“This year, pop – or, more accurately, rock’n’roll, a term which suddenly seems almost quaint – is 50 years old. Its date of birth, like its trajectory, is difficult to define. What is indisputable is that Elvis Presley, a Southern white boy inhabiting a black form, was the first, and perhaps the most dynamic, expression of a music that was raw and primal, charged with a sexual tension that was best measured by the shrill din of the adult voices attempting to shout it down.

At that moment the notion of youth, both as a culture and a demographic, was born; it defines our culture now to a degree that we no longer question. In the transition, rock’n’roll has lost much of its power to shock and to galvanise, has become both fragmented and ubiquitous. Yet it endures.

The following is a collection of moments from the last 50 years of pop, some of them obvious, some of them, I hope, not so, all of them possessing some deeper cultural relevance. I have tried to be objective but, at times, could not resist the urge to be utterly subjective. I have left out Sgt. Pepper, for instance, because it sounds to me like a period piece and, I confess, I am tired of the canonical received wisdom that prevents us from seeing the Beatles – and the Sixties – clearly. Conversely, I have included the Spice Girls, not out of any fondness for their music or antics, but because they are unquestionably a modern pop phenomenon. You, of course, are bound to disagree. Already, I do.” —Sean O’Hagan, Guardian.UK