<\/p>\n
In the late summer of 1969, a song debuted on Billboard\u2019s Hot\u00a0100 that would emerge as the year\u2019s biggest hit. The final year of the \u201960s had already produced some stone classics\u2014literally: from Sly Stone<\/a> to the Rolling Stones<\/a>, plus the Beatles<\/a>, Marvin Gaye<\/a>, the 5th<\/sup> Dimension<\/a>, and Tommy James and the Shondells<\/a>. But this newer group\u2019s hit topped all of them. And the \u201cgroup\u201d didn\u2019t even exist.<\/p>\n The Archies were an animated garage-rock combo. As comic-book characters, the high schoolers of the Archie universe\u2014including Archie, Jughead, Betty, and Veronica\u2014date all the way back to the Second World War. But in 1968 and \u201969, they were also the stars of The Archie Show<\/em>, a CBS Saturday-morning TV series. The Archies, the band\u2014made up of real-life session musicians, including singer-songwriters Ron Dante and Toni Wine\u2014was created to promote the TV cartoon. And like the Monkees before them, the Archies scored real hits on the Billboard charts. Co-written by Brill Building songwriter Jeff Barry<\/a> and future \u201970s hitmaker Andy Kim<\/a>, \u201cSugar, Sugar\u201d sold more than 3\u00a0million copies in 1969 alone and commanded the Hot\u00a0100 for four weeks. In December, Billboard named it the year\u2019s No.\u00a01 song<\/a>. To this day, pop critics still consider \u201cSugar, Sugar\u201d the high-water mark<\/a> of \u201960s bubblegum pop.<\/p>\n