There are very few – if any – artists who could ever come close to paralleling the unquantifiable heights of The Beatles over the course of history, let alone when the Fab Four were still on the prowl. But in 1968, despite the seminal White Album enshrining an iconic status yet one more time, there was someone else chasing up The Beatles’ behind to give them a run for their money.
Although it’s possibly difficult to discern from the prolific nature of the record itself, the Liverpool quartet’s making of the White Album was fraught with tension. Dynamics between the band were rapidly fraying—George Harrison had left the band for two weeks in August before the album was eventually released in November 1968, and their production powerhouse, George Martin, was somewhat missing in action throughout the process.
Coupled with this, even though the White Album still spawned some of The Beatles’ most lasting legendary hits like ‘Hey Jude’, its overall tone was decidedly less political than some previous efforts, which, in many ways, couldn’t have come at any worse a time. With anti-war and civil rights protests springing up all over the world throughout that fated year, the success of the record didn’t quite match the call for champagne-popping.
Instead, a more introspective and worldly voice came riding in from the country west to dash The Beatles’ hopes of a continuing commercial reign. That appeared in the form of Glen Campbell, whose array of seminal pop-country fusion hits pipped the Fab Four to the post and ended up outselling them in the overall charts for 1968, heralding a new era and dimension of the sonic canon as the British invasion was slowly meeting its bitter end.
How did Glen Campbell beat The Beatles?
Campbell’s stratospheric success on both sides of the Atlantic represented new musical beginnings as the Americans began to take back grip over what had been a scene ruled by quintessential Britishness for so long. This was especially pertinent given the release of his defining Witchita Lineman, hitting the airwaves at the same time as the White Album, also in November 1968, as the perfect reflective antidote to international shores.
To that end, Witchita Lineman – as well as a slew of other hits, including ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ – garnered a certain country charm among the critics for the remainder of the ‘60s and into the 1970s. For the part of 1968 alone, however, Campbell’s homely twang scooped him Grammys in both the country and pop categories, including ‘Best Country and Western Solo Vocal Performance’, ‘Best Country and Western Song’, and ‘Best Vocal Performance’.
With The Beatles finally throwing in the towel not two years later, it was firmly time for American music to take charge over the charts at long last and regain some of their lost commercial appeal. Campbell was arguably at the forefront of that pack, being the first artist to knock the Fab Four off their high horses and instead replace the rock and roll routine with a strong dose of country and misty-eyed nostalgia.