Let Me Be (The Turtles song) Sloan's song "Eve of Destruction", which became a number 1 hit in the U.S. for Barry McGuire, recognizing that, with its uncompromising message, "You just couldn't make a statement like that and ever work again." He said that they accepted "Let Me Be" because it represented "just the perfect level of rebellion … haircuts and non-conformity".<ref name="Unterberger/JingleJangleMorning"></ref> Author Peter Doggett describes "Let Me Be" as a "perfect encapsulation of teenage angst". In his book "1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music", Andrew Grant Jackson identifies it as part of a "subgenre" of protest songs that emerged during 1965, in which
Protest song living beings (who are united in their capacity for feeling pain and pleasure and hence for empathy), to which Beethoven himself added the lines that all men are brothers. Songs which support the status quo do not qualify as protest songs. Protest song texts may have significant cognitive content. The labour movement musical "Pins and Needles" summed up the definition of a protest song in a number called "Sing Me a Song of Social Significance." Phil Ochs once explained, "A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for BS." An 18th-century example of topical