1969: the year everything changed
Rob Kirkpatrick
Skyhorse Publishing
January 15, 2009
The infusion of protest music into the mainstream culture is well-illustrated by the manner in which most Americans first heard songs like Hair, a musical about hippies, war, and America in the 1960s. When the play began its off-Broadway run in 1967, it was a raw and shocking production that featured nudity, profanity and desecration of the American flag on-stage. By 1969, the songs of Hair were among the most popular in the nation due largely to cover versions by the Fifth Dimension, a pop-soul quintet known for easy-listening ballads and the Cowsills, a real-life musical family that provided the inspiration for The Partridge Family television program (George-Warren & Romanski, 2001).
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