The battle between the iconic band and "The Voice" took place in 1966. The dispute for the podium was fought by "Strangers in the Night" and "Paperback Writer".
No one can deny that Frank Sinatra and The Beatles redefined music, each in their own time. Although they were contemporaries in the decade that the Liverpool group lasted, their music, their background, and their audience were very different. But there was a time when they competed for several weeks to be the hit of the summer in the United States.
The year was 1966. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were established as a global phenomenon, with tours of San Francisco, New York, and Tokyo; a dozen number-one Billboard singles, and eight chart-topping albums in four years.
Furthermore, they were still the most popular of all despite their sonic transformation.
Sinatra was already an icon of the industry for a long time. At the age of 50, he was still singing life -in Las Vegas hotels- and selling an abundance of records, although far from the meteoric numbers of Beatlemania. Of course, "The Voice" swept the Grammy Awards, prevailing in the most important categories over the British quartet.
Frankie was on a roll when on May 30, 1966, he released Strangers in the Night: his new work reached platinum status and became the fifth record to reach number one. The self-titled song was the lead cut and the first from the album to quickly climb the Billboard Hot 100.
The Beatles released Paperback Writer on the same day as Strangers... Within a few weeks, it was already topping the charts in Australia, Canada, Norway, Ireland, and Sweden, among other countries. On June 25, it climbed to number one on the charts in the United States.
But a week later, Sinatra's ballad snatched first place from the Lennon and McCartney single - which would appear on the compilation disc and B-sides Hey Jude. Although the lead lasted a short time, the stainless Frankie was able to give himself the pleasure of disputing the hit of the summer with the group of the moment.
A change of times
Many believe that this battle for number one was a pivotal moment in the history of popular music, opening a gap between eras. The Beatle's theme mixed sounds of folk and rock with distorted guitar riffs and a leading bass, and it had a letter that moved between wit and the absurd.
While the composition by the Croatian Ivo Robic, later adapted by the German Bert Kaempfert and popularized by the blue-eyed baritone, was already perceived as an easy-listening sound (simple “easy-listening” melodies), as a romantic ballad with a taste of nostalgia.
It should be noted that 1966 was a year of deepening cracks. In the United States, a change of era was in the air, not only in culture and art. Those were times of confrontation between rock and politics, between war and freedom of expression, and between hippie communities and the establishment.
Paradoxically, The Beatles and Sinatra began to appreciate each other after that summer of '66. McCartney would confess that he wrote When I'm Sixty-Four, thinking that he "was writing a song for Sinatra".
Frankie would include McCartney's Yesterday on his 1969 album, My Way. That same year, The Beatles released Abbey Road, which included the beautiful Something. George Harrison's theme would be described by Sinatra as "the best love song written in the last fifty years."
