5 Songs That Prove 1969 Was The Decade's Best Year For High School Hits

If the year 1969 were a person, it would be a high school student. It was a year of wild mood swings, worthy of a hormonal teen. In the summer of 1969 alone, the nation witnessed the unifying elation of the first manned moon landing and the violent division of the Stonewall uprising. So, it shouldn't be surprising that 1969 provided the most challenging, uplifting, provocative, and best high school hits of the tumultuous '60s, if not all time.

Like the rock songs from 1969 that sound even cooler today, the year's high school hits embody the energy, enthusiasm, confusion, apprehension, disillusionment, and resilience of youth. Our five high school bangers chart a wild ride that takes in the ebullient glucose rush of the Archies' "Sugar, Sugar," as well as the anxiety about encroaching adulthood — and Vietnam War draft — that Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" conveys. As with any school year, we conclude with a valedictory message, Cass Elliot's harmonious "Make Your Own Kind of Music," which hopefully encouraged the graduating class of '69 to go out and help heal a divided world.

Iconic love song "Sugar, Sugar" held the No. 1 spot the longest in 1969, topping Billboard's Hot 100 for four weeks. The bubblegum pop confection was credited to the Archies, a band featured on the CBS Saturday morning animated series "The Archie Show," beating Damon Albarn's Gorillaz to the cartoon-band punch by 29 years. The show updated a 1941 comic book and followed the misadventures of Archie Andrews and his friends at Riverdale High. It was a ratings hit, claiming 75% of the television audience, and was pitched toward contemporary tweens and teens.

Hoping to emulate the success of the Monkees TV show, CBS approached that show's producer Don Kirshner to create a song for the animated Archies to play. "Sugar, Sugar," written by tunesmiths Andy Kim and Jeff Barry, proved addictive as candy to high school kids, drawing boys and girls onto the dance floor and stirring a cauldron of hormones with seemingly innocent yet secretly salacious lyrics like, "Pour a little sugar on it baby."

In a year awash with concerns for authenticity, "Sugar, Sugar," a song by a nonexistent band, arguably connected with teens craving escapism. "The year of Woodstock, the year that we landed on the moon, the year everyone was talking about Charles Manson ... There was this song that just showed up," Kim told NPR. Speaking of the moon, "Sugar, Sugar," undoubtedly scored coolness points with teens when it was played in outer space by the Apollo 12 crew.

By 1969, teen boys' world view was no longer confined by their high school's walls. As the Vietnam War dragged on, adolescent men saw older brothers shipped off to Southeast Asia, with no return journey guaranteed. No song delivered this destabilizing reality better than the opening cut on King Crimson's 1969 debut album, "21st Century Schizoid Man": "Blood rack, barbed wire / Politicians' funeral pyre."

Explicitly condemning the inhumane incendiary mixture that was being deployed in Vietnam, "Schizoid Man" brought the war home and did so with beautiful, complex, powerful, and terrifying music. With sounds ranging from Robert Fripp's lacerating guitar to Ian MacDonald's squalling free-jazz saxophone, "Schizoid Man" is as equilibrium-shattering as the dystopian science fiction stories popular with high school readers in 1969. Think "Slaughterhouse Five," which coupled author and World War II veteran Kurt Vonnegut's time-traveling surrealism with memories of surviving the Allied firebombing of Dresden.

Lyricist Peter Sinfield matched the music's jagged assault with terse lyrics influenced by some of that sci-fi, including the bleak satire of Philip K. Dick. "I wanted it to frighten people and upset them," Sinfield told Rolling Stone, adding that he wanted them to "relate [the song] to other pieces of violence in their life." Proto-metal and nascent prog rock, "Schizoid Man" was perhaps too "out there" to convey its antiwar message to teen boys. That task was left to a more direct, top-5 tune.

Creedence Clearwater Revival possessed an uncanny talent for delivering lyrical downers through some of the most joyous music ever put to wax. Look no further than rollicking blues-infused swamp rocker "Fortunate Son." High school boys fixated on sports and girls might have missed the grim message of tunes like CCR's proto-psychobilly "Bad Moon Rising." Not so with "Fortunate Son," a No. 3 hit from 1969, a year that saw anti-Vietnam War protests at Harvard University and the fierce 10-day battle at Hamburger Hill.

The song resonated with kids approaching high school graduation with no wealthy relatives or college plans to keep them out of the draft, because it also hit close to home with its writer. John Fogerty, who served in the U.S. Army Reserves from 1966 to '68 to avoid the draft, addresses the war with trenchant, poetic realism: "Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes / Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord / And when you ask 'em, 'How much should we give?' / Ooh, they only answer, 'More, more, more, more.”

The tune's swaggering rock 'n' roll doesn't mask the fact that Fogerty is protesting a rich man's war fought by poor people's kids. "It's a song I could have written now," Fogerty said on Facebook in 2020. "So I find it confusing ... that the president has chosen to use my song for his political rallies when in fact it seems like he is probably the fortunate son."

One of the lesser-known untold truths about the Rolling Stones is that "Gimme Shelter" — called the band's greatest song by no less than Mick Jagger — is also their most high-school tune. In his memoir "Life," Keith Richards says the tune was inspired by a London rainstorm. "All these people with their umbrellas being blown out of their grasp and running like hell," he writes. However, Richards also reveals that his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg was cheating on him with Jagger at the time. So despite its ominous sounds and signifiers, "Gimme Shelter" was spawned by that most teen-boy predicament: Jealousy triggered by a girl coming between two mates.

"Gimme Shelter" was released as the lead-off track on the Stones' "Let It Bleed" LP in 1969, a year dominated by rancor, racism, and an unpopular war. The tune's lyrics reference madness, murder, and a firestorm that "burns like a red-coal carpet." The music is also creepy, featuring Jagger's ghostly harmonica and Keith Richards' shambling, spectral guitar, which mutates into a coiling razor-wire riff.

To 1969 high schoolers, the world must have seemed as scary as the one depicted in "Gimme Shelter." The song may have seemed like prophecy and reportage. "[Vietnam] was a real nasty war, and people didn't like it," Jagger told Rolling Stone. "People objected, and people didn't want to fight it. ... ['Gimme Shelter' is] a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse."

In 1969, high school girls reached the end of a decade that had promised women agency and freedom, but their options were still limited. Enter Cass Elliot's uplifting anthem for young women wanting to take charge of their lives: "Make your own kind of music / Sing your own special song / Make your own kind of music / Even if nobody else sings along."  

"Make Your Own Kind of Music" is arguably a self-affirmation for Elliot, a powerful performer who experienced fat shaming throughout her life. Even her own band, the Mamas & the Papas, put her down in the song "Creeque Alley": "And no one's gettin' fat except Mama Cass." Cass' solo single, released a year after the Mamas & the Papas' breakup, only reached Billboard's No. 36 spot. That said, its empowering message likely resonated with women at the end of the 1960s, a decade that elevated thinner fashion models like Twiggy as the feminine ideal. The tune spoke to perceived ugly ducklings whose true beauty was often underappreciated. 

Sparked by a TikTok meme, "Make Your Own Kind of Music" became a viral hit in 2023. "It's the coolest thing I could possibly even conceptualize," Cass's daughter Owen Elliot-Kugell subsequently told Rolling Stone. "'Make Your Own Kind of Music' is really about, like 'F*** you. I'm gonna do whatever I want, no matter what anybody thinks.'" There's nothing more defiantly high school than that.

If you need help with an eating disorder, or know someone who does, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).