4 No. 2 Songs From 1966 That We Still Love Today

You won’t find too many years in music history with as much going on as 1966. Different styles were colliding, while new genres of music were popping up at all angles. Not to mention artists from all over the world were making music a global scene. In that environment, attaining a No. 1 single meant threading a minuscule needle. These four songs are now beloved classics, but they only reached No. 2 in 1966.

“Mother’s Little Helper”

After “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” blasted down all barriers to the top of the charts for rock’s bad boys, they used that to their advantage to slip several subversive songs into the upper reaches of the pop music world. “19th Nervous Breakdown”, with that sneering guitar riff, centered on the plight of the everyday housewife. Songwriters Mick Jagger and Keith Richards peered beyond the façade to the mundane dreariness of the routine. What they found was a pill-popper just trying to inject some color into their black-and-white world. Who knew that the Glimmer Twins had such a knack for sociological nuance as they displayed here?

“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” by Bob Dylan

Considering the groundbreaking nature of Bob Dylan’s mid-60s output, it’s a testament to the audiences of the day that they turned a few of these incendiary tracks into hit singles. “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” flew in the face of everything staid and safe, typical of Dylan’s iconoclastic approach. The drug reference in the refrain didn’t stop anybody from playing the song. Nor did the fact that the band sounds completely blotto on the track, which, allegedly, was how Dylan insisted they should be when they recorded it. In the middle of it all, he works in a message about the impossibility of trying to satisfy the various demands placed on you in your life.

“Yellow Submarine” by The Beatles

It’s not like The Beatles were devastated by this track only reaching No. 2 in 1966; after all, they boasted two other songs that hit the top of the charts in America in that calendar year. “Yellow Submarine” might get dismissed today as lightweight by some scolds. We now know that it wasn’t originally intended to be that way. John Lennon sparked its creation with a much darker set of lyrics. Even in the finished version, however, there’s a lot to love about this track. No one said it was easy making a song for kids be something more than an earworm. The Beatles manage to tell a sneakily poignant tale about getting away from it all, complete with nautical sound effects.

“A Groovy Kind Of Love” by The Mindbenders

The Mindbenders took a hit when Wayne Fontana, their teen idol lead singer, left for greener pastures. Meanwhile, across the pond, Brill Building songwriters Carole Bayer Sager and Toni Wine wrote “A Groovy Kind Of Love” primarily as an exercise in working the then-popular slang word “groovy” into the mix. Persistence paid off for the Mindbenders, who recorded the song without Fontana and made it all the way to No. 2. But the song’s journey to the top wasn’t completely stymied, even if the Mindbenders didn’t get it there. Phil Collins, right in the middle of his 80s ubiquity, did a slowed-down, chart-topping cover of the song in 1988.

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