My rules:

• Only one song per artist/group
• The song must be released that specific year
• Songs from live albums not allowed
• Restricted to only 20 songs

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A shitload of great music was released in 1968, here are my 20 chosen songs.

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• Madame George – Van Morrison

  

  Madame George is the album’s whirlpool. Possibly one of the most compassionate pieces of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I’ll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too.
  -Lester Bangs

  A song from the album Astral Weeks, released in 1968. It was recorded during the first Astral Weeks session that took place on September 25, 1968 at Century Sound Studios in New York City with Lewis Merenstein as producer.

  In 1974, after he had recorded eight albums, Morrison told Ritchie Yorke when he asked him what he considered his finest single track and the one that he enjoyed the most that it was: “Definitely ‘Madame George’, definitely. I’m just starting to realize it more and more. It just seems to get at you… it just lays right in there, that whole track. The vocals and the instruments and the whole thing. I like that one.”
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  Down on Cyprus Avenue
  With a childlike vision leaping into view
  Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe
  Ford and Fitzroy, Madame George
  Marching with the soldier boy behind
  He’s much older now with hat on drinking wine
  And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
  The cool night air like Shalimar
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  Continue reading “1968: 20 Songs Released in 1968 You Must Hear” →