Format: LP

One of the first pop albums to become a cult classic, love's 1967 masterpiece, Forever Changes, is the pinnacle of the L.A. freak scene.
Singer/songwriter Arthur Lee's lyrics are increasingly fragmentary and paranoid, foreshadowing the band's eventual drug-fueled collapse. Yet these drop-dead hip tunes are set in arrangements featuring Herb Alpert-style mariachi horns, lush middle-of-the-road strings, and other tropes of the easy listening scene, creating a more unsettling sense of tension than if the songs were given the usual heavy rock instrumentation. Every single track is a stone classic, Forever Changes belongs high on any halfway serious list of the greatest pop albums of the '60s.