Seven effervescent and engaging pop albums from 1969
By Chris Guest
3. Bread – Bread
While Bread would reach more impressive soft-rock heights later on in the 1970s, the group’s debut album is an underrated pop powerhouse that’s celebrating its 55th anniversary this year. Bread’s opening salvo likely should've been named as one of the best opening tracks on a debut album from the 1960s: the catchy and underrated “Dismal Day,” which features a twangy guitar riff and terrific vocal harmonies – a hallmark of the group.
The sad-sounding “Look At Me” is also a highlight, with its pining, powerful lyrics about seeming invisible in a bustling world, and “Family Doctor” serving as a fun, country rock-tinged aside with a prominent flute part. This is an assured debut that only hints at the lush soft-rock classics that David Gates would pen over the course of the next few albums, but still features notable hallmarks of the group and shows they are far more than simply sappy romantics (and even if they were, more power to them).
2. From Elvis in Memphis – Elvis Presley
A tremendous 1969 pop album from The King that followed up his tremendously successful 1968 release Elvis was released after his ’68 Comeback Special on television, which garnered rave reviews and reintroduced one of the most important artists of all time (who produced one of the best opening tracks on a debut album in the 1950s) to a new audience after his career had started to wane in the mid-to-late 1960s.
While Elvis’s voice at this point had taken on some of the rasp that his late career would be defined by, it suits the material perfectly – the “Memphis sound” is on display fully here, much as it was on Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis, which is one of the best soul albums of 1969.
The album features a plethora of notable tracks, including the plaintive “I'll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms),” the country ballad “It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin’,” the bluesy and catchy “After Loving You,” and the soulful and powerful “Power of My Love,” which features a saucy and raucous horn part. Of course, the best-known song from this album is the powerfully delivered “In The Ghetto.”
Beyond that, the all-time classic “Suspicious Minds” was also recorded during sessions for this album, but it was released as a non-album single. If it was actually on the album properly (not just as a CD bonus track), this album would easily be number one.