“San Francisco” by Scott McKenzie

"San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" came out in May 1967 with Scott McKenzie singing a song John Phillips wrote, and it was a commercial with a halo: Phillips and Lou Adler produced it and put it out to drum up business for their Monterey International Pop Music Festival that June.

Phillips played guitar on it, session men Joe Osborn and Gary L. Coleman supplied the bass and the orchestra bells and chimes, and Hal Blaine sat behind the drums. It went to 4 in the US and all the way to the top in Britain, held number one for six weeks in Germany and five in New Zealand, and came to be hailed as the unofficial anthem of the flower-power counterculture, a Summer of Love signature right alongside the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.