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Plethora of Pop’s Rate-A-Record
1962: A Good Year to Start 1st Grade
And a complex year to rate a few records
Not everyone can say that they started first grade just a month before the Cuban Missile Crisis grabbed us by the extremities, but I can. My father, actually, would have been the one who was grabbed, but he and my mother held themselves and other things together, and the stare-down between JFK and Nikita Khrushchev (to name the famous two, though I suppose Fidel must be mentioned since he was leader of the island state), only affirmed my parents’ unity in supporting Kennedy.
Things would certainly change a few years later in my Dad’s politics, but that’s what fear and civil strife will do to a person. And if, like me, you’ve been watching The Diplomat on Netflix and did live through the1960s, you might be wondering why we can’t ever get things right between ourselves and Russia.
Or maybe you keep up with current events and know.
But when I stare down the list of Hot 100 songs of 1962, I recognize that if music were our only concern, not only would we be better off on the international affairs stage, we’d also see that “one nation, indivisible” can actually be a reality.