The 1960s File Feature
Do The Best You Can
Do The Best You Can The Hollies on the Edge of Their Most Turbulent ChapterThe British Invasion in Its Third ActBy September 1968, the British Invasion had l…
01 The Story
“Do The Best You Can” — The Hollies on the Edge of Their Most Turbulent Chapter
The British Invasion in Its Third Act
By September 1968, the British Invasion had long since completed its first triumphant wave, and the acts that survived it were navigating the strange terrain of what came next. The Hollies had arrived in America with the second wave of British groups in 1964 and built a substantial American following through a sequence of impeccably constructed pop singles. They were not the Beatles and they were not the Rolling Stones, but they occupied a reliable and profitable space in the landscape: melodically inventive, harmonically sophisticated, and capable of producing radio-ready singles with something close to machine precision. That reputation had been built on years of careful work on both sides of the Atlantic.
Harmony and Turbulence
The group's defining asset was always the three-part vocal blend at its center, a sound so distinctive that you could identify a Hollies record within the first few bars. Do The Best You Can showcased that blend against a production that reflected the psychedelic-inflected pop of its moment. The summer of 1968 had been one of the most turbulent in recent memory; the music landscape was splintering into rock, soul, folk-rock, and progressive experiments that were pulling the audience in multiple directions at once. The Hollies, committed to the pop single as their primary vehicle, found themselves occupying an increasingly specific niche. Other British acts had pivoted toward longer-form album rock; the Hollies stayed with what they knew.
A Brief But Real Chart Presence
The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 14, 1968, at position 93. It spent one week on the chart, which tells its own story about where the group's American fortunes stood at that particular moment. A single week on the chart is not a failure in any absolute sense; it means the record was selling and being played somewhere. By comparison with the Hollies' earlier American peaks, however, it indicated that the formula that had worked so reliably was finding a more selective audience. The American market was becoming harder to read, and harder to crack, for pop groups whose identity was rooted in the single rather than the album.
The Nash Departure and What Came After
The timing of this release is significant for another reason. Graham Nash left the Hollies in late 1968, departing to form Crosby, Stills and Nash with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. His exit marked the end of the group's classic period and the beginning of a long reconstruction. Nash had been one of the primary songwriters and the highest voice in that signature three-part harmony. His departure forced a reconstitution of the group's identity that would take years to complete. Do The Best You Can appeared right at the edge of that watershed, making it a document of the group at a genuine crossroads.
Craftsmanship in a Crowded Season
The Hollies were never a band that collapsed. They continued recording, continued touring, and eventually found their footing again on both sides of the Atlantic. The late summer of 1968, captured in this minor chart entry, represents a specific moment of transition that makes the song historically interesting well beyond its commercial performance. The harmonies are still there, the melodic intelligence is still present, and the production speaks the language of its era with fluency. The 12 million YouTube views the track has accumulated speak to an ongoing curiosity about this period in the group's story. Press play and you will hear a band in motion, figuring out where the next road leads while still sounding entirely like themselves.
“Do The Best You Can” — The Hollies' singular moment on the 1960s charts.
02 Song Meaning
Resilience and Realism in “Do The Best You Can”
A Philosophy Disguised as a Pop Song
The title carries a complete worldview in six words. Do The Best You Can is not a call to perfection or a demand for the impossible; it is something more human and more honest than that. The phrase acknowledges limitation while refusing to accept defeat, a balance that is considerably harder to maintain in practice than the cheerful phrasing suggests. As a thematic foundation for a pop song, it invites listeners to find their own applications, which is one reason the sentiment has stayed durable long after the specific chart moment faded.
The Ethos of Effort Over Outcome
Late-1960s pop culture was saturated with idealism of various kinds, some of it utopian, some of it political, some of it spiritual. The Hollies were not, by temperament or by commercial positioning, a band that traded in grand ideological statements. Their strength was the intimate, the personal, the universally applicable emotional situation. A song about doing your best rather than achieving a specific result cuts across ideological lines with unusual ease. It asks nothing of the listener except recognition, and recognition is the first step toward the kind of emotional connection that keeps a song alive for decades.
The Sound of Sincerity
There is something in the Hollies' vocal delivery that makes earnest sentiments land without irony. By 1968, irony was becoming the dominant register in rock music; the detached posture was increasingly fashionable. The Hollies sang as though they meant every word, which required a certain kind of courage in the cultural climate of that year. Their harmonies carry warmth that defuses any potential for condescension in the message. The song does not lecture; it encourages, which is a subtler and more difficult thing to accomplish in a three-minute pop record. The fact that it succeeds makes it worth returning to.
Why It Resonates Beyond Its Chart Life
A song that reaches number 93 and stays on the chart for a single week might seem destined for complete obscurity. The 12 million YouTube views attached to this track suggest otherwise. Much of that audience comes not from nostalgia for a hit but from curiosity about a group, a sound, and a period in music history. Within that context, Do The Best You Can functions as a compact expression of a kind of practical humanism that the Hollies practiced throughout their best work: the belief that doing the right thing with whatever you have is not a consolation prize but a genuine achievement worth celebrating.
“Do The Best You Can” — The Hollies' singular moment on the 1960s charts.
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