Child of the Sixties Forever

3 Lyrics From 1960s Pop Crossover Songs That Are Absolute Poetry By Alex Hopper

These three 1960s pop crossover songs feature lyrics that are purely poetic. These songwriters flexed their ability to do more than write a catchy melody. Indeed, they could also write memorable lyrics that were deeply profound.

Though The Beatles were bona fide rock stars, their sound also had a pop element. Moreover, their cultural impact firmly puts them in crossover territory. However you want to characterize their sound, they emboldened every instrumental with top-notch lyricism. Take “In My Life”, for example. Seldom has a song been as simply beautiful and poetic as this one.

“Though I know I’ll never lose affection / For people and things that went before / I know I’ll often stop and think about them / In my life, I love you more,” the lyrics to “In My Life” read. For decades, this song has stood as a symbol of this band’s stellar songwriting and the power of poetry that we can relate to.

“Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell

This folk song gained major popularity in the 1960s. When we look back on this era, this track defined the culture. It might not be today’s bubblegum pop, but it effectively crossed over into the pop realm when it was released. More than just sonic appeal, though, this track is relatable, too. With this ballad, Joni Mitchell penned one of the most stunning and universal tracks ever.

“Tears and fears and feeling proud / To say ‘I love you’ right out loud / Dreams and schemes and circus crowds / I’ve looked at life that way,” the lyrics read. This song is pure poetry, teaching us all about life in a more poignant way than most of us can muster.

“Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles

Circling back to The Beatles, we have “Eleanor Rigby”. “Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice / In the church where a wedding has been / Lives in a dream / Waits at the window, wearing the face / That she keeps in a jar by the door / Who is it for,” the lyrics read. This tender track says a lot about our own lives through its characters. It’s one of Paul McCartney’s most poetic tracks, cementing The Beatles’ legacy as a powerfully narrative band.

“All the lonely people / Where do they all come from? / All the lonely people / Where do they all belong,” the chorus continues. This song has unforgettable imagery that sticks in our minds long after it ends, like any great bit of poetry.

Did you hear that the world is ending on Friday? That's according to three scientists in the 1960s.Chas Newkey-Burden

Why scientists in 1960s predicted world would end on Friday

Projections of continued population growth caused ‘immediate stir’ and raised fears for the future

By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK

Did you hear that the world is ending on Friday? That's according to three scientists in the 1960s.

“Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve,” they said in an article in the journal Science published on 4 November 1960. “They will be squeezed to death.”

Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, AD 2026

The Austrian-American physicist Heinz von Foerster and two colleagues wrote the paper that had the sobering title: “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, AD 2026”.

“The work was based on a simple observation,” said Science in October – “the time it took for the human population to double in size kept getting shorter”. So, drawing on population estimates from about 400BC until 1958, the authors “came up with an equation that best described the trend”.

By 2020, they predicted, the human population would exceed 25 billion, but the researchers “didn’t calculate when humanity would run out of food, land, or energy”. They merely concluded that “at some point” in 2026, their equation “ceased to give meaningful results because the predicted population shot towards infinity”.

The claims caused an “immediate stir”, said Alan MacEachern, a history professor from Western University in Ontario, Canada, on The Conversation. There were stories in Time and The New York Times and the findings “became the subject of a series of Pogo comic strips”. Many commentators thought the article was “strictly a tongue-in-cheek comment on population fears”.

Lobbyists leapt upon it. In 1963, a witness from the chemical industry told a Canadian parliamentary committee that the report was an argument for chemical pesticides, which would, they argued, be needed to “feed the approaching population explosion”. In a 1971 US Supreme Court abortion case leading up to Roe v. Wade, it was cited as proof “there was no compelling reason for the government to favour increased population”.

But there were sceptics from the start. “In view of the comments that subsequently were published in this journal, an extensive discussion of this article does not seem to be required,” said Harold F. Dorn in Science two years later. Witheringly, he added that the prediction would set a record “for the short length of time required to demonstrate its unreliability”.

Demographers were “annoyed by what they saw as a provocation by outsiders” and “pointed out obvious flaws”, said Science in October. Yes, the “time it takes for the number of humans to double could get a lot shorter”, for example, but “certainly not shorter than the nine months it takes for a baby to develop”.

Nevertheless, the article was “regularly cited” and its predictions continued to appear “remarkably accurate”. That was the case until around 1993, “halfway to the predicted ‘doomsday’, when the global population began falling behind its forecasts”, said MacEachern.

Now, the global birth rate is “slightly less than half what it was in 1960”, so “hopefully, we will all wake up on November 13 to an ordinary day”.

Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i news site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.