Popularity
The song was the #1 hit in the U.S. for the five weeks encompassing March 1966, the #1 hit on the Hot 100's end of the year chart for 1966, and the No. 21 song of 1960s, despite the later unpopularity of the Vietnam War and the competing "California Dreaming", sharply dividing the popular music market. It has sold over nine million singles and albums and was the top single of a year in which the British Invasion, led by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, continued to dominate the U.S. charts. The Beatles' top hit was We Can Work It Out (#16), while the Stones' top hit was Paint It, Black (#21). See Billboard charts.
It is currently used as one of the four primary marching tunes of the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band.
Read more about this topic: Ballad Of The Green Berets
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“Here also was made the novelty ‘Chestnut Bell’ which enjoyed unusual popularity during the gay nineties when every dandy jauntily wore one of the tiny bells on the lapel of his coat, and rang it whenever a story-teller offered a ‘chestnut.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)