The Music of 1965: A weekly look at America's top singles in the year that The British Invasion peaked

The British Invasion of the Hot 100 in 1964 really was an invasion of the American pop chart by British acts that no one could have foreseen. In 1963, only one British act reached #1 on the American singles chart. It was The Tornados with their instrumental hit, ‘Telstar’. It was released in 1962 and spent a single week in 1963 at #1. Many #1 records in 1963 don’t even seem like pop records, at least not the kind you would find on the Hot 100 a scant few months into 1964. You were more likely to find a lot of these records in the parents’ record collections than with America’s youth. The #1 records in 1963 included songs by Steve Lawrence, The Rooftop Singers, Paul and Paula, Andy Williams, Al Martino, Eydie Gorme, Henry Mancini, Kyu Sakamoto, Dale and Grace and, of course, every male teenager’s fantasy, The Singing Nun. No wonder young kids embraced The Beatles so fervently when they arrived on the scene in 1964.In 1964, four different British acts held the #1 spot on the Hot 100 for a total of 24 weeks with The Beatles holding down the top spot for 18 of those weeks. The Animals, Peter and Gordon and Manfred Mann also reached the #1 spot. By 1965, seven British artists are found at #1 for a total of 28 weeks. The Beatles had five #1s, Herman’s Hermits and The Rolling Stones had two each while Freddie and The Dreamers, Petula Clark, The Dave Clark Five and Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders all accomplished the feat once.In 1965, as in 1964, it is the seemingly inexhaustible talent of The Beatles, especially the songwriting genius of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, that dominates. In 2019, the movie ‘Yesterday’ imagines a world in which The Beatles did not exist. To many people my age, that is a horrifying thought and, surely, such a world would bea less joyous one. I can’t imagine that in such a world my record collection would be filled with Bobby Vinton albums instead of ‘Revolver’, ‘Rubber Soul’, ‘Abbey Road’, ‘The Beatles’ aka ‘The White Album’ and ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. In 1965, the best a