60s Music Videos

No decade changed popular music more completely than the 1960s. It opened with rock and roll still finding its feet and closed with the medium transformed into an art form capable of anything. In between, four young men from Liverpool rewrote the rules — but the Beatles were only the beginning. The British Invasion sent the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and dozens more across the Atlantic, while in Detroit, Motown built a hit factory that put Black American music at the center of the mainstream and never let it leave.

The range was staggering. Bob Dylan turned folk into poetry and then plugged in, splitting his audience and expanding what a song could say. Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding gave soul its definitive voice out of Memphis and Muscle Shoals. The Beach Boys chased studio perfection while the Byrds invented folk rock, and by the second half of the decade psychedelia had bent the whole thing out of shape — Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Cream pushing rock toward volume, improvisation, and open experiment.

It was the decade music became inseparable from the culture around it. Songs marched with the civil rights movement, drifted through Haight-Ashbury, and closed the decade in the mud at Woodstock. Television carried it into living rooms through Ed Sullivan, Top of the Pops, and the variety shows where a single appearance could make a career. The charts were a genuine free-for-all, where Motown singles, country crossovers, garage rock, and orchestral pop all fought for the same three minutes on the radio.

Below you’ll find Music Videos Club’s growing collection of 1960s videos — official releases, live performances, and television appearances — each paired with the full story behind the recording: the chart performance, the studio sessions, the human details that most sites don’t bother with. Browse by what you remember, discover what you missed, and find out what was actually happening when these songs were made.