Ranking #2 songs, U.S. edition: 1959-1960 (opens in new tab)

Sam Cooke mastered an impossible tightrope dance on “Chain Gang”: he inhabits the day laborer whose work is so hard but sings this man’s pain so sweetly. Chrissie Hynde would turn the title into the central conceit of 1983’s “Back on the Chain Gang” — for Cooke it ain’t no conceit. Released a couple years […]