The Beatles - paperback writer, 1966

"Years ago, my Auntie Lil said to me, 'Why do you always write songs about love all the time? Can't you ever write about a horse or the summit conference or something interesting?' So, I thought, 'All right, Auntie Lil.'"

The Beach Boys - caroline no, 1966

"Wilson produced the track in early 1966 at Western Studio with 12 session musicians who variously played harpsichord, flutes, guitars, basses, and vibraphone. Some of the percussion involved an empty water cooler jug struck from the bottom with a mallet. Wilson sped up the mix by one semitone to make his voice sound younger. The album version was edited to include a non-musical tag consisting of the sounds of Wilson's dogs barking and a passing train."

The Beach Boys - good vibrations, 1966

"The maestro has passed - the man was a open heart with two legs - with an ear that heard the angels. Quite literally. Love and Mercy for you and yours tonight. RIP Brian."

The Mamas And The Papas - monday monday, 1966

"Monday, Monday" is a 1966 song written by John Phillips and recorded by the Mamas & the Papas, with backing music by members of the Wrecking Crew for their 1966 album If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears. Denny Doherty was the lead vocalist. It was the group's only #1 hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100."

The Beach Boys - wouldn't it be nice, 1966

"what a glorious soundtrack it is, both musically and lyrically, in which everything works as layer upon layer of irony. From the album’s opening line of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” to the closing number, “Caroline No,” Wilson upends and overturns every Beach Boys cliché, exposing the hollowness at their core."

Sam And Dave - hold on i'm coming, 1966

"Like many soul acts of their era, Sam & Dave faded after the 1960s. But Soul Man hit the charts again in the late 1970s when the Blues Brothers, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, recorded it with many of the same musicians. Moore had mixed feelings about the hit becoming associated with the Saturday Night Live stars, remembering how young people believed it originated with the Blues Brothers."

The Rolling Stones - under my thumb, 1966

"It's never about a real woman, but simply about this instrument that the guitarist has to tame, which probably gets him into trouble at first, but which he finally manages to dominate with his fingertips—under his thumb!"

The Beatles - got to get you into my life, 1966

"Got to Get You into My Life" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, first released in 1966 on their album Revolver. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The song is a homage to the Motown Sound, with colourful brass instrumentation and lyrics that suggest a psychedelic experience. "It's actually an ode to pot," McCartney explained."

Simon And Garfunkel - leaves that are green, 1966

"A sprightly folk-pop tempo and feel highlight this song, which is one of the earliest tunes in the Simon & Garfunkel canon that shows the duo embracing the then-current folk-rock style. Buttressed by some inventive percussion and harpsichord, the shiny quality of the melody is highlighted throughout this fine pop confection. Lyrically, it's a sad, almost melancholy song of lost love that utilized the changing seasons to convey the feelings at the disintegration of a romance. This is indeed something that Paul Simon would utilize again in the very near future."

Simon And Garfunkel - homeward bound, 1966

"Simon wrote the song during his time in England, possibly while waiting for a train at Widnes railway station in the northwest of England. Simon said later he actually composed it at a railway station in Warrington."

The Beatles - and your bird can sing, 1966

"Aside from dismissing it as a substandard work, John Lennon never discussed "And Your Bird Can Sing". His first wife Cynthia recalled that the song was inspired by her presenting Lennon with a clockwork bird inside a gilded cage, wrapped in gift paper, apart from the wind-up mechanism. She wound up the bird as she handed the present to Lennon so that it sang, leaving him with "an expression of sheer disbelief on his face" as he removed the wrapping paper."

Bee Gees - spicks and specks, 1966

"Their 1966 single ‘Spicks and Specks’ reached number 1 and was named Go-Set’s single of the year just as the band left to seek its fortune in London. Their debut English single, ‘New York Mining Disaster 1941’, was the first of many international hits. In 1977 their soundtrack album for Saturday Night Fever would become the largest-selling movie soundtrack in history (although it was unaccountably overlooked for Oscar nomination); at one point, Barry Gibb could count five of his songs in the US Top 10 at once."

Neil Young - burned, 1966

"For many years, Decade was the only Neil Young compilation album available. A 1993 compilation called Lucky Thirteen was released, but it only covered Young's 1982–1988 output. It was not until 2004 that Reprise Records released a single-disc retrospective of his best-known tracks, titled Greatest Hits. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Young promised fans a follow-up to the original Decade collection, provisionally titled Decade II; eventually, this idea was scrapped in favor of a much more comprehensive anthology to be titled Archives, spanning his entire career and ranging in size from a box set to an entire series of audio and/or video releases. The first release of archival material since Decade and Lucky Thirteen would appear in 2006, Live at the Fillmore East, a recording from a 1970 concert featuring Crazy Horse with Danny Whitten. Several other archival live releases followed, and in 2009 the first of several planned multi-disc box sets, The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972, was issued. In April 2017 Decade was reissued on vinyl as a limited-edition Record Store Day release, with remastered vinyl and CD editions planned for general release in June 2017."

The Beatles - here there and everywhere, 1966

"McCartney began writing "Here, There and Everywhere" at Lennon's house in Weybridge, in early June, while waiting for Lennon to wake up. McCartney recalled: "I sat out by the pool on one of the sun chairs with my guitar and started strumming in E. And soon [I] had a few chords, and I think by the time he'd woken up, I had pretty much written the song, so we took it indoors and finished it up."

The Beach Boys - god only knows, 1966

"it is a baroque-style love song distinguished for its harmonic innovation and complexity, unusual instrumentation, and subversion of typical popular music conventions, both lyrically and musically. It is often praised as one of the greatest songs of all time and as the Beach Boys' finest record."

The Beach Boys - sloop john b, 1966

"Sloop John B" (originally published as "The John B. Sails") is a Bahamian folk song from Nassau. A transcription was published in 1916 by Richard Le Gallienne, and Carl Sandburg included a version in his The American Songbag in 1927. There have been many recordings of the song since the early 1950s, with variant titles including "I Want to Go Home" and "Wreck of the John B".

Simon And Garfunkel - flowers never bend with the rainfall, 1966

"his mirror on the wall threw back an image dark and small, which to some degree depressed him."

Simon And Garfunkel - i am a rock, 1966

"Billboard described the song as a "beautiful lyric ballad." Cash Box described the song as a "hard-driving, pulsating ode about rather isolated young man." Record World said that the duo "sing about loneliness in usual poetic terms."

The Beatles - i'm only sleeping, 1966

"The first draft of Lennon's lyrics for "I'm Only Sleeping", written on the back of a letter from 1966, suggests that he was writing about the joys of staying in bed rather than any drug euphoria sometimes read into the lyrics. While not on tour, Lennon would usually spend his time sleeping, reading, writing or watching television, often under the influence of drugs, and would have to be woken by McCartney for their songwriting sessions. In a London Evening Standard article published on 4 March 1966, Maureen Cleave, a friend of Lennon, wrote: "He can sleep almost indefinitely, is probably the laziest person in England."

Sheiks - tell me bird, 1966

"Paulo de Carvalho, drums; Edmundo de Brito Silva, bass; Fernando Chaby, guitar; Carlos Mendes, guitar."