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 songs in the United States they in fact pre-date. For example, "Masters of War" (1963) which protests against governments who orchestrate war, is sometimes misconstrued as dealing directly with the Vietnam War. However, the song was written at the beginning of 1963, when only a few hundred Green Berets were stationed in South Vietnam and came to be re-appropriated as a comment on Vietnam in 1965, when US planes bombed North Vietnam for the first time, with lines such as "you that build the death planes" seeming particularly prophetic. In contrast to other topical singers of the day, Dylan never mentioned Vietnam by name in