(Credits: Far Out / NASA / Uwe Conrad)
Mon 1 December 2025 2:00, UK
Nowadays, the 1950s literally feel as though they were a lifetime ago. Different societies, different standards, and different ways of living all feel better left in the past. Put simply, 1957 is not like 2025.
But even despite this, there’s no getting away from the fact that this was a year in particular that wreaked its lasting influence all over the world, and still continues to affect us to this day. Don’t worry, it’s not something totally sinister or evil – it was the true birth of rock and roll, the blistering force of which left music well and truly changed forever.
Of course, whenever you mention this point in time and the birth of rock music even casually, there’s only really ever one major name that comes into the fray: Elvis Presley. In a lot of ways, it almost goes without saying that he was the artist who held the number one spot for the longest time in 1957, mainly because he never spent much time away from it.
In total, Presley had at least four tunes hit the top spot over the course of the year, including ‘All Shook Up’, ‘Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear’, ‘Too Much’, and ‘Jailhouse Rock’. Cumulatively, these hits gained him an unmatched reign of 25 weeks at number one, an obviously unparalleled record of almost half the year.
But within this, there was one song of the four that just pipped the rest to the post with its number one credentials, which happened to be ‘All Shook Up’. Beginning its stint at the top of the charts on April 13th, 1957, and remaining there for a subsequent nine weeks, it not only became Presley’s top song of the year, but also the tune that held the number one spot for the longest and became the most successful track of that 12 months.
What did Elvis Presley have to say about the song in 1957?
Between rumours that the title of the song came as a tagline for a can of Pepsi, or merely a mirage that Presley had himself, it’s difficult to know exactly how the wordage for the classic rock hit ever came to be. Something so succinct yet so instantly evocative must have taken a fair amount of toiling over to eventually come to fruition.
But according to the king himself, the process was really far more simple. He said in an interview later in 1957: “I’ve never even had an idea for a song. Just once, maybe. I went to bed one night, had quite a dream, and woke up all shook up. I phoned a pal and told him about it. By morning, he had a new song, ‘All Shook Up’.”
It seemed like this rare apparition was symbolic of all Presley’s later success, becoming one of his most seismic hits of that time period, and indeed of his whole career. Of course, it would be remiss to not put credit on the name of the friend in question, Otis Blackwell, who wrote the iconic lyrics.
Yet it’s never the background geniuses who get all the acclaim, only the ones who stand front and centre to convey the message. Through this lens, although Presley’s huge chart successes were seemingly the product of one man and one voice, there was really a whole army behind him working to make it happen.
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