The Year Was takes you on a journey through time. In each show, Annett travels back in time to explore a different year. What did music sound like around the world, across different genres and scenes of pop culture? What else was happening at that time? And how does that resonate today?

This time: The Year Was 1964!

A time of intense cultural transition – which of course you can’t talk about without The Beatles, who started their “British Invasion”, taking first the US and then the world by storm. (Was that the first band to go viral, foreshadowing today's pop culture?) But music in 1964 was so much more than that. Motown perfected the fusion of bubblegum pop and rhythm and blues. The Shangri-Las reinvented girl group pop with their teenage tragedy "Leader of the Pack". The Beach Boys provided a young, restless and increasingly self-aware generation with a sunlit Californian anthem. All this was happening while America was still suffering the aftershocks of JFK’s assassination and the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. Meanwhile, tensions in Vietnam intensified. Daily life in Berlin was shaped by the newly built Wall. Stanley Kubrick made nuclear war funny. And London's Mod culture took over fashion with its bold colors, geometric patterns, and miniskirts.

1964 brought the growing generational gap to the forefront – building up the dynamite that would set the Sixties on fire in the years to come.