4 Highly Influential 60s Albums That Didn’t Get Much Love When They Were First Released

Time has a way of sorting out the greatness of albums. That’s certainly the case with these four classics from the 60s. They’re among the most influential and artistically peerless LPs of that decade.

But when they were released, none of them made a huge impact on the listening public. Initially considered flops, they eventually ascended to the rock pantheon.

‘Pet Sounds’ by The Beach Boys

Many folks criticized The Beach Boys for refusing to branch out too often from the cars and surfboards that populated their earliest songs. But can you blame them? When Brian Wilson tried to flex his artistic muscle with the wondrous Pet Sounds album in 1966, everyone from his record company to the other members of the band doubted that it was the right direction. On top of that, the album didn’t sell nearly as well as the simpler LPs of the early 60s. Musicians certainly noticed the brilliance of Pet Sounds, however. It prodded The Beatles into making something as grand and daring as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. These days, most consider it the band’s crowning musical achievement.

‘Something Else’ by The Kinks

Few bands of the 60s can boast of having made as lasting an impact as The Kinks. But the band’s willingness to blaze their own trail cost them in the popularity department in the second half of the 60s. As a songwriter, Ray Davies refused to settle for the garage-rock simplicity of the group’s first few singles. Instead, he kept pushing the envelope with songs of impressive depth and ambition. And the band stretched its musical boundaries far beyond rock. Very few fans were paying attention when the band unleashed Something Else in 1968. But it’s hard to imagine the Britpop boom of the 90s without this album as a huge influence.

‘Odessey And Oracle’ by The Zombies

The Zombies made a splash in both England and America with their first few singles. Thanks to the jazzy organ work of Rod Argent, the band could go to musical places that few of their peers could reach. But the band started to struggle in terms of commercial success in the middle of the decade. When they released Odessey And Oracle in 1968, a few singles from the record had already debuted to little attention. Thinking that the band had run its course, they split up. A few years later, the American discovery of the single “Time Of The Season” led folks to revisit this marvelous record. The baroque pop genre has rarely produced an album of this caliber.

‘Sweetheart Of The Rodeo’ by The Byrds

The Byrds stormed out of the gate in the mid-60s with a folk-rock sound that immediately catapulted them to the higher echelons of the pop charts. As the years passed, however, personnel changes took some of the steam out of their momentum. Roger McGuinn, the group’s bedrock member, kept trying new approaches to keep them afloat. The addition of Gram Parsons for the Sweetheart Of The Rodeo in 1968 took the band in a countryish direction at a time when few other rock bands were trying such a thing. Unsurprisingly, the Byrds’ established fans struggled to understand this new move. But the country-rock boom of the ensuing years owes a ton to this brilliant hybrid of a record.

(Photo by Tom Hustler/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The post 4 Highly Influential 60s Albums That Didn’t Get Much Love When They Were First Released appeared first on American Songwriter.