Midway through the 1960s the American record industry was engaged in a desperate search for the new Beatles and the market was flooded with a continuous stream of imitations, some better than others. This was the situation when the Turtles, co-inventors with the Byrds of the folk-rock genre, appeared on the scene. As pop artisans, the Turtles scaled the charts with some of the most famous melodies of the time. However, with Happy Together they developed a style that was subtly subversive: an absolutely traditional song, sung softly, but with the rhythm of a musical comedy that makes the very romantic lyrics ironic, and trumpets announcing the psychedelic era.
