the immense songwriting talents of Ray Davies, the band turned out an incredible group of songs on Face To Face; character-driven pieces, sometimes satirical, that showcased British life, warts and all, and didn't just ape American musical trends and styles.

Sunny Afternoon was the big hit on an album of great songs. The whole thing preceded such "Kinks klassics" as Dead End Street and Waterloo Sunset by mere months, kicking off a new golden era for a band already known for killer rock singles like You Really Got Me, All Day And All Of The Night, and Tired Of Waiting For You.

There are differing opinions on which line-up of The Yardbirds was the greatest.

The blues rockers featured three of the greatest English guitarists of all time (Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page) at various points in their existence, and Roger The Engineer is considered the peak of Beck's time with the band.

It was the band's third proper studio album, and many would argue it remains The Yardbirds' greatest non-live record.

Amid the R&B rave-ups, there are basic bar-room boogies (The Nazz Are Blue), hypnotic exotic riffs (Over Under Sideways Down), and fun experiments (Hot House Of Omagararshid, Turn Into Earth), but the greatest moment has to be Jeff's Boogie, in which Beck pulls out every guitar trick in the book inside two and a half minutes.

In 66, The Who were on their way to becoming one of the biggest bands in the world.

Much like The Rolling Stones' Aftermath, The Who's A Quick One was a stepping stone. While it lacked a hit single to match the heights of My Generation or Substitute, it contained hints of things to come.

The closing six-part suite — A Quick One, While He's Away — is a taste of the rock operas to come (such as Tommy and Quadrophenia). 

Album opener Run, Run, Run is a hard rocker before such things really existed, Boris The Spider and Cobwebs & Strange showed their diversity and kookiness, while So Sad About Us is a ripping piece of power pop that should've been a hit.

Pop, rock, gospel, and rhythm and blues were shifting and swirling together in black communities in America to make something new in the 50s.

By the 60s, it had become soul music and was a juggernaut that dominated black music charts (euphemistically called the R&B charts) and seeped into the white music charts (the "pop" charts), such was its popularity.

Here are three of the big non-Motown soul records of 66 (we'll get to Motown in a minute).

Otis Redding crammed a lot of incredible music into a short but magical life.

He released six studio albums before his untimely death in a plane crash, aged 26, including this collection, which was his fifth studio album.

His signature song (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay wouldn't be released until after his death, but Complete & Unbelievable boasts a handful of great Redding moments, including Try A Little Tenderness, Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song), and his wild cover of The Beatles' Day Tripper.

Not only is the album a highlight of Redding's too-short career, but the arrangements and playing are top-shelf, provided by Stax house band Booker T & The MGs, as well as the famed Memphis Horns, and a young piano player by the name of Isaac Hayes.

Tina Turner was an icon with a voice like no other.

While Ike Turner's horrific treatment of Tina casts a sad shadow over their musical output together, nothing can take the shine off the title track of this soul classic (not even the participation of convicted killer Phil Spector).

Turner's vocal performance on the opening track is one for the ages, as her voice goes from impassioned scream to beautiful sweetness and back again in a heartbeat. It's so incredible it overshadows the rest of the album.

But don't sleep on the rest of River Deep, Mountain High like American labels and audiences did in 66.

Tracks like I Idolize You and A Fool In Love are stone-cold soul groovers, while a gender-flipped Save The Last Dance For Me is also a highlight.

Wilson Pickett was a prodigiously voiced and gifted performer.

This helped make him one of the biggest stars of 1966, which would end up being the peak of his career before a sad decline.

Capitalising on the success of his previous record, Pickett's third album saw him re-team with some of the classic Stax house band players (who would become Booker T & The MGs) as well as the equally awesome players from Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

There are the obvious soul classics here — Pickett's renditions of Land Of 1,000 Dances and In The Midnight Hour are among the greatest songs of all time — but don't sleep on tracks like Something You Got, Ninety-Nine & One-Half, Danger Zone, and Mercy, Mercy.

As the late great comedian Bill Hicks pointed out, "the musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years [were] real … high on drugs".

That's most evident in the emergence of psychedelic rock, strongly influenced by the use of LSD, which was banned in California and Nevada in mid-66, but already had a foothold in the arts, music and "counter-culture" communities.

Some historians point to The Beatles' album Rubber Soul (December 1965) and B side Rain (May 66) as precursors to psychedelic rock, and they were certainly among the musicians letting LSD ooze into their music.

While key Californian acid-soaked bands like The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Aeroplane weren't quite there in 1966, plenty of others were already turning on, tuning in and dropping out to make a groovy new sound.

Pinpointing the sound of psychedelic music can be hard (it's all about the vibe, man).

But Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan was definitely an early proponent with his third album, which came out in August 66 in the US (and later, for legal reasons, in the UK).

The album's mesmerising title track (sampled extensively for Imani Coppola's Legend Of A Cowgirl) referenced LSD and combined sounds new and old, making it one of the first truly psychedelic pop songs. Having a B side called The Trip certainly helped.

The album melds folk, jazz and blues with sitar, bouzouki and bongos, with Donovan's lyrical eye and melodic ear making something truly new on tracks such as Three King Fishers, Ferris Wheel and the two-chord apocalyptic pop of Season Of The Witch.

The debut album from this New York five-piece was at the cutting edge of psychedelia.

A true forgotten gem, it was among the first records to use the P word in its title.

The band broke up four years after Psychedelic Lollipop, which was their only record to crack the top 25 in the US.

While the lyrics leave something to be desired, the musicality and harmonies are strong, and the record boasts some incredible moments: a startling cover of Tobacco Road, a trippy tape effect that sends Love Seems Doomed into another dimension, the Animals-esque Sometimes I Think About, and their garage rock hit single (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet.

The first truly psychedelic band, these madcap Texans took LSD and sure as hell sounded like it.

Easily recognisable for the fluttering staccato electric jug playing of Tommy Hall, the Elevators peppered their songs with trippy lyrics, dark atmospheres and Roky Erickson's howling vocals.

To call their debut album ahead of its time is an understatement.

Hypnotically dreamy tracks like Rollercoaster and The Kingdom Of Heaven are the very definition of psychedelic, but killer tunes like You're Gonna Miss Me and Splash 1 were dark-horse hits dressed in tie-dyed shirts, hippy beads and rose-coloured glasses.

Few albums are more obvious stepping stones into psychedelic rock than this.

The third album from Los Angeles folk-rockers The Byrds followed the departure of chief songwriter Gene Clark, which pushed the band in new directions.

This included adding Indian influences ("raga rock") and psychedelic guitar solos (inspired by John Coltrane) to their jangly guitar sound and beautiful harmonies.

Eight Miles High is the obvious psych highlight, but 5D (Fifth Dimension), What's Happening?, and I See You are equally LSD-tinged.

The album's influence extends beyond the psychedelic. For example, I Come & Stand At Every Door sounds almost exactly like REM, just 20 years earlier, while their cover of Hey Joe hints at punk and garage rock.

Another of the first records to adopt the word "psychedelic" to describe their sound (some accounts say the first). However this one-off studio experiment is one of the albums that lives up to that adjective the most.

The brainchild of New York musician Rusty Evans, Psychedelic Moods was recorded by a throw-together band in the space of a couple of days, with the musicians sleeping in the studio in between LSD-fuelled recording sessions.

At least, that's what the legend says. How much of that is true is up for debate, as is whether or not the album was recorded as a joke or as a serious tribute to its subtitle of "A Mind-Expanding Phenomena".

Either way, its heady tunes "actually capture the fuzzy off-balanced mind-bending experience", as one reviewer put it, blending wiry guitars and woozy rhythms with trippy lyrics and out-there sound effects.

Rock'n'roll, or beat music as it was sometimes called, began to diversify and evolve even before anyone coined the term rock'n'roll.

Blues-rock, country-rock, rockabilly, swamp rock — all of these subgenres were getting thrown around long before 66.

But it was only in hindsight that the term garage rock came about, as people tried to find a name for the dirtier rock sound of the mid-60s that would become a bridge to punk, metal, grunge, hardcore, post-punk and a bunch of other alt-rock subgenres.

1966 is littered with great singles and bands that were overlooked in their day. Indeed, without Lenny Kaye's compilation series Nuggets (1972 onwards), many would have been forgotten.

But here are some of the key acts that helped give rock'n'roll music a grittier sound and a tougher attitude.

Little known outside the US, this Boise, Idaho band were a big deal.

So big, in fact, that their fifth album, Midnight Ride, was one of just three US top-10 records the group released in 1966 alone.

Best remembered for the pop hit Kicks and the killer tune I'm Not Your Stepping Stone (a later hit for The Monkees), this record is also important for its reputation as a seed of garage rock.

Up-tempo tracks like There's Always Tomorrow and Ballad Of A Useless Man boast the slightly grittier sound of the subgenre, though it's I'm Not Your Stepping Stone that is the true signpost; the Sex Pistols cover released over a decade later shows where the band was pointing.

The loudest of the garage rock bands, Seattle's The Sonics released just three albums with their original line-up before temporarily combusting, however they're the best examples of what garage rock was all about.

While their 1965 debut Here Are The Sonics contains their best-known track (a cover of Richard Berry's Have Love Will Travel), the follow-up Boom has plenty of fast-paced fuzzed-out rockers that lay the groundwork for punk, such as Cinderella, He's Waitin', a fantastic cover of Louie Louie, and the killer closer Shot Down.

They never sold many records, but The Sonics inspired everyone from The Stooges and The Hives to Nirvana and The White Stripes.

Californian band The Seeds were led by Sky Saxon, the self-proclaimed "King of Garage Rock".

Saxon's band put out two rock albums in 1966: their self-titled debut and follow-up A Web Of Sound, which not only paved the garage rock road but also pointed towards psychedelia.

The former contains their two biggest hits, Can't Seem To Make You Mine and Pushin' Too Hard, and both feature Saxon's strangled vocals, which were surely a precursor to the punk howls of singers like Iggy Pop.

The scuzzy riffs of Evil Hoodoo, the agonised howls of Girl I Want You and Try To Understand, and the anti-authority sentiments of Pushin' Too Hard make this a true garage rock touchstone and go some way towards backing up Saxon's claim to the garage rock throne.

Nailing down the "first" punk record is impossible, but a lot of people like to point to this album as a kind of birth of punk, and it's a compelling choice.

The Monks were five US soldiers stationed in Germany who got monk tonsure haircuts and inadvertently invented a new genre on tracks like Monk Time, Shut Up, Higgle-Dy-Piggle-Dy, and I Hate You, accidentally influencing countless musicians who liked the idea of music being a ferocious, wild and weird parent repellent.

The one and only album by The Monks combines fuzz bass, driving rhythms, bursts of noise, and an anti-establishment attitude (oh, and banjo!) to get closer to punk than any other garage rock band of the day.

It's the speak-sung, three-chord jam that sparked a thousand backyard bands, and if you're looking for a garage rock song to tag as the genesis of punk rock then this is as good as any.

UK band The Troggs are still (sort of) touring to this day and released albums into the 90s, but their halcyon days lasted just 18 months, starting with their cover of Wild Thing in April 66 and ending with the sublime Love Is All Around in October 67.

Their debut album From Nowhere opens with Wild Thing, also includes the under-rated With A Girl Like You, and reissues also excellent garage rock hits From Home, I Can't Control Myself, and their version of Louie Louie, the latter containing the dirtiest guitar sound of the era.

Led by the melodic magic of multi-instrumentalist Arthur Lee, the Los Angeles group released three incredible albums between March 66 and November 67 that touched on garage rock, psychedelic rock, jazz, folk-rock and symphonic pop.

Their self-titled debut is their most garagey and it rocks hard; Lee's voice cracks and shreds on My Flash On You, their version of Hey Joe moves at breakneck speed, while Can't Explain is one of the great rock songs of the era.

This line-up of Love would never be this proto-punk again. Follow-up album Da Capo is more psychedelic and the cult classic Forever Changes is a pop masterpiece that sounds like nothing else, but across all three albums they would leave a huge influence on bands across a wide range of genres.

Pop music in Australia in the 50s and 60s was largely content to copy the sounds of the UK and US.

As a result, the albums, songs and acts that endured in the cultural memory are the ones that had something truly special.

Here are three Aussie bands with big albums in 66 that we still talk about today.

Pitching the sound of the British Invasion back to Britain may have seemed a bit like selling sand at the beach, but that's what The Easybeats did, becoming Australia's first successful original rock band in the process.

1966 was a prolific year in which the band released two albums (It's 2 Easy and Volume 3) and two EPs (Easy As Can Be and Easyfever), relocated to England, and put out one of the greatest Aussie songs of all time, Friday On My Mind.

While they were always more of a singles band than an album band (the book The 100 Best Australian Albums features the compilation The Best Of The Easybeats at number six rather than a studio album), It's 2 Easy is a fascinating document.

It precedes Friday On My Mind, but the best tracks on it hint at the driving rhythms and attitude of that incredible single: Women, I Can See and Wedding Ring are great songs, though the album lacks a real killer hit.

Born in the UK, the brothers Gibb spent eight and a half formative years in Australia, but it was the lack of success for Spicks & Specks, their second album, that sent them back to the UK.

While the record didn't set the charts alight, it's filled with charm and the Gibb boys' tight three-part harmonies with highlights including How Many Birds, and the Beatlesy tracks Big Chance, I Don't Know Why I Bother With Myself, and Where Are You.

And then there's the title track, one of the greatest Australian pop songs of all time, containing a stomping piano rhythm, two key changes, a beautiful trumpet outro, and the sadness of nostalgia in three powerful minutes.

The Seekers' career arguably peaked about six months after the release of this album.

That was when the Aussie quartet played to an unfathomably huge world-record crowd of 200,000 people at Melbourne's Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

Come The Day took the band to heights no Australian band had ever reached. The Seekers had hit singles around the world prior, but this album (their fifth) was the first to crack the top 10 in Australia, the UK and the US.

Capped off by sparkling single Georgy Girl (which leant its name to the US version of the album), Come The Day showcases the band's strengths, particularly on songs such as the title track, where the lush harmonies and folk-pop playing perfectly accompany Judith Durham's flawless vibrato.

In its early years, Motown Records operated out of a two-storey home in Detroit dubbed Hitsville USA, which was more than fitting; from 1961 to 1971, the label produced 110 Billboard top 10 hits.

Throughout the 60s and 70s, the label pumped out an insane run of world-changing music, and the genres of soul, pop, R&B and funk wouldn't be the same without Motown and its famed backing band, known fittingly as The Funk Brothers.

Here's a taste of just some of the remarkable music that emerged from the Detroit label in 1966.

Between August 64 and November 72, The Supremes released an astonishing 25 albums.

Amid that incredible run were 12 US number-one singles, most of which were the work of Mary Wilson, Diana Ross and Florence Ballard.

While their other 66 album I Hear A Symphony is adventurous and interesting, especially the dazzling title track, A' Go-Go was led by two stellar singles: the top-10 hit Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart, and the Motown classic You Can't Hurry Love, which stands as one of greatest songs of all time.

The rest of the record is a calculated collection of dancefloor-ready covers of chart-toppers previously done by the likes of The Four Tops, The Temptations, Martha & The Vandellas and more, helping make this the first Supremes album to hit the top of the US Billboard 200.

This is 16-year-old Stevie Wonder's sixth album (and second of 1966).

Down To Earth saw Wonder trying to establish himself as a serious musician rather than just an angelically voiced child prodigy.

Much like its predecessor Up-Tight (the title track of that record is Wonder's first truly killer tune), Down To Earth is an eclectic mix of covers, ranging from Merle Travis's 16 Tons to Bob Dylan's Tambourine Man, and songs penned by Wonder, Henry Cosby and Sylvia Moy.

But on tracks such as soulful swinger A Place In The Sun and dancefloor banger Be Cool Be Calm, you can hear a superstar starting to emerge.

The Four Tops formed in 1953 as part of the vocal group boom, however the band didn't release its first album until 1965, three years after joining Motown.

They quickly became hit machines who, along with label-mates The Supremes, took some choice material from the songwriting powerhouse of Holland-Dozier-Holland to the top of the charts.

On Top, the third of five albums released in the space of just three years, isn't laden with hits — its biggest song is Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over) — but shows the band's sound growing, with its nod to the past (a Cole Porter cover) and to the present (a Beatles cover).

Gettin' Ready is the second of seven consecutive Billboard top-20 albums for The Temptations.

The vocal group was one of the core hit-making vocal groups for Motown in the 60s. The two big hits on Gettin' Ready are Ain't Too Proud To Beg and Get Ready, both of which went to number one on the US R&B charts and remain soul classics.

Still performing with 84-year-old founding member Otis Williams, The Temptations would develop their sound after this by adding tastes of psychedelia and funk, and continued to have hits even into the 90s.

The Supremes were on the rise in 1966, but Martha & The Vandellas were already on top.

Watchout! is Martha & The Vandellas' fourth studio record, and while it doesn't contain anything as legendary as previous hits Dancin' In The Street or Nowhere To Run, it does boast two top-10 hits: I'm Ready For Love (which sounds an awful lot like The Supremes' You Can't Hurry Love) and Jimmy Mack.

The latter would be their final top-10 hit and the band would start to fracture in the following years, just as the Motown label also began to hit tough times.

But Watchout! marks the last great album from one of Motown's definitive acts.

Gaye had 10 top-50 singles on the Billboard charts prior to this, his seventh album, but none had cracked the top 100.

Moods was his best effort to date but still fell short, peaking at 118.

It was an attempt to present Gaye as a serious artist and not just a pop star.

Armed with a strong line-up of songs from Motown's in-house songwriters (including Holland-Dozier-Holland), the album didn't achieve its aim, yet still produced another five top-50 singles including Ain't That Peculiar, Take This Heart Of Mine, and I'll Be Doggone.

This article wouldn't be complete without these world-changing albums.

Surprisingly, Simone's 14th album was thrown together from session leftovers.

But it doesn't feel like an afterthought, rather a distillation of her many voices and styles.

Simone is brassy on Break Down & Let It All Out, then on the very next track (Why Keep On Breaking My Heart) she coos in sweet agony, while on her own song, Four Women, she brings all the rage and violence required to tell such a tale of racism, slavery, rape and misogyny.

An influence on Jeff Buckley, David Bowie, Aretha Franklin and more, Wild Is The Wind is perhaps the definitive Simone album, more than earning its place on many a best-ever-albums list.

Jazz was leaving rock behind in the experimentation stakes of 66.

The likes of Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane were among those taking the genre to wild new places.

Ascension is one of Coltrane's last studio albums (he died in July 1967). It's a hugely influential, free-jazz experiment that has an organised structure behind it.

Coltrane released the slightly easier-to-digest Meditations in 1966 too, but Ascension is often considered one of his greatest works, though, as music mag Mojo once put it, the album "has been found useful in clearing the room of squares", such is its chaotic and free nature.

Nothing sounds like cowboys, deserts and Mexican stand-offs quite like this.

Italian composer Ennio Morricone's transcendent score for the spaghetti western The Good, The Bad And The Ugly spent more than a year in the Billboard charts, keeping Sergio Leone's film in the cultural consciousness long after it had left cinemas.

The sunburnt trumpets, the mirage-shimmering guitars, the haunting whistle — these are the sounds that stand out in the memory.

But there are so many more, including ocarinas, organs, an amazing orchestra and so many weird voices.

It may have had Leone scratching his head, but it works a treat.