It was the decade of Dylan and Aretha, the Beach Boys and the Beatles, Hendrix and Zeppelin. But that's not all it was. The 1960s also included the slyly political pop of Brazil's Os Mutantes, the early electronic experiments of Silver Apples, and the free jazz exhalations of Albert Ayler. It was a single-oriented era—a startlingly inventive period following the initial explosion of rock'n'roll but before the album became dominant—when entire new genres seemed to bubble up every few months. The '60s marked a time when pop music became more than a teenage fad, turning into an important art form in its own right as it soundtracked the civil rights movement, the hippie heyday, and the Vietnam War.
In an effort to highlight less iconic artists and properly showcase the variety of sounds the '60s had to offer, this list features no more than five entries by any given artist.
