The Worst Best Album of 1963
A new Riff series
For this series, I’m starting in a place where I can actually remember listening to music, that magical year of 1963, when I turned seven years old. Everything here is totally subjective (as if nothing else I write is). So…
Check out this list of the 100 top selling albums of 1963:
It’s a pretty incredible list, given how the music was shifting and really all over the place. Yes, the Beatles (# 3, 8, 72, & 96) made a big mark, but so did the Beach Boys (# 11, 15, 21), Peter, Paul, & Mary (# 4, 5, & 9), and a host of others from Henry Mancini to Barbra Streisand, to…The Searchers.
As you’ll note, the number one album of 1963 was James Brown’s Live at the Apollo, and the #100 album of the year was The Smothers Brothers’ The Two Sides of The Smothers Brothers. Unbelievably, I own neither of these albums and hate myself pretty badly for it. Many others on the list I don’t and likely never will own, and I’m thinking mainly about Allan Sherman’s My Son the Celebrity (#29) and the Swingle Singers’ Bach’s Greatest Hits (#30), though I…
