In the years when it looked like the Oldies format might just disappear altogether from FM radio in the U.S., there was a lot of discussion about how to retool the format altogether for a generation that hadn’t grown up with ’60s music at all. (The handful of neo-Standards formats that popped up around the mid-’00s took a similar approach, targeting a martini-drinking, swing-dance-lesson-taking 30-year-old, not somebody who lived through the pre-rock era.)

Eventually, the PPM era gave the renamed Greatest Hits format a stay of execution, and, as it turned out, much more. The passage of time meant that most of the ’60s songs that stayed on the radio had some TV/movie/pop-culture-based relevance to a younger audience anyway (e.g., songs that were remade or reissued in the ’80s from “Mony Mony” to “Stand By Me”), but it wasn’t a complete do-over.

But if you’re wondering how that might have sounded, there’s Absolute Radio ’60s—the new digital decade channel from the U.K.’s always innovative Rock AC, Absolute Radio. Absolute ’60s and the soon-to-be-launched Absolute ’70s join decade stations from the ’80s, ’90s, and the ’00s.

Absolute ’60s got in a public (and very cleverly calculated) contretemps with Cliff Richard when it was announced that the veteran British hitmaker wouldn’t be part of the new format. Richard, of course, isn’t all that present on the U.K.’s existing Greatest Hits station, “Gold.” Not playing him isn’t all that different from American Oldies stations reducing Elvis Presley to two late ’60s/early ’70s titles. But when U.S. stations do that, they just hope that the big Elvis fans don’t notice.

Absolute ’60s is very much filtered through both the rock cred of its main channel—although Motown is part of the slug-line and Northern Soul is represented as well—but also through the pop-culture filter of the last 20 years. A lot of big ’60s acts aren’t there. Quincy Jones’ “Soul Bossa Nova,” better known to this generation because of “Austin Powers” than it ever was at the time, does make the cut. So does the never-charted-in-the-UK “Little Green Bag” by George Baker Selection. It’s the ’60s as you might hear them on a hip restaurant tape.

Here’s Absolute ’60s, “Home of the Beatles, Stones, and Motown,” at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 23. Like many of the Absolute digital channels, it was hosted—which makes it very different from its U.S. counterparts. (Disclosure, my other employer. Edison Research, works with the parent Absolute Radio.)

Deep Purple, “Hush”
Kingsmen, “Louie Louie”
Rolling Stones, “We Love You”
Jr. Walker & the All-Stars, “Shotgun”
Jimi Hendrix, “Hey Joe”
Dusty Springfield, “I Only Wanna Be With You”
Supremes, “You Can’t Hurry Love”
Doors, “Break On Through”
Beatles, “Let It Be”
Solomon Burke, “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love”
Led Zeppelin, “Thankyou”
Elvis Presley, “Viva Las Vegas”
Simon & Garfunkel, “America”
Nina Simone, “I Put A Spell On You”
Who, “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere”
Barry Ryan, “Eloise”
Beatles, “Dear Prudence”
Gladys Knight & Pips, “Got Myself A Good Man”
Kinks, “Sunny Afternoon”
Beach Boys, “Help Me Rhonda”
Stooges, “I Wanna Be Your Dog”
Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, “The Onion Song”
Jimi Hendrix, “Fire”