Wanted to hear your opinions. Do you consider 1964 to have been part of the early 60s or mid 60s?

I don't know, and I'm not sure I'm that interested in the answer. But 1964 has to be one of the most biggest shifts in human history, ever.

By my calendar it is definitely the mid 1960s.

There's absolutely no hesitation it's mid-60s. Not only is it chronologically so, the culture of '64 was dramatically different from the first third of the decade. In music, not only did you have the Beatles and othet Merserybeat bands, even regular pop in general evolved creatively from the mundane early 60s. Motown had fully found its voice in gems like "Dancing in the Street," while even straightforward girl pop songs like "My Guy," "Navy Blue," and "You Don't Own Me" had a lot more character to them than just rote 8/12-bar blues and overpowering wah wahs. Fashion had also fully established itself as 60s, with shift dresses and hairspray abound, not to mention guys mimicking the Beatles. Television also changed quite a bit in 1964, with The Twilight Zone ending and several new ones premiering, like Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, The Addams Family, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Geopolitically, the arms race against the USSR took a break, Vietnam was the focal point of the Cold War, JFK was dead, and the Civil Rights Act was passed. In plenty of ways, 1964 is more similar to the late 1960s than it is even to 1962 because of how much changed during and immediately leading up to it.

Mid 60s obviously. For Chrissakes, the Beatles hit America that year.
The British Invasion, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom, as well as other aspects of British culture, became popular in the United States, and significant to the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic. Pop and rock groups not just the Beatles, but also the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, and the Animals were at the forefront of the invasion.

There's absolutely no hesitation it's mid-60s. Not only is it chronologically so, the culture of '64 was dramatically different from the first third of the decade. In music, not only did you have the Beatles and othet Merserybeat bands, even regular pop in general evolved creatively from the mundane early 60s. Motown had fully found its voice in gems like "Dancing in the Street," while even straightforward girl pop songs like "My Guy," "Navy Blue," and "You Don't Own Me" had a lot more character to them than just rote 8/12-bar blues and overpowering wah wahs. Fashion had also fully established itself as 60s, with shift dresses and hairspray abound, not to mention guys mimicking the Beatles. Television also changed quite a bit in 1964, with The Twilight Zone ending and several new ones premiering, like Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, The Addams Family, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Geopolitically, the arms race against the USSR took a break, Vietnam was the focal point of the Cold War, JFK was dead, and the Civil Rights Act was passed. In plenty of ways, 1964 is more similar to the late 1960s than it is even to 1962 because of how much changed during and immediately leading up to it.


Some people think the 60's began in 1965 and not 1964, because this is when the Vietnam war was escalated, it was when the Watts riots occurred leading people to question civil rights activism, music became darker with "Eve of Destruction" and The Rolling Stone's "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", 1965 was also when the Beatles changed their music style to a more mature theme when they released "Rubber Soul".