1949: Hank Williams: "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Country music's archetypal lament. Everybody's covered it, and for good reason: that swooping melody is a singer's dream, and line-for-line, it's probably the most quotable pop song ever. Poetry made into everyday speech, and twice as breathtaking.

1950: Hank Snow: "I'm Movin' On." "You've switched your engine, now I ain't got time/For a triflin' woman on my main line . . . I warned you twice, now you can settle the price/'Cause I'm movin on." In short, more attitude than the state of New Jersey—no wonder it spent three months atop the country charts.

1951: The Larks: "My Reverie." Love is classic—or in this case, classical, because the gorgeous melody was adapted from Debussy. Lead singer Eugene Mumford, having served twenty-nine months in prison on a false rape charge, sounds both woeful and ecstatic, going out on an impossible high note that seems to freeze the song in midflight, even as the piano and backing dum-dum-dums resolve quietly underneath.

1952: The "5" Royales: "Baby Don't Do It." A sextet despite their name, these former and future gospel harmonizers chase the secular dollar: "If you leave me pretty baby/I'll have bread without no meat," Johnny Tanner sings, church far behind him. For songwriter-guitarist Lowman Pauling, it began a string of classics that culminated with "Think" and "Dedicated to the One I Love," which not even James Brown or the Shirelles performed better.

1953: The Harp-Tones featuring Willie Winfield: "A Sunday Kind of Love." Love is religious. What Winfield wants is a relationship that gives him the peace of mind he gets from attending church; the organ and vocal harmonies illustrate his desire without pushing it too far toward the secular, and without making it sound like a drag—a miracle you can believe in.

1954: Chet Baker: "My Funny Valentine." Simultaneously ecstatic and menacing, cuddly and frightening, impressionistic and prophetic, pinprick evil and sexier than hell, harrowing and totally androgynous, Baker remade this sharply lyrical standard into a fuzzy black-and-white photograph, an unanswered prayer. His slow death from heroin was horrible, but this makes it sound inevitable.

1955: Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers: "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" For God's sake, people, he was twelve years old! When I was twelve, I could barely form a coherent sentence!

1956: James Brown: "Please Please Please." Before concocting the parts of modern music not invented in Jamaica, James Brown was the rawest and most inventive ballad singer this side of Ray Charles. This feral debut single so infuriated King Records president Syd Nathan ("It only has one word!" he exclaimed) that Nathan dropped Brown and fired Ralph Bass, who'd signed him. Then the record shot to No. 1, and Brown and Bass got their jobs back.

1957: Elmore James: "It Hurts Me Too." There were "blues shouters," but James was a blues screamer, from his cut-glass voice to his night-shivers guitar. Here he begs a woman to leave her man out of simple friendship, though the forthright carnality that infuses all his work is certainly a factor. Sensitive, sure, but every bit as primal, pained and fearsomely loud as everything else he cut.

1958: Frank Sinatra: "Angel Eyes." Dressed up for the abyss, as usual, Frank hails the last call, also as usual. I don't hear him whispering "Ava" at the song's close as others swear he does, but the way he utters, "You happy people" near the end, all hope drained from his voice, comes close enough.

1959: The Flamingos: "I Only Have Eyes for You." This Chicago quintet were skilled at making records that felt both overwhelming and full of room. This is the ultimate example—a transformation of a dapper '30s number into a slow, gorgeous epiphany with a hint of fatalism lingering underneath. The ultimate doo-wop record.

1960: The Shirelles: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" The ultimate girl-group record. Never was teenage (or adult) love's ultimate question stated better: "Is this a lasting treasure/Or just a moment's pleasure?" I hereby apologize for every time I've opted for a moment's pleasure over a lasting treasure. Not that I'm taking any of it back, but still.

1961: Elvis Presley: "Can't Help Falling in Love." "Wise men say/Only fools rush in," so naturally this is his most relaxed record ever, and who can resist his guileless sincerity, the anthemically swooping melody, the backup vocals of the Jordanaires? OK, maybe not the Jordanaires, but still.

1962: Patsy Cline: "Why Can't He Be You?" The most pained of Cline's not-especially-cheerful ballads. The way her voice cracks on "I hear it all the time" says it all. But when the most passionately sung line in the song is "But his kisses leave me cold," is her predicament cause or effect?

1963: The Ronettes: "Be My Baby." The opening drumbeat is fixed in the heart of everyone who's heard it—a box set could be made of songs that ripped it off—but it's the way Ronnie Spector declares "For every kiss you give me/I'll give you three" that makes this eternal. Love is ungainly, and sexier than hell for it.

1964: Dionne Warwick: "Walk on By." The most quietly devastating record ever made; when the piano enters, quiet but hard, the bottom drops out as surely as the blast of distortion opens up "Smells Like Teen Spirit." It's so perfect it'll even make you forgive that corny-ass trumpet riff.

1965: Pamelo Mounk'a et Les Bantous de la Capitale: "Amen Maria." Congolese singer-guitarist Mounk'a was never as iconic a figure as his rivals Franco or Tabu Ley Rochereau, but this might be the best record any of them made. The melody unfurls for what seems like forever, carrying you along with it until two minutes in, when the lead guitar steps forward, lifts the proceedings off the ground, and then the horns send it into the air. Of all the songs on this list you aren't familiar with, find this first.

1966: The Marvelettes: "The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game." The ultimate relationship metaphor, courtesy of (who else?) Smokey Robinson. Wanda Young, usually one of the Marvelettes' secondary singers, delivers the most offhandedly sexy Motown vocal of the '60s. The Marvelettes' greatest hit — and Motown's.

1967: The Rolling Stones: "Let's Spend the Night Together." The Stones at their most open: Mick Jagger actually sounds like he believes that "We could have fun just fooling around," and like he's genuinely overwhelmed on the "And round and round and oh, my, my" that follows. If "This doesn't happen to me everyday" sounds disingenuous coming from '60s rock's biggest sex symbol, figure it's his way of being generous, just like "I'll satisfy your every need," whose corollary, "And I know you will satisfy me," is—he's Mick Jagger—a foregone conclusion.

1968: Tammy Wynette: "Stand By Your Man." The lyrics are such rank male chauvinism, and Wynette's voice breaks so often, you've got to wonder how much she actually means it. Then she hits the chorus—part plea, part willful bravado—and you get your answer: As much as she needs to, which is probably too much.

1969: Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin: "Je T'aime . . . Moi Non Plus." The most (ahem) climactic pop song ever made to that point. Gainsbourg originally recorded this long fake orgasm in 1967, with then-paramour Brigitte Bardot. It's probably best, though,that he waited until a more appropriate calendar year to do it again, this time with British starlet Birkin, whom he'd met on a movie set. No. 1 in the UK, it peaked on the American charts at — I kid you not — No. 69. (Did he pay Billboard off or what?)