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.
The big two of 1966
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".
Rockin' in the USA
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").
After the invasion
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.
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