A (half) Century of Music

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Sat Jan 04, 2014 2:05 am

1970
Yearly GPA: 1.846

To my surprise, the 70s start off with something of a bang, and we're still really yet to enter the proper 70s. Here we begin to hear the transition, as pop music gets funkier, rock music bifurcates into dancier or harder stuff depending on the band, and adult alternative/easy listening music begins to separate itself more from its fellows. Hotfoot described the seventies as the period when music first fragmented into all the various styles we know today, and that's an accurate statement. The transition hasn't been completed here, indeed it's barely begun, but acts and styles that will be with us the whole decade are to be found within this list, albeit sometimes in fairly rough form.

B. J. Thomas - Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head
Number 1 song from January 3rd-30th, 1970 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I... I just can't hate this song. Yes it's sappy as all getout, but it's just... it's so happy. I can't hate on it. I'm sorry. Go find someone who can.

Yeah, not the best way to start the seventies, I know, but not everything in this decade was funk, classic rock, and disco. There will be a lot more songs that sound just like this, so be forewarned.

The Jackson 5 - I Want You Back
Number 1 song from January 31st-February 6th, 1970 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Short of the Beatles, it's arguable that we will not be meeting anyone on the charts as influential as Michael Jackson, and here, at the age of eleven, is his first ever hit. It's... not very good. I know this song is hailed as some kind of mighty triumph, the greatest track of its era, etc... I'm not here to blow smoke. This song is all of the problems with the Jackson 5 (boring, rambling light-plink sanitized non-funk) with none of the benefits (excellent musicianship, production value, singing quality by its main star). The Jackson 5 were a very early-70s band (not a complement), but their best songs lay ahead of them at this point.

Shocking Blue - Venus
Number 1 song from February 7th-13th, 1970 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
As far as I know, this is the first Dutch entry on the US number 1 hits chart. By no means is this the best arrangement of the track (we'll get there), but it's a solid late-sixties offering, a transitional piece in which I, at least, can detect the first stirrings of Europop. Or maybe that's just the contact LSD high.

Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
Number 1 song from February 14th-27th, 1970 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 70s. This introduces one of the big themes of the 70s: Funk. Sly & The Family Stone were a band that I never fell in love with, but their funk credentials are unassailable, especially on this song. I'm not overfond of it relative to later examples, but this should serve to illustrate well what we're in for.

Oh by the way, I didn't misspell that title. That is literally what they called the song. Because they were hipsters.

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge over Troubled Water
Number 1 song from February 28th-April 10th, 1970 (6 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: A
I will hear nothing against this song. Not from anyone. This is the pinnacle of Art Garfunkel's singing, and one of the purest efforts from the greatest harmony in modern history. Elvis, Aretha Franklin, The Supremes, The Jackson 5, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and a hundred other greats have covered this song, and whether you think it too slow or not is immaterial. If you can't recognize Simon & Garfunkel's greatness then you are an ignorant clod who knows nothing of music. Period.

The Beatles - Let it Be
Number 1 song from April 11th-24th, 1970 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
One of the better Beatles songs, a mournful piano ballad that served as a swan song to (arguably) the greatest band ever. It's another one I sort of respect more than I love, but there's no denying that the song is an incredibly emotional one, indicative of the levels of quality the Beatles reached by the end of their run.

The Jackson 5 - ABC
Number 1 song from April 25th-May 8th, 1970 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
What do you give a song that is sung so well, but where the song itself is so boring? I suppose you give it a C and call it a wash. This might be the Jackson 5's signature hit, but frankly, it's just not good enough to warrant repeat listening, at least to me.

The Guess Who - American Woman
Number 1 song from May 9th-29th, 1970 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
One of the first great classic rock songs, certainly the first of the seventies. The Guess Who were reportedly asked not to play this at the Nixon White House as it was deemed to be anti-American. The Guess Who were a Canadian band, so I suppose I see it, but this is still the best version of a fondly-remembered classic. Sorry, Lenny.

Ray Stevens - Everything is Beautiful
Number 1 song from May 30th-June 12th, 1970 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
I don't condemn this song simply because the singer later turned into a Tea Party shill singing songs about the glory of Joe Arpaio. At least for a time, Stevens' sentiment seemed to be genuine. The problem is that the song is simply a saccharine mess, with production values that sound like they came from a Casio keyboard, and an intro from the students of the Oak Hill Elementary School in Tennessee singing "Jesus Loves the Little Children". Stevens' singing is decent, but nothing else about this song is tolerable, save perhaps the message.

The Beatles - Long and Winding Road
Number 1 song from June 13th-26th, 1970 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I HATED this song the first time I heard it, until I learned that the version I'd heard was the version that Phil Spector mutilated with a massively overproduced nightmare of string orchestras and choral accompaniments, which turned the song into some kind of Perry Cuomo-wannabe easy listening ballad, a transformation so awful that McCartney dissolved the Beatles on the spot after listening to what Spector had done to his song. The original version, which I have chosen to take as the target for this song, has such a different feel, thanks to the minimalist production, that it might as well be a different song. It's still not perfect, nor my favorite Beatles composition, but I respect it a lot more in its original McCartney-esque form, and it almost serves as a sort of farewell lament for the end of the greatest band in history.

The Jackson 5 - The Love you Save
Number 1 song from June 27th-July 10th, 1970 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
This might be Michael Jackson's worst singing performance, certainly one of his worst of the next twenty-five years. We are of course grading on a curve with Michael, but the song is just disjointed and based around a pun from a seat-belt ad campaign. No thank you.

Three Dog Night - Mama Told me not to Come
Number 1 song from July 11th-24th, 1970 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
A borderline case, but frankly, when the song goes nowhere (albeit earnestly), there's only so much credit I can give. The chorus alone is not good enough to salvage this one. Better luck next time guys.

The Carpenters - Close to You
Number 1 song from July 25th-August 21st, 1970 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
This song escaped an F only by virtue of being too inconsequential to really hate. Its languid pace has resulted in it becoming something of a joke in satirical films nowadays. I suppose that's only fair, as this is one of the most chaste, boring love songs I've heard, and I listened to everything from 1958-63.

Bread - Make it with You
Number 1 song from August 22nd-28th, 1970 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Bread was a well-named band, in the sense of being boring as _____. This soporific easy listening shlock is, as the one above it, too boring to generate hate for. To think that people consciously tried to emulate this band and its solitary hit confuses the hell out of me, but apparently all manner of would-be rock stars listened to this song and thought "This. THIS is what I wanna be!"

Just how many drugs were circulating in 1970 again?

Edwin Starr- War
Number 1 song from August 29th-September 18th, 1970 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
War has a strange history to it. Originally recorded by the Temptations, a public petition demanding its release by Motown as a single was met with resistance from the band themselves, who were afraid it would result in a political backlash. Motown temporized by agreeing to record someone else singing the song and release the new one as a single. Edwin Starr, a second-tier vocal talent at Motown, volunteered to take the heat, and recorded a fiery, bulked-up rendition inspired by James Brown. It exploded onto the charts and singlehandedly made Starr's career as a protest singer, and it's easy to see why. Message aside, War is an almost relentlessly funky song, rhythmic and syncopated, and well deserving of its number one spot.

Diana Ross - Ain't No Mountain High Enough
Number 1 song from September 19th-October 9th, 1970 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: F
Motown chief Barry Gordy despised this song when it was first recorded, considering it a bloated piece of crap with unnecessary spoken word sections and terrible pacing. I could not agree more. This song encapsulates what I hate about Diana Ross in a nutshell. Boring production, mediocre singing, shameless ripoffs of style and tone from other, better artists (in this case, Aretha), bloated run-times, songs that simply have nothing to say and take FOREVER in saying it, riven with saccharine cloying tee-hee aren't-I-naughty bullshit. This song is one of the worst number one hits ever produced, and I cannot condemn it strongly enough.

Neil Diamond - Cracklin' Rosie
Number 1 song from October 10th-16th, 1970 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I sense that my like for Neil Diamond is going to get me in a lot of trouble before this list is through. That said, I fully understand anyone who despises it. The image above is not a joke, it's actually about a brand of sparkling rosé wine. As such, the song really isn't about much of anything at all, but I'd be lying if I said I hated it.

The Jackson 5 - I'll Be There
Number 1 song from October 17th-November 20th, 1970 (6 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
I was not ready to hate this song, and yet I did. The arrangement sounds like bad karaoke, and Jackson's voice is just... well... creepy. It's not a bad song overall, but this version of it was nowhere as good as I remembered it being.

The Partridge Family - I Think I Love You
Number 1 song from November 21st-December 5th, 1970 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
In the very strange history of fake bands made for 60s-70s television shows, the Partridge Family might be the strangest. Moreso even than the Monkees, the Partridge Family were cobbled together as a marketing stunt, and with the exception of lead singer David Cassidy, who would go on to find success as a singer/songwriter, seems to have been entirely devoid of talent. This, their signature hit, is listenable, but only just barely.

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Tears of a Clown
Number 1 song from December 12th-25th, 1970 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Pagliacci this ain't. Smokey's voice is surprisingly weak in this song (as it was in most songs he tried to sing contra-tenor), and his tendency to ramble results in this lovelorn song going nowhere. Supposedly it was named because the calliope intro sounded to Robinson like a circus. So does the finished product to me.

George Harrison - My Sweet Lord
Number 1 song from December 26th, 1970-January 22nd, 1971 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
This song spawned the greatest copyright infringement case in music history, a thirty-year epic concerning the similarities of this song to The Chiffons' "She's So Fine". Personally, I hear the resemblance, but hardly regard it as a copy of one for the other. Yet the trauma of this lawsuit, and the horrific cost entailed by all parties to it effectively destroyed the music plagiarism-lawsuit forever, as studios thereafter would simply sit down and hammer agreements out of court. Probably for the best.

The song is hardly worth all the attention. My Sweet Lord is discordant rambling crap, complete with a fairly poor attempt by Harrison to make his vocals sound "raw" and "unfiltered". Harrison was no Bill Medley, and this song is all the proof you'll ever need.

Supplemental Songs

An above average year produced an above average crop of supplementals. Let's get to them:

Norman Greenbaum - Spirit in the Sky
1969 Billboard Top 100 position: 22

Havoc's Grade: B
Yeah, yeah, I know. Sappy it might be, but Spirit in the Sky is a really fun song, despite the subject matter. According to Greenbaum himself, it's the second-most requested song at memorial services, after Danny Boy. But really, try to name me another successful combination of gospel and psychedelic rock.

Credence Clearwater Revival - Lookin' Out My Backdoor
1969 Billboard Top 100 position: 36

Havoc's Grade: A
The best song off CCR's best album, Lookin' Out My Backdoor was written as a Dr. Seuss-style jumble for John Fogerty's 3-year-old son. Claims that it's actually about drugs, while hard to avoid, have always been denied. Whatever it's about, this is swamp rock at it's absolute finest, a wonderful, down-home banjo-infused bluegrass/rock song. I can't even describe how much I love this song, and I regard it as one of the high water marks of Southern Rock.

Supposedly there's a Finnish Death Metal version of this song floating around somewhere. I confess to being vaguely curious...

James Taylor - Fire and Rain
1969 Billboard Top 100 position: 67

Havoc's Grade: B
You've gotta like James Taylor, that's all I really can say about this song. You've gotta like this style of introspective singer-songwriter ballads for this thing to appeal to you, and the reason most people don't is because most people making this kind of music were not James Taylor. This song is a moody, sparse piece, genuine and emotional, with lyrics that, depending on who you ask, mean vastly different things. I understand this genre of music not being someone's thing, but this is one of the finest pieces within it, and worth a listen, even if you're not a fan.

Other noted songs from 1969:
Rare Earth - Get Ready
Free - All Right Now
Stevie Wonder - Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours
Chicago - We've Only Just Begun
Santana - Evil Ways

LadyTevar · Post by **LadyTevar** » Sat Jan 04, 2014 1:16 pm

Yes, I was referring to the BEST of the 70s. I grew up with them, listening to it all around me as a child, so all of these are familiar and loved. Hell, I probably knew this music before I could talk, since my big brother was a teen at the time. 8-tracks and records were everywhere in my house, but the *best* part was the blacklight in my big brother's room...
... which he *hated* finding his little sister had snuck in again just to see it and the black-light posters on the wall.

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 10:39 pm

1971
Yearly GPA: 1.423

Yeah... this is sort of what I was expecting to happen. The earliest parts of the 1970s are, like those of the 60s, a baaaaad time for music, as the themes that would form the 70s proper have yet to be invented. You hear some funk, some rock, some hints of the things to come, but mostly, as with all times the charts fall apart, lots of Easy Listening, adult alternative schlock. Let's get this over with.

Dawn - Knock Three Times
Number 1 song from January 23rd-February 12th, 1971 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Yeah, it's basically wannabe Jimmy Buffet without the kitch value, but frankly, the song isn't that terrible. I'm not enthusiastically fond of it, but I've certainly heard worse in its genre.

The Osmonds - One Bad Apple
Number 1 song from February 13th-March 19th, 1971 (5 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: F
A wretched, shrieking, pile of annoyance. Supposedly, the Jackson 5 were on the point of recording this song, but chose to go with ABC instead, leaving this "gem" to the Osmonds. Honestly, I don't know that it would have mattered, as this song is hopeless, regardless of who sang it, but still, Donny Osmond's hideous voice does the song no favors.

Janis Joplin - Me & Bobby McGee
Number 1 song from March 20-April 2nd, 1971 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I don't love Janis Joplin's only (and posthumous) hit, but it's not a bad song at all. Written by her boyfriend Kris Kristofferson, this cover became her signature song, recorded days before her death from a drug overdose at 27. Thus, after Otis Redding's "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay", this is the second song to hit number one after the death of its performer.

The Temptations - Just My Imagination
Number 1 song from April 3rd-16th, 1971 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
I admit to having fond memories of this song for personal reasons, but it's simply too slow to be any good. I'm not the biggest Temptations fan to begin with, and they broke up shortly after releasing this song, ending one of the most important bands in Motown's history. This is not how I'd have preferred them to go out, but then they were the ones who effectively perfected this style of slow, lite-rock harmony singing.

Three Dog Night - Joy to the World
Number 1 song from April 17th-May 28th, 1971 (6 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
Probably Three Dog Night's best song, this was originally a nonsense song written by Hoyt Axton, the famous 60s-80s songwriter (and son of Mae Axton, an Elvis songwriter who also had a number one hit with Heartbreak Hotel). How it became popular was a mystery to everyone in the band, but certainly not to me. It's a wonderful early 70s classic rock number, not quite as hard as some others I could mention, but just a great deal of fun. It's probably not one of the best songs of the decade, but I'll be damned if I've ever met anyone who didn't like it.

The Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar
Number 1 song from May 29th-June 11th, 1971 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Released in 1971, Brown Sugar was actually recorded back in 1969, and in fact debuted at the infamous Altamont Concert that year, which signaled the death of the 60s movement. Perhaps that was only fitting, as Brown Sugar is a song that may be about a dozen different things, all of them as taboo today as they were back then, from slavery to oral sex, misogyny, violence, heroin, and miscegenation. I admit, I'm not wildly fond of it, just in terms of the music, but as songs-to-get-you-lynched go, this is one of the better examples.

The Honey Cone - Want Ads
Number 1 song from June 12th-18th, 1971 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Generic early-70s R&B. I can't even find anything interesting to say about this song. It fell off the charts after fifteen seconds and was never heard of again.

Carole King - It's Too Late
Number 1 song from June 19th-July 23rd, 1971 (5 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Moribund, boring, and lyrically uninspired, this adult contemporary darling was, of course, selected by the Grammy committee for Record of the Year. It meanders on without a purpose, and Carole King can't even pay me the basic compliment of good singing. Only its relative inoffensiveness keeps it from the dreaded F category. The song is literally too boring to hate.

Paul Revere and the Raiders - Cherokee Nation
Number 1 song from July 24th-30th, 1971 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Well I can't say I expected to have anything good to say about this song of all songs, but honestly... yeah, it's not so bad. I like the strong drum beat, I like the minor chords, and unlike a lot of politically charged songs, it's not a polemic, simply a recitation of what happened. It's nothing I'm going to put on my iPod, but I can't get too upset about it.

James Taylor - You've Got a Friend
Number 1 song from July 31st-August 6th, 1971 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Look, I'm actually a fan of James Taylor, believe it or not, but this is just too boring, even for me. Originally written by Carole King (surprise, surprise), this sounds like the sort of song that Taylor might sing on a guest appearance on Sesame Street. Maybe in 1932 this might have made sense at number 1, but not here.

The Bee Gees - How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
Number 1 song from August 7th-September 3rd, 1971 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Meet the Bee Gees, the most famous Manx band in history, and the first instance on our lists of what I call "Barry Gibb" syndrome. By this, I mean Gibb's trademark shaky, breathless vocals, which would become a trademark of the group. The BeeGees had, by this point, been around for fifteen years, but this was the decade of their greatest success, starting here. The song is... okay. I'm not fond of the slow pace or the overdone staccato, but it's got interesting harmonies, and generally speaking has enough going on to merit the occasional listen, even if it basically boils down to 70s easy listening.

Paul McCartney - Uncle Albert
Number 1 song from September 4th-10th, 1971 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: F
A horrific medley of godawful experimentalist crap, emblematic of most of Paul McCartney's Wings career, this song manages to get worse after it transitions into its second phase, something called "Admiral Halsey". I've read the most ludicrous bullshit metaphysical "interpretations" of this song, trying to tie it to postwar politics, rivalries with John Lennon, metaphysics, and Indian mysticism. Fuck that. This song is about the fact that McCartney had a pile of disjointed bits of music unworthy of being expanded into songs and cobbled them all together. This is the reason nobody liked Wings, Paul. Shit like this.

Donny Osmond - Go Away Little Girl
Number 1 song from September 11th-October 1st, 1971 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
This... this got remade? By the Osmonds? And it hit number one again?! What the hell was in the water in 1971?!

Okay, okay... I'm okay... I will say that Donny Osmond's perpetually 10-year-old voice does suit the song better than the original creeptacular pedo-fest (yes, I know it was a different context back then, I don't care). But removing the creepy undertones from this song just leaves it as another boring, chaste, light-rock ballad.

Rod Stewart - Maggie May
Number 1 song from October 2nd-November 5th, 1971 (5 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Rod Stewart himself professed confusion as to how his first number one hit ever got big, admitting that it has "no melody at all". I share his confusion, and must add lyrical skill, rhyme schemes, and energy to the list of things this song lacks. It just drones on and on, lacking even the most basic level of interest that Stewart was occasionally able to infuse into his folk rock numbers. I don't hate Rod Stewart, despite his cheese, but I can't tolerate this song for long.

Cher - Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves
Number 1 song from November 6th-19th, 1971 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
This is a borderline case, but on further listenings, it's not as bad as I originally considered it, though the claim that the singer picked up a boy "just south of Mobile" is an interesting one, given that south of Mobile is the Gulf of Mexico. Still, I wouldn't call this a "good" song, merely a tolerable one. Cher did, eventually, get better. But she would always be a hit or miss sort of artist.

Isaac Hayes - Theme From Shaft
Number 1 song from November 20th-December 4th, 1971 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Funky as hell, of course, but goddamn, does that intro last forever, stolen as it is from Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness". I don't mind a song that builds up, but two thirds of this song is intro, and I can't praise a song overmuch when all I like is the last third.

Sly & The Family Stone - Family Affair
Number 1 song from December 4th-December 24th, 1971 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Languid stoner music with a thin veneer of funk. No thank you. It sounds like something from Flight of the Conchordes, save without the wit and self-awareness. No thank you.

Brand New Key - Melanie
Number 1 song from December 25th-January 14th, 1971 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
From what 50s laundry commercial was this thing spawned? Even Melanie herself described this as a throwback to the 30s. I just have no use for a song like this in 1971, nor really at any other time.

Supplemental Songs

1971 was not a good year for the charts in general, number 1 or otherwise, but there were one or two songs worth calling out:

John Denver - Country Roads
1971 Billboard Top 100 position: 8

Havoc's Grade: B
The unofficial state song of West Virginia (despite the fact that most of its cited features refer to Virginia proper), this, not one of Dylan or Guthrie's, might be the finest folk song written in the latter half of the 20th century. I know it's simple and overplayed, but this song, as performed by John Denver has an almost unbelievable sense of "place" to it, and represents the pinnacle of Denver's work, in my mind.

Bill Withers - Ain't No Sunshine
1971 Billboard Top 100 position: 23

Havoc's Grade: A
Thank god for Bill Withers, salvation of 1971. It's one of the most soulful R&B ballads of the early seventies, composed when Withers was a mechanic building toilet seats for Boeing. What it's precisely about, other than loss, is a complex question, but his explanation was that it was inspired by The Days of Wine and Roses, and the ability to miss a thing that is manifestly bad for you.

Sorry, incidentally, about the video. Finding Withers' original version was nearly impossible amidst the piles of karaoke and cover versions on Youtube.

Gordon Lightfoot - If You Could Read My Mind
1971 Billboard Top 100 position: 38

Havoc's Grade: B
I apologize if you came here looking for funk and classic rock and disco music, but this is the early 70s, and the best songs here are mostly acoustic ballads. This one might be a matter of personal taste, but I have wonderfully fond memories of this string-and-guitar ballad, one of the better songs from the Adult Contemporary charts, and a wonderfully atmospheric piece about loss and regret. I understand those who don't care for it, but it's a favorite of mine.

Other noted songs from 1971:
Jean Night - Mr Big Stuff
Marvin Gaye - What's Goin' On
Tom Jones - She's a Lady
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Mr. Bojangles
Richie Havens - Here Comes the Sun

frigidmagi · Post by **frigidmagi** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:39 am

I'm almost scared to click on Uncle Albert. The video on Cherokee Nation wasn't half bad.

LadyTevar · Post by **LadyTevar** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 11:29 am

Can't argue "Country Roads". Hearing it takes many people "Home", and if it starts playing in a bar in WV you have the whole place singing.

I will argue with you on "Gypsies Tramps and Theives". I would give it a B, as the circus-style beat and minor chords just hit all the right notes with me, including the idea of being the outsiders. It's one of my favorite songs by Cher.

Marvin Gaye's music may not have reached the top of charts, but he influenced dozens of singers who did. "What's Going On" is a classic Motown song and I still hear it on the radio.
Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band is another that may not have the number one, but "Mr. Bojangles" is still getting radio-time on classic rock stations.
Gordon Lightfoot? Good choice. Might be acoustic, but his guitar skills are solid. I have seen several 80s and 90s rockers saying they count him as inspiration.

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 5:25 pm

1972
Yearly GPA: 1.769

This year had potential. At the midway point, I thought it was going to break 1966' score and become the best year in music to-date (at least for the number 1s). Sadly, a tremendous crash in quality in the latter half of the year (something that also afflicted 1966 by the way, albeit not as hard) torpedoed that possibility. It's still a high-ranking year, but reflects the unevenness of the early 70s on even a month-to-month basis.

Don McLean - American Pie
Number 1 song from January 15th-February 11th, 1972 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
A heck of a way to start a year. American pie is a seminal classic, the magnum opus of Don McLean, and one of the most analyzed works of American music. Interpretations could (and have) fill a book, but McLean himself refused always to comment, preferring that others find their own meanings in the poetic lyrics of this eight-minute epic. It suffers in my mind from rather extreme overplay, but listening to it again, this is simply a special song. A recapitulation of an entire era of music, much of which we've just listened to. It many ways, it signals the end of one era and the beginning of another. Godspeed.

Al Green - Let's Stay Together
Number 1 song from February 12th-18th, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Al Green's famous R&B classic rambles on and on, but there's plenty of soul in it. This song obtained classic status in retrospect, being named one of the hundred greatest songs ever written by Rolling Stone (#60). I don't quite go that far, as the 70s had no shortage of pre-disco soul songs that sounded pretty without being particularly moving. Still, it's a strong song, one way or another.

Nilsson - Without You
Number 1 song from February 19th-March 17th, 1972 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
Ah, Without You, a song Paul McCartney described as "The killer ballad of all time." I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it's a song with incredible staying power, having been covered no less than a hundred and eighty times by a hundred and eighty different artists. Originally recorded by the british pop/rock group Badfingers, Harry Nilsson (of Three Dog Night) was the first to release a major cover, and frankly, this version of the song is miles beyond the original, and the primary reason why it saw so many re-recordings over the years. It's hard to listen to this song with fresh ears, but ballads like this simply did not exist before this song, and everything from Power Ballads to entire ballad bands like Styx or Journey or Kansas (for better or worse) owe their existence to this song's emergence. And on top of that it's simply a very good example of the genre it helped to create, even if it does just sort of peter out at the end.

Neil Young - Heart of Gold
Number 1 song from March 18th-24th, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Bob Dylan supposedly hated this song because it sounded like he was singing it. I think he was smoking too much weed. Not that Young's voice is amazing here, but it's a different sort of bad, one that I find much less objectionable. This song is actually Neil Young's only number 1 hit, an acoustic ditty featuring James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt as backup vocalists, a moody little piece complete with harmonica solo, one that buttresses Young's weak vocals well enough to merit a listen. Young himself was not fond of the song's popularity, calling the song "too mainstream" later on, and preferring the indie circuit he would occupy for the rest of his career. We may run into him again on the supplemental list, but Neil Young was not destined to make a strong showing here.

America - Horse With No Name
Number 1 song from March 25th-April 14th, 1972 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Sick of acoustic folk rock yet? Too bad. It's fashionable nowadays to denigrate this song because the lyrics make no sense (which they don't), but I'll have none of that hipsterishness here. The banality of the lyrics ("The heat was hot?") is plainly a device, as it gets the mind-altering nature of being lost in a vast emptiness across perfectly, as well as synchronizing with the music. This is a song designed to ramble aimlessly, which is a completely different thing than songs unintentionally doing so. I don't regard Horse with no Name as some kind of maligned classic, but it's not anywhere near the terrible song that people seem to qualify it as. Wait until the mid-seventies if you want real garbage, and leave America alone.

Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
Number 1 song from April 15th-May 26th, 1972 (6 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
This song spawned eighty cover versions, and Ewan McColl, the original writer of the song back in 1957, hated every single one of them, to the point where he locked them all in a room in his house that he called "The Chamber of Horrors". Worst of all, in his mind, was this version, which catapulted the song into prominence and made Roberta Flack's career. With respect to a revered songwriter, the fault here is not within Ms. Flack's singing, but within the song itself, a dreary, interminable love ballad that could put a PCP addict to sleep. If eighty singers, including some of the best in the world, attempt to sing your song well and cannot, what is the most logical point of failure?

The Chi-Lites - Oh Girl
Number 1 song from May 27th-June 3rd, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
A decent song, which unfortunately peters out near the end, as if the songwriter couldn't figure out how to end it. There's not much to be said about this one other than it's an R&B classic, one I like, but don't love.

The Staple Singers - I'll Take You There
Number 1 song from June 3rd-9th, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I wanted to like this one better, but it simply does not go anywhere. I guarantee that nobody knows anything about this song beyond its first twenty seconds or so. That may be because there IS nothing to it after that point. I've heard someone describe this song as the "epitome of the Muscle Shoals, Alabama sound". So I guess there's that.

Sammy Davis Jr. - The Candyman Can
Number 1 song from June 10th-30th, 1972 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Once you get over the weirdness of the idea, you have to admit, Sammy Davis Jr. knew exactly how to sing a song like this. It sounds like it comes straight out of a Rogers & Hammerstein musical, with all the necessary production value. The song, obviously, was off the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory soundtrack, but it was this version of this song that earned Sammy the nickname of "The Candyman" in his later years. Given the overall quality of this version of the song, I can hardly call it unwarranted, joking aside.

Neil Diamond - Song Sung Blue
Number 1 song from July 1st-7th, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Yes, yes, I'm a terrible hypocrite, having bashed many a song for being as insipid as this one in the past. The difference here, frankly, is that the song, slow and rather stupid as it is (the Hopalong Cassidy bass line does it no favors), fits Diamond far better than the crap doo-wop songs of yesteryear did their singers. It comes off as relaxing rather than just dull, at least to me, and while I absolutely understand anyone who claims to HAAAAAATE this song, if I'm being absolutely embarrassingly honest... I kinda like it. I don't want to claim it's anything amazing, but I find it soothing. Sue me.

Bill Withers - Lean on me
Number 1 song from July 8th-28th, 1972 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
How Bill Withers dropped off the radar the way he did is beyond me. This is yet another stone classic from the savior of the previous year, one that's been covered a zillion times, including a version we'll encounter in 1987. Withers' claimed it was an ode to his home town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, and to the community spirit of small mining towns throughout the midwest, something he believed was missing in large cities like Los Angeles. I'm not as fond of this song as I am of his previous, but it's still a justly-celebrated song, and one I originally thought was some folk song from the mists of time.

Gilbert O'Sullivan - Alone Again (Naturally)
Number 1 song from July 29th-August 18th, September 2nd-15th, 1972 (6 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I almost condemned this song for being a boring piece of crap, but the singer did it for me, as he turns another 50sish ballad into an old Irish song of lament and regret. It's nothing I'm gonna be listening to over and over again, but it has a touch of realism to it that a lot of songs similar to it do not.

Looking Glass - Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)
Number 1 song from August 26th-September 1st, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
This song supposedly pushed the name Brandy into one of the more popular girl's names around the time it came out. It's a structurally-weird song, one I'm not sure how to describe. I've heard it called a precursor to the "Jersey Shore" style of rock music, that would later be represented by people like Bon Jovi or Bruce Springsteen, but I really don't hear it. Honestly, if I had to guess without knowing a thing about the song, I'd have placed it in Florida.

Three Dog Night - Black and White
Number 1 song from September 16th-22nd, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Racial tolerance songs do not have a great track record for quality, to put it mildly. Not that I have any issue with the principle, but the base fact is that songs like Everything is Beautiful or Ebony & Ivory are terrible songs, independent of the message they're trying to get across. Among the very, very few songs of this nature that are tolerable as music is this one, originally written in 1954 to celebrate the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the supreme court which desegregated public schools. Covered by everyone from Pete Seeger to Sammy Davis Jr, this version was far and away the most successful, though I confess, I had not heard it in so long that I thought for a while it was something I'd imagined. As a song it's nothing spectacular, indeed sounding rather like something one might hear on Sesame Street, but it manages to be listenable (unlike its fellows), and that, combined with the message, makes it worth a listen.

Mac Davis - Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me
Number 1 song from September 23rd-October 13th, 1972 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Apparently, Mac Davis' record company demanded he write a song with a "hook", and this was the result. They might have asked that the hook be somewhat memorable, but beggars can't be choosers. It's a generic soft-rock easy-listening song, the sorts of which we'll be seeing plenty more of. I'll save my ire for songs that deserve it.

Michael Jackson - Ben
Number 1 song from October 14th-20th, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Michael Jackson's first solo single, everyone! What, you've never heard of this song before? Well neither had I until I researched this list. A boring ballad for some imaginary friend named Ben (I assume), this song is so boring that even Michael's excellent singing can't salvage it. Boring crap remains boring crap no matter who is producing it, and this song evidences that well enough.

By the way, could you guess that this song was the closing credits piece for a horror film about giant mutant rats that eat people?

Chuck Berry - My Ding-a-Ling
Number 1 song from October 21st-November 3rd, 1972 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: F
The saddest part of this barely-teenage-level double-entendre song is that this is Chuck Berry's only number 1 hit. That alone should justify the position of this song. But on top of that it's just a single, stupid joke, repeated ad nauseum. Radio stations, predictably, tried to have this song banned from the airwaves. For once I agree.

Johnny Nash - I Can See Clearly Now
Number 1 song from November 4th-December 1st, 1972 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Though all of you know this song (don't lie), I would wager that most of you are familiar with the Jimmy Cliff cover off the Cool Runnings soundtrack in 1993. This song was the original, and manages to be the worse version of an already lackluster song. Optimism is fine, but this song is just sappy and boring, whose only claim to fame is that of being the first reggae song on the charts, at least as far as I know.

The Temptations - Papa Was a Rolling Stone
Number 1 song from December 2nd-8th, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I was really prepared to hate this song, but frankly, as psychedelic soul goes, this is actually a decent example. Yes, it rambles, but that's because it might as well be a vocal jazz piece. It has funk and soul in buckets, and the Temptations were never shy of making wonderful harmonies, whatever their genre.

Helen Reddy - I am Woman
Number 1 song from December 9th-15th, 1972 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I'd heard OF this song of course, but I don't think I'd ever heard it before just now, and frankly it's nothing like what I expected. Maybe I was channelling some later cover version, but I expected a large-production bombastic anthem asserting power in a triumphalist way, not this chincy lite-rock bit with a sound like the introduction to a 70s sitcom. Message or no message, this song is simply bad, and while I understand why it was such a big deal back in the day, its popularity was never due to its musical qualities. I'm not here to pass out empowerment awards, but to criticize music, and this thing isn't worth spending any time on.

Billy Paul - Me and Mrs. Jones
Number 1 song from December 16th, 1972-January 5th, 1973 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
For some reason, this song is highly regarded as one of the classics of the Philly Soul scene, but I don't hear it. It's wayyyyy too slow and lackadaisical, trying to be sexy I suppose, I couldn't tell you. I'd not heard of Billy Paul until I started researching music in general, and really don't have much to say about him other than the fact that he was no Marvin Gaye.

Supplemental Songs

Though 1972 was fairly uneven in terms of its number one offerings, the supplemental list has a number of choice morsels from bands whom we will come to associate with the 70s in one way or another. These include:

Elton John - Rocket Man
1972 Billboard Top 100 position: 40

Havoc's Grade: B
Be forewarned, I'm a big Elton John fan, and he will likely be popping up all over these lists. That said, this was a borderline inclusion, as Rocket Man is a very slow song, even by Elton's standards, lacking much of the punch he would later insert into his rock-piano ballads. An homage to David Bowie's unquestionably superior 1969 Space Oddity ("Ground Control to Major Tom..."), which somehow managed to not even crack the year-end 100 chart, Rocket Man is still a very solid, wistful song. Just don't let Shatner near it again.

Derek & the Dominoes - Layla
1972 Billboard Top 100 position: 60

Havoc's Grade: A
Now this is more like it. For those who've never heard of Derek & the Dominoes, you've assuredly heard of their founder and frontman, lead guitarist Eric Clapton, probably the second-greatest guitar player of all time (after Hendrix). Flopping on release and only finding its audience with time, Layla is one of classic rock's magnum opuses, from the searing guitar riff that starts us off, to the abrupt shift into one of the most famous blues-instrumental pieces of the 70s about halfway through. 70s classic rock was quite a thing, but this is one of the best examples you will ever find, awesome from beginning to end, worth every second of its double-duty runtime.

The less said about the 1993 unplugged version, however, the better.

Alice Cooper - School's Out
1972 Billboard Top 100 position: 75

Havoc's Grade: B
Yeah it's dumb. I don't care. Alice Cooper's first big hit (despite coming off his fifth album) is a hard rock classic, one of the first mainstream songs in which you don't have to squint to hear the hard rock in it. It's just a rocking song, celebrating the freedom one felt when school ended at long last. Hits the mark perfectly.

Other noted songs from 1972:
The Main Ingredient - Everybody Plays the Fool
The 5th Dimension - Last Night
Cat Stevens - Morning Has Broken
Roberta Flack - Where is the Love
Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen - Hot Rod Lincoln

frigidmagi · Post by **frigidmagi** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 8:26 pm

I like Pie.

To be honest until a few years ago I never knew it was the focus of so much analyization, for me it was just a really good song.

LadyTevar · Post by **LadyTevar** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 10:52 pm

There should be more Alice Cooper on here. However, "School's Out" still gets airplay (especially in May/June). As you said, it's a full-out rocking hit-the-mark I'm-FREE song that damn near every kid would sing along with. He gets stronger as 70s goes on.

"Layla" always confused me with the switch to the (to me, overlong) instrumental. I happen to enjoy the modern version more, with the stronger blues and slower style because it cut off the extra coda.

As I go through this list, it's scary how many I know the lyrics to, just from seeing the title...

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Tue Jan 28, 2014 6:28 pm

1973
Yearly GPA: 1.654

By now, we've had enough evidence to begin to identify the macro-trend of music over the course of the billboard charts, in that ever since 1964, there seems to have been a rough equilibrium for where music has been, with the occasional peak and valley of a good or bad year. 1973 continues this trend, in part because of the sheer number of songs on the list. Not one song was on the charts for more than five weeks, and the vast majority were here for only one or two. The average is thus going to be pulled towards the mean for 60s-70s music, but as with any year, we have success and failure in quantity to look at.

Carly Simon - You're So Vain
Number 1 song from January 6th-20th, 1973 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
The song's about Warren Beatty, guys. It's not that hard to figure out.

I'm a music-over-lyrics kind of guy, generally speaking, in that I find the actual sound of a song to be far more important than its' lyrical content. You're so Vain however is a strange one, in that it's lyrically a dextrous and interesting song, but the music is rather boring. I don't know quite what to make of it, but I suppose it's not bad.

Stevie Wonder - Superstition
Number 1 song from January 27th-February 2nd, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: A
At around this point, Stevie Wonder gave up on the classic Motown sound and decided it was time to get supremely funky. Superstition was the result, and boy oh boy was that the right call. Superstition might be Stevie Wonder's best song, with one of the finest pure-funk base/drumlines of the seventies. I defy anyone to tell me that they honestly dislike this song, and I regard it as one of the greatest funk songs of the seventies.

By the way, this is the first number one hit to get an A from me in three years. The early 70s were not terrible, but plainly not my cup of tea.

Elton John - Crocodile Rock
Number 1 song from February 3rd-23rd, 1973 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I have no idea what to make of Crocodile Rock. It's a manifestly stupid song, though Elton John does infuse it with his customary energy. The chorus is grating and annoying, but the organ work is actually kind of fun. I'm torn in several different ways, and will compromise on an "okay" rating. It's certainly memorable...

Roberta Flack - Killing me Softly
Number 1 song from February 24th-March 16th, March 31st-April 6th, 1973 (5 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
The Fugees' cover of this song in 1996 effectively usurped the song from Roberta Flack's 1973 version, which is a shame, as this is a surprisingly strong soul rendition, if a bit too long. The song starts out overly slow, but once we're in full force, I really do like it, which is far more than I can say of the majority of its contemporaries.

The O'Jays - Love Train
Number 1 song from March 24th-30th, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I'm sorry, there's only so much gimmickry I can really tolerate, and this song just doesn't have anything going for it beyond the kitsch level. It goes nowhere, just repeating itself endlessly, and the music isn't interesting enough to warrant repeat listening. I'll pass.

Dawn - Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the old Oak Tree
Number 1 song from April 21st-May 18th, 1973 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Apparently yellow ribbons were tied around one's hair, neck, or home, so as to indicate that one's beloved was missing, either in the military or in jail, and that the woman in question was waiting for him. Fine sentiment I suppose, but this song belabors its point way too much, and despite the occasional flashes of something musically interesting, it never reaches above the level of a stupid little ditty.

That said, this song and the attached symbol somehow got mixed up in the politics surrounding the end of the Marcos regime in the Philippines. Yellow ribbons were worn by the supporters of Benigno Aquino Jr, a politician who was murdered on the tarmac of the airport as he returned from exile. This incident eventually led to the overthrow of Marcos in the so-called "People's Power Revolution". The symbol the protestors marched behind was a yellow ribbon.

Stevie Wonder - You Are the Sunshine of my Life
Number 1 song from May 19th-25th, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
This song is just stupid. Stevie sounds terrible (especially when he tries to hit the low notes). It sounds like the smooth jazz version of a Stevie Wonder song, and not the good kind. And worst of all, I can't find anything else to say about it.

The Edgar Winter Group - Frankenstein
Number 1 song from May 26th-June 1st, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: B
In terms of raw craft, this is one of the most impressive songs I've ever heard. This nine-minute instrumental was designed mostly as a means for Edgar Winter (of the eponymous group) to demonstrate his incredible musical talents. Over the course of this epic song, Winter plays the Key-tar (actually just a normal keyboard slung around his neck), the saxophone, the drums, and even amplifiers. It's a virtuoso performance, almost mesmerizing to watch, and while I can't say it's on my list of favorite songs, it certainly merits great respect.

Paul McCartney & Wings - My Love
Number 1 song from June 2nd-29th, 1973 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
This is the problem with Wings right here. Paul McCartney is one of the greatest songwriters in the 20th century, but bereft of the other Beatles, his tendency towards the schmaltzy and saccharine went uncontested, and his 70s band Wings therefore was always mired in the most boring of lite-rock themes. This one is a perfect example, a plodding, lilting non-entity of a song that even Paul seems to lose interest in. McCartney would, off and on, produce good music post-Beatles, but these songs would be the exception, not the rule.

George Harrison - Give me Love (Give me Peace on Earth)
Number 1 song from June 30th-July 6th, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Meanwhile, McCartney's bandmate George Harrison dove straight into Eastern Mysticism with a vengeance, and began making songs like this one, a blending of Hindu religious mantras and country-gospel. It's... okay. Harrison was arguably the most musically talented Beatle, albeit far from the best singer, but as the song adds complexity and layers, it becomes a bit more interesting. I regard Harrison's career with something of indifference generally, but at least he had a distinct style which he made his own, and one that, unlike McCartney's, wasn't usually simpering nonsense.

Billy Preston - Will it go Round in Circles
Number 1 song from July 7th-20th, 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
The Beatles were busy this year. Billy Preston, one of the so-called "fifth Beatles" (he was credited on Get Back) gives us a funk-soul number that's pretty decent, albeit not one of the shining examples of the genre. This song does rather go round in circles, but Preston keeps the energy level high, and the sound is sufficiently blues-rock to keep it interesting, even if it's about a minute and a half too long.

Jim Croce - Bad, Bad Leroy Brown
Number 1 song from July 21st-August 3rd, 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
I didn't expect to like this song, but Leroy Brown is a hell of a folk-rock song, energetic and infused with honky-tonk piano work and a chorus of hand claps that cements its barroom-anthem theme. Jim Croce, an inspiration for artists from Freddie Mercury to Bruce Springsteen, knows exactly how to wring his voice into the proper storytelling-style for these sorts of ballads.

Maureen McGovern - The Morning After
Number 1 song from August 4th-17th, 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: F
This song, off the Poseidon Adventure soundtrack, is awful. It would merely be a bad song were it not for the fact that the main singer, Maureen McGovern couldn't sing to save her life, despite having been hired as a vocal dub for the main actress of the film. A voice and song to sink ships with. Avoid.

Diana Ross - Touch me in the Morning
Number 1 song from August 18th-24th, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
To my surprise, this song, from my perpetual hate-target Diana Ross, isn't half-bad. It still suffers from a number of Ross' bad habits, including talk interludes, and a meandering, noodling musical backing, but I can't deny that she sounds much better on this song than she does on most of her solo and Supremes stuff. I can't claim I'm racing out to buy the single, but it's not a waste of time, and that's saying something for America's Diva.

Stories - Brother Louie
Number 1 song from August 25th-September 7th, 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: F
The main singer of Stories, Ian Lloyd, was so bad on this song that I suspect it to be a joke. I know that 70s rockers often intentionally grated their vocals in an attempt to sound more "real", but this guy sounds like someone has his testicles in a vice. Absent the main singer, the song is just stupid, with a chorus that sounds like something out of a children's rhyme. It all adds up to a terrible song, with not even the placid "rock" backing of any interest. Small wonder these guys were never heard from again.

Marvin Gaye - Let's Get it On
Number 1 song from September 8th-14th, 22nd-28th 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I know this is blasphemy, I know, but I've never really understood the obsession with this song, which to me sounds like just another rambling, meandering soul-pop song. Perhaps it's Marvin Gaye's voice, which sounds weak to me on this song, or just the boring arrangement, I don't know. Perhaps I simply have no taste. But while I don't hate Let's Get it On, I don't find it particularly hyper-sexual, nor all that amazing. Sue me.

Helen Reddy - Delta Dawn
Number 1 song from September 15th-21st, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: B
Correspondingly, here's a song I shouldn't like at all, but frankly, it's not bad at all. The opening five seconds are very strong, which helps a lot, but even absent those, it still manages to be a well-crafted country-pop hit, nothing earthshattering, but a very solid song from a singer I never expected to hear anything good from. Good arrangements cover for much.

Grand Funk Railroad - We're an American Band
Number 1 song from September 29th-October 5th, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Not to be a traitor to country or anything, but classic rock could do a lot better than this. This thing is rambling, warbling crap, so much so that I have very little to say about it, all things considered. Pass.

Cher - Half Breed
Number 1 song from October 6th-19th, 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I almost gave this a D, but Cher has always had the ability to make a relatively poor song into something worth listening to, and she managed that feat here. Half-breed, about a woman who is half-white, and half-Cherokee, covers relatively familiar territory, and Cher's costumes are as ridiculous as always, but Cher's grating vocals do semi-justice to the song, even if the Indian drumbeat is a bit too uncomfortably on-the-nose for the subject matter.

The Rolling Stones - Angie
Number 1 song from October 20th-26th, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Soulful guitar ballads about lost love are not what I tend to associate with the Rolling Stones, and there's a good reason for that. Mick Jagger's voice simply does not work for things like this. Maybe, a decade or so later, this might have made a semi-decent power ballad, but the song as it stands in 1973 is just a plodding bore, overly long, and with failed attempts at sentimentality that simply don't befit a band like the Stones.

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Midnight Train to Georgia
Number 1 song from October 27th-November 9th, 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
This song is maddeningly incapable of actually getting to its point, but once it finally does, there is a solid core of good 70s soul here. Gladys Knight's biggest hit showcases her soul skills, while the backup band (the Pips) is entirely a family affair, comprising Gladys' brother and cousins. All in all, this isn't a song I can't live without, but it's a fairly decent soul classic. And that's just fine by me.

Eddie Kendricks - Keep on Truckin' (Part 1)
Number 1 song from November 10th-23rd, 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Be warned, I couldn't find only the first part of this song, and had to make do with a combined part 1 & 2 version. It does not improve with length.

This song is claimed by some to be the first disco track. I'm not sure I agree, not in the least because if I did agree, it would significantly lower disco in my eyes. Yes, I know we're all going to be roundly sick of disco by 1980, but this is a poor example of the form even by those standards. The song is just warbling nonsense, sung by a former Temptations singer trying to get one over on his former bandmates. Even when restricted to part 1, it's just interminable. No thank you.

Ringo Starr - Photograph
Number 1 song from November 24th-30th, 1973 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
The first ten seconds of this song are actually very good, so much so that the rest of it seemed something of a letdown. Composed by George Harrison and Ringo collectively, it's an elaborate production, burying some of its sins with sheer quantity of elements, and shows a clear classic rock influence that most Beatles songs did not. I kind of like, actually, which is not something I expected to say about a Ringo Starr song.

If nothing else, it's a hell of a lot better than another song by the same name we'll be seeing eventually...

The Carpenters - Top of the World
Number 1 song from December 1st-14th, 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
This song is stupid, even by the admittedly low standards of the Carpenters, everything artificial and overly-carbonated about 70s country-Pop is evident here. Saccharine and chaste, it's the sort of bubbly pop song that appeals to one's grandmother. That is, assuming she doesn't listen to the actual golden oldies that this song is ripping off.

Charlie Rich - The Most Beautiful Girl
Number 1 song from December 15th-28th, 1973 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Not that traditional country had much better to offer this year. This song could well have been sung in 1953 for all I could tell. It's a slow, woebegone rendition of lost love, the same thing as a hundred thousand other country songs. Can't even muster a strong emotional resonance. Useless.

Jim Croce - Time in a Bottle
Number 1 song from December 29th, 1973-January 11th, 1974 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
Jim Croce's haunting acoustic ballad is the third song on our list to have hit number one following the death of its author. Croce was killed in (you guessed it) a plane crash in September of 1973, leaving this song behind as his last single, a fact that should weird you out when you listen to it. I'm a great fan of the strange, ethereal tone of this song, short though it is, and it serves as a fitting memorial to its composer to this day.

Supplemental Songs

I can't make absolute predictions, but from now on, you probably will start seeing more and more songs in the supplemental lists, as we get into an era where I like more and more songs. Go figure.

Dobie Grey - Drift Away
1973 Billboard Top 100 position: 17

Havoc's Grade: B
Awwww yeah. This is soul music for me, and anyone who wants to dismiss it as lite rock is an idiot who can cordially see himself out of the thread. Dobie Grey's greatest hit is one of the most widely-covered songs of all time, for very good reason. It has an incredible sense of place and time to it, a nostalgic yearning for old-time music and its power to transport us away. It's a little disjointed, especially at the end, but there's no hating this song.

Stealers Wheel - Stuck in the Middle with You
1973 Billboard Top 100 position: 30

Havoc's Grade: B
This is a borderline selection, as I don't really love this song, but it's got such a strange vibe to it that it's almost fascinating. Obviously Tarantino put it to the best use it would ever find, but it was actually originally designed as a parody of Bob Dylan's impenetrable, crazed lyrics. It certainly captures his sense of gonzo insanity, but it's a pretty damn good song in its own right.

Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell - Dueling Banjos
1973 Billboard Top 100 position: 61

Havoc's Grade: B
This might be the weirdest song I ever put on these lists. The primary chords of Dueling Banjos have been associated forever with the hillfolk of Appalachia, thanks to the movie Deliverance (off of whose soundtrack this entry comes), but go back and listen to the song again. Dueling Banjos is one of the finest Bluegrass instrumental pieces ever composed, a musical romp in the form of a battle between guitar and banjo, one the banjo usually tends to win (thanks to economy of movement if nothing else). It's hard to look past the song's associations, but I actually unironically love Dueling Banjos when performed well, and the two instrumentalists who shadow-played this song in the movie turned in one of the better performances I've heard.

Pink Floyd - Money
1973 Billboard Top 100 position: 92

Havoc's Grade: B
I'm not the biggest Pink Floyd fan, but this is the only single off of their revolutionary Dark Side of the Moon album to chart at all, and one of the best from it. A weird Prog-rock tune, as was most of Pink Floyd's work, Money is an excellent song, replete with excellent solos and a fun minimalist structure to it.

David Bowie - Space Oddity
1973 Billboard Top 100 position: 97

Havoc's Grade: A
Thank all the gods, I thought I was going to miss this one, but somehow this 1969 single found its way onto the year-end charts in 1973. I'll take it. Space Oddity is one of Bowie's best and most famous songs, covered endlessly, including of course most recently in space by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. But the song itself is a wonderful psychedelic rock anthem, capturing the epic nature of spaceflight. I love this song, and I will not hear any opinions of those who do not. Why it never charted highly, I don't know, but I'm just glad I got the chance to showcase it. For this, if nothing else, thank you, 1973.

Other noted songs from 1973:
John Denver - Rocky Mountain High
Three Dog Night - Shambala
King Harvest - Dancing in the Moonlight
Bobby "Boris" Pickett - Monster Mash (Yeah, it re-charted this year.)
Deep Purple - Smoke on the Water
Paul McCartney & Wings - Live and Let Die
The Carpenters - Sing
The Temptations - Ain't no Woman Like the One I've Got
Elton John - Daniel
Paul Simon - Kodachrome

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 12:27 am

1974
Yearly GPA: 1.558

1974 set the record for the most number 1 hits of any year since the creation of the billboard charts, with no fewer than thirty-five songs dividing the fifty-two weeks of the year between them. Obviously this means that most of the songs this year did not chart for long, so expect a number of off-beat one-hitters that managed to capture the public imagination briefly before disappearing once more. Generally speaking though, this trend was to the year's detriment. A song that tops the charts for nine weeks may well suck, but it's likely to at least be interesting. A song that reigns for one single week can just be the best of a bad bunch, and that describes an awful lot of songs below.

The Steve Miller Band - The Joker
Number 1 song from January 12th-18th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: B
I had no conception that this song was from 1974, as it sounds like a late-nineties song you might hear from Sugar Ray. Seriously, listen to this thing and the rest of the era and tell me if it sounds remotely similar to the Bee Gees or Sly & The Family Stone. Once in a while you get these songs whose sound is just way ahead of their time, and this is one of them.

Al Wilson - Show and Tell
Number 1 song from January 19th-25th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Interminable Pop-soul crap, so boring I can't think of anything to say about it. If the title is meant to be a sex euphemism, it's one of the worse ones out there.

Ringo Starr - You're Sixteen
Number 1 song from January 26th-February 1st, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
This song features a kazoo solo. Do I really need to say anything else?

Barbara Streisand - The Way We Were
Number 1 song from February 2nd-8th, February 16th-March 1st, 1974 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
The title song from the 1973 film of the same name, starring Streisand and Redford is of about the same quality as the film it's drawn from. Sappy, overblown melodrama, emblematic of Streisand's career as a whole, which is of course why it was the number one song of the year.

Love Unlimited Orchestra - Love's Theme
Number 1 song from February 9th-15th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
You might know the Love Unlimited Orchestra better by the name of its frontman, a certain bass baritone-voiced sexy beast by the name of Barry White. Not that you could tell he had anything to do with this song, as it's an instrumental piece. I normally don't care overmuch for instrumentals, but this one's all right, pleasant and just slightly funky, even if it does kind of turn into elevator music eventually. A staggering number of disco artists cited this song as an influence, so I guess there's that.

Terry Jacks - Seasons in the Sun
Number 1 song from March 2nd-22nd, 1974 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Oh shut up, there is no way this song deserves the bilious hate that it seems to generate. Where anyone got off calling this one of the five worst songs ever made, I have no idea. Not that it's some kind of masterpiece. It's saccharine and cloying and way too blase about its subject matter. But the underlying music is strong, and I've always been a music-over-lyrics kind of guy.

Fun fact: This song was written in 1936, and first produced by legendary Belgian music producer Jacques Brel. It was adapted from a Balzac poem. Go figure.

Cher - Dark Lady
Number 1 song from March 23rd-29th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I wanted to like this song, but there's no getting over the fact that Cher simply can't sing on it. Normally the music for Cher's songs is arranged in such a way as to hide this fact. Not here.

John Denver - Sunshine on my Shoulders
Number 1 song from March 30th-April 5th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Random fact, a cover of this song was Carly Rae Jepsen's first single, back in 2008.

Yes, this song is saccharine enough to give one diabetes, but frankly, I'll take legitimate sentiment over repetition any day. And Denver always had a genuine quality to him. I recognize why people hate this song, but I'm not here to repeat what everyone says about these songs.

Blue Swede - Hooked on a Feeling
Number 1 song from April 6th-13th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
No, this isn't a cover, or rather while it is a cover, this is the version of the song that hit number 1 in 1974. No, I don't know where the "Ooga chucka ooga chucka" stuff all came from, but it apparently was all the rage in the mid-70s. It's a good thing too, because without it, the song is basically big-band lounge music.

Elton John - Benny and the Jets
Number 1 song from April 13th-19th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I just don't understand the appeal of this song. I suppose raw weirdness gets you a long way, and this is one of the first glamrock pieces to really hit it big, but it just goes nowhere and involves nothing but semi-tonal rambling along the way. I'm a fan of Elton John, but only when he's sober.

MFSB and the Three Degrees - The Sound of Philadelphia
Number 1 song from April 20th-May 3rd, 1974 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
The Soul music scene bifurcated quickly in the seventies into a number of different regional styles. This here is one of the most classic examples of the Philly Soul style of music. Don't let its instrumental nature fool you, this song is funky. Just disco enough to dance to, not so disco as to be ridiculous. I don't know how this thing wound up on top of the charts, but I'm sure not complaining, as it's one of the best pure soul atmosphere pieces you're likely to find.

Grand Funk Railroad - The Loco-Motion
Number 1 song from May 4th-17th, 1974 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
And so the Loco-Motion rears its head again with this rocked-up version by GFR. Honestly... it's just sloppy. I get the idea, but this song just wasn't designed for a 70s hard rock remix, and it really shows. No matter how many heavy drum beats and guitar solos you stuff into it, the song remains the same old stupid thing from the fifties that it was bad when Little Eva was singing it. It is definitely better than the original, but I can't call it great.

Ray Stevens - The Streak
Number 1 song from May 18th-June 7th, 1974 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: F
What the FUCK was that?

First of all, Ray Stevens had a second number 1 hit? How the hell did that happen? And it was this? Was this year so devoid of good music that this was the best they could do? Because yeah, this was the number one song of the year.

I NEVER want to hear someone tell me about how great music was before I was born again. NEVER.

Paul McCartney & Wings - Band on the Run
Number 1 song from June 8th-14th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I think it's pretty clear at this point that I'm not much of a Wings fan. In this, I resemble almost every person ever born, but since they'll be with us for most of the rest of the 70s, I suppose I should get used to them. This song is... simply boring and discordant, which is not unlike the rest of their oeuvre. The second half of the song isn't bad as 70s lite rock goes, but it represents about 40% of the total track, and McCartney's tendency to ramble aimlessly simply doesn't help him much here.

Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods - Billy Don't be a Hero
Number 1 song from June 15th-28th, 1974 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
I tried, really, but this song is too trite, even for me. It's supposedly an anti-war song, but it has all the solemnity of a Sousa march, and came out long after Vietnam was a painful memory for all but the Vietnamese. The singer sounds like he's from the Partridge Family, and the music is the sort of sanitized family-rock that made the lighter side of early 70s rock so unbearable. No thank you.

Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown
Number 1 song from June 29th-July 5th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I've listened to this song for thirty years, and didn't know it was called Sundown until five minutes ago. Regardless, soft though it is, I kinda like this song. Maybe it's Gordon Lightfoot's voice, which I've always considered interesting independent of the song, but while this isn't close to my favorite of his, I can't really hate on it at all. Supposedly this was written about his ex-girlfriend Cathy Smith, who would later go on to kill John Belushi with a heroin overdose. Small world.

Hues Corporation - Rock the Boat
Number 1 song from July 6th-12th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
An early disco flop until it was saved by the club scene, this song should have been left where it was. The singers are alternately too mellow and terrible, and the song is simply boring. Next.

George McCrae - Rock Your Baby
Number 1 song from July 13th-26th, 1974 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
This is Disco, not the early antecedents of Disco, but Disco itself, the first smash hit of the Disco movement, which would come to utterly dominate the charts until its abrupt collapse in 1980. As to the song itself, it's... okay. It has a hell of a drum-and-bass beat, one that's incredibly funky, and very hard to avoid grooving to, but McCrae's singing is just kind of... there. It's not a bad song by any stretch, but it does go on quite a while, one of the few cases where the radio edit is probably superior.

John Denver - Annie's Song
Number 1 song from July 27th-August 9th, 1974 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I do like John Denver, but there's a limit. This song is high-minded lovey-dovey crap, salvaged only by a customarily pretty folk-country sound to it. Still not something I'm interested in replaying much.

Roberta Flack - Feel Like Makin' Love
Number 1 song from August 10th-16th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: F
This song, like this singer, is useless. A cloying, rambling mess that goes nowhere and wastes everyone's time getting there.

Paper Lace - The Night Chicago Died
Number 1 song from August 17th-23rd, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
This is the equivalent to fanfiction, the story of a massive shootout between the police and Al Capone's gang that ends with hundreds of police killed and the gang exterminated. It's a decently entertaining little number, albeit a bit lightweight given the subject matter.

Paul Anka & Odia Coates - You're Having my Baby
Number 1 song from August 24th-September 13th, 1974 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Neither of these people can sing for a damn. It sounds like drunken karaoke on a cruise ship for the elderly. This song was one of the longest-running number ones of the year. No thank you.

The video for this, by the way, is amazing, particularly the last twenty seconds or so.

Eric Clapton - I Shot the Sheriff
Number 1 song from September 14th-20th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I love Eric Clapton, but this sanitized version of the 1973 Bob Marley classic is a pale imitation of the original. Clapton sings the song like he's auditioning for a lounge act, and the underlying strength of the song, the dichotomy of the upbeat music and deep subject matter, doesn't work when the singer sounds so fake. Listen to the Wailers' version instead.

Barry White - Can't Get Enough of Your Love
Number 1 song from September 21st-27th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
This is probably Barry White's biggest hit, and while I don't love it, it has enough nostalgic value for me to give it something of a consideration. Why it became the sex song it did, I don't know, but I suppose there's worse.

Andy Kim - Rock Me Gently
Number 1 song from September 28th-October 4th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I've never heard of this guy or his song before, but it's not half bad. Not half good either, but one takes what can get in a year like this.

Olivia Newton-John - I Honestly Love You
Number 1 song from October 5th-18th, 1974 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
I suppose it was inevitable that Olivia Newton-John would show up here, and she certainly won't be the last of her ilk on the charts, but the base fact is that she was always nothing more than a more-chaste, less-talented Barbara Streisand. This song showcases that fact sufficiently well, I should think. It's a boring ballad from a genre that in a later day would be call "White Girl with Piano" music. It is useless.

Billy Preston - Nothing from Nothing
Number 1 song from October 19th-25th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
This song is well titled. It is nothing but bog-standard honky-tonk 70s music. Not offensively bad, but entirely forgettable.

Dionne Warwick and The Spinners - Then Came You
Number 1 song from October 26th-November 1st, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
A year filled with one-week wonders is going to be pretty mediocre, as anything better would have blown the rest of this barely-chartworthy crap off the hot seat. This is yet another example, a boring, atonal soul-pop piece whose virtues are entirely disguised from me.

Stevie Wonder - You Haven't Done Nothin'
Number 1 song from November 2nd-8th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
A political version of Superstition, go figure. It's not a bad song, how could it be, as it's basically Superstition's opening riff played over again. But it's just not that interesting, and never really builds to anything musically. And the Jackson 5's backup singing is barely there.

Bachman-Turner Overdrive - You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
Number 1 song from November 9th-15th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: B
This is a very borderline case, as the singing is fairly weak on this song, but BTO's strong point was always riffs and classic guitar rock work. Nobody's gonna mistake them for Led Zepplin, but the song hits all the right notes for good 70s classic rock. And you'll forgive me if I'm being a bit generous, but that appears to be something missing this year.

John Lennon - Whatever Gets You Thru the Night
Number 1 song from November 16th-22nd, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
This duet with Elton John is, unfortunately, the very last time we will encounter John Lennon on this list, at least outside of the supplementals. It honestly sounds more like one of Elton's, which normally isn't a bad thing, but it's just a bit rambly for my taste. That said, it's got energy, and that's not nothing.

Billy Swan - I Can Help
Number 1 song from November 23rd-December 6th, 1974 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: F
This might be the most boring song I've ever heard. I checked the playback at two minutes convinced it had been seven. It does not end, it does not go anywhere, and it sounds like something I might have composed on my Casio keyboard at the age of nine. This song can kiss my ass.

Karl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting
Number 1 song from December 7th-20th, 1974 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: A
I don't want to hear it. Stop laughing and listen, this song is SO MUCH BETTER than everything else around it. Yes, the song is stupid, but it has energy and fun and is just musically a good damn song. Anyone who claims to dislike Kung Fu Fighting is an asshole. And I sentence them to listen to the rest of this wretched year.

Harry Chapin - Cat's in the Cradle
Number 1 song from December 21st-27th, 1974 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I hate this song. I hate it for purely irrational reasons. Its qualities are consequently hard for me to discern, but it's not a bad song in terms of musical quality.

Helen Reddy - Angie Baby
Number 1 song from December 28th, 1974-January 3rd, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
What qualities this song has have been effectively hidden from me. It sounds like something I will not remember in five seconds.

Supplemental Songs

A punishing year like this makes me happy for the supplemental list.

Kool & The Gang - Jungle Boogie
1974 Billboard Top 100 position: 12

Havoc's Grade: B
Sometimes, things just need to get extremely funky. And in a year filled with Olivia Newton-John and Dionne Warwick, it's good to remember just what there was to like about the 70s.

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
1974 Billboard Top 100 position: 72

Havoc's Grade: A
This might just be Elton John's greatest work. It's not my favorite, but it's certainly a superb piece, an ode to an older day, as are most of John's best pieces. It's one of the best soft rock songs ever written, and a gem amidst the dross of a dismal year.

Elton John - Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
1974 Billboard Top 100 position: 78

Havoc's Grade: B
I DID mention that I was a massive Elton John fan, didn't I? This song is off the same album as the last one, and the two of them knocked each other out of contention for number 1 spots. Both were worthy. And while Elton John is not everyone's cup of tea, I have absolutely no hesitation in proclaiming him the savior of 1974.

Oh, and in case anyone thought my credentials at being secure in my heterosexuality were not solid enough, I'll just point out that the best version of this song, unquestionably, is the 1991 duet version between Elton John and George Michael. Even if George looks like he's having a stroke.

Other noted songs from 1974:
Maria Muldaur - Midnight at the Oasis
Gladys Knight & The Pips - The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me
Three Dog Night - The Show Must Go On
Stevie Wonder - Living for the City
Carly Simon & James Taylor - Mockingbird
Chicago - I've Been Searching So Long
Jim Croce (posthumously) - I Have to Say I Love You in a Song
Sister Janet Mead - The Lord's Prayer (yes)

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 2:06 am

I really still don't see how you could mistake the Joker for anything BUT a 70's song, but I can see the influence it had on the bands from the 90's you're talking about. Still, the earmarks of the 70's are all over it, even without getting into the recording artifacts.

And Hooked on a Feeling getting a C? Bah! That's a pretty solid B if you ask me, and that's well before it was used in Guardians of the Galaxy.

It's not my fault you can't get Barry White, because you can't duplicate his dulcet tones. That said, yeah, probably a C.

As far as John Denver, well...
[youtube][/youtube]

That's all that needs to be said.

As far as the Lord's Prayer, well, here's my contribution.
[youtube][/youtube]

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 5:26 pm

You see, THAT would have made my supplemental list.

LadyTevar · Post by **LadyTevar** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 10:42 pm

"Cat's in the Cradle" got such a following because of the Lyrics, I think. Every person who looked back and realized they let time get away from them, didn't spend enough time with their kids. It's a sad melancholy song, and so it hits the heartstrings. It always hits me whenever I hear it.

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 12:20 am

1975

Yearly GPA: 1.538

I may have spoken too soon when I said 1974 has the most number one hits of any year ever. As it turns out, that was true except for the fact that 1975 ties it with another 35 songs making the number one list. Oh goody.

Honestly, I was expecting better from the mid-70s than this. I know that not every classic song hit number one, that's the reason I have supplemental lists after all, but the relentless mediocrity of 1975 and 74 are hard to take. Those two years had seventy songs hit number one between them, precisely 7 of which I thought were worth a damn. These are the sorts of statistics that drain a man's will to continue. But here's to better days...

Elton John - Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
Number 1 song from January 4th-17th, 1975 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
Yes, I know I established myself as a fanboy just last year, but honestly, this is a cover that just makes sense, and I think Elton does a fine job with a song that I've always had mixed feelings for. I think I like this version better, if only because it's more elaborate and jazzed up, something that I think works well for this song. That said, did it need to be six minutes long?

Barry Manilow - Mandy
Number 1 song from January 18th-24th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I've nothing against Barry Manilow overall, but let's not pretend that he was some kind of rock god. Mandy is one of his less tolerable songs, and while I concede that he sings it well, the song is simply the sort of generic cheeseball shlock that I'm already sick of this decade, and won't be getting better.

The Carpenters - Please Mr. Postman
Number 1 song from January 25th-31st, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
How is it possible that this cover of the 1950s hit actually got worse? The original was hardly anything special, but at least sound liked the prevailing style of music back then. This is like someone took that song and sucked the soul out of it. The Carpenters were always terrible, but this is just garbage, even by their standards.

Neil Sedaka - Laughter in the Rain
Number 1 song from February 1st-7th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
This was a man? Seriously? I remember hearing this song on light rock stations back in the day, and it never crossed my mind that I wasn't hearing a woman. This song was, regardless, terrible then, and remains terrible now, and the revelation that I was listening to a eunuch this entire time does not help it much.

The Ohio Players - Fire
Number 1 song from February 8th-14th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Memorable only for a single word, this song isn't actually that bad despite, even if it rambles quite a bit. Call this a borderline case for sheer funk.

Linda Ronstadt - You're no Good
Number 1 song from February 15th-21st, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
It's no good, it's no good, it's no good, it's no good, baby it's no good...

Average White Band - Pick Up the Pieces
Number 1 song from February 22nd-28th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
This is jazz-funk number is one of those pieces you know, but never imagined actually being composed or played on the radio. I honestly thought it was a commercial jingle. The full thing isn't bad, frankly, if you're into funky sax music that is.

The Eagles - Best of My Love
Number 1 song from March 1st-7th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I love the Eagles, but this song is just terrible. It sounds like something off Chicago's work from the same period, soporific acoustic lullaby music. This might actually be my least favorite Eagles song, and of course this is the one that first landed on the charts. Oy.

Olivia Newton-John - Have You Ever Been Mellow
Number 1 song from March 8th-14th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: F
Well Olivia Newton-John has definitely been mellow. In fact she's been barely conscious many a time, judging by this song. This thing is simply terrible, light puffy cloud music for people who, even in 1975, had no idea what it was to be "hip" or "with it".

The Doobie Brothers - Black Water
Number 1 song from March 15th-21st, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I know that Delta Blues tends to do this, but this song just sort of meanders along without actually getting anywhere. It's a decent song for that, but I just prefer my music to actually have a point. Still, I can't argue too much with this one.

Frankie Vallie - My Eyes Adored You
Number 1 song from March 22nd-28th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I admit this is better than Frankie Vallie tended to produce, but that's faint praise indeed. This song is one of the most chaste easy listening pieces yet, though there will be chaster ones still. I have very little use for this song.

LaBelle - Lady Marmalade
Number 1 song from March 29th-April 4th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Listen to this one again, I dare you. Removed from the screeching vocals of Christina Aguilera, this song is actually fairly decent. It fits better into the 70s than it does the early 00s for one thing, and Labelle's singers were unquestionably better ones. Believe it or not, this song was actually written by the same songwriters who wrote My Eyes Adored You above. I guess they had something of a range. The song is still a bit rambly for my tastes, but it's a step up from most of the rest of this crap.

Minnie Ripperton - Lovin' You
Number 1 song from April 5th-11th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: F
I try not to bow to the popular opinions on infamous songs. Some of them, A Horse With No Name for instance, are very unfairly maligned. But sometimes a spade is really a spade. Loving You is widely regarded as an embarrassing disaster, and that's precisely what it is. This song is terrible, in a way that is frankly unique. It's probably the least sexy sex song in the history of the world, which makes sense when you learn that the melody was originally invented as a lullaby for Ripperton's baby daughter and comes complete with the sound of chirping birds. And the whistle-register vocals that penetrate the song's chorus may not literally be head exploding, but after a few minutes you might begin to wonder.

The Elton John Band - Philadelphia Freedom
Number 1 song from April 12th-25th, 1975 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
No, I don't know why this is under the name of Elton John's nonexistent band as opposed to the man himself.

There's apparently a great deal of debate as to what this song is actually about, but people sort of assumed it was a patriotic song, given the impending bicentennial. It's certainly upbeat enough. It's nothing I'm going to stuff onto my iPod, but I've heard far worse songs this year already.

BJ Thomas - (Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song
Number 1 song from April 26th-May 2nd, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
This is the longest song title on the Number 1 charts.

I don't get the popularity of ukulele music in the early-mid 70s. This one's entirely forgettable, squeaking into the number one only because it had nearly no competition. Not worth spending time on.

Tony Orlando and Dawn - He Don't Love You (Like I Love You)
Number 1 song from May 3rd-18th, 1975 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
I really don't know what to keep saying about these completely forgettable mid-tempo easy listening numbers, as they all tend to run into one another. I'm simply tired of listening to this genre, and yet I have a feeling I'm going to have far more to listen to.

Earth, Wind, & Fire - Shining Star
Number 1 song from May 24th-30th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
This is a close one, but the sheer funk of EW&F pulls them through. This is a very generic funk/psychedelic soul song, and I can't really say I like it overmuch. These guys were capable of much better.

Freddy Fender - Before the Next Teardrop Falls
Number 1 song from May 31st-June 6th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: F
1975 saw six different country songs hit number one, and if this isn't the worst of them all, I may punch someone. This song is terrible in English and in Spanish, a lilting monstrosity of a song sung by a weak-voiced idiot who LITERALLY recorded it in ten minutes. Fuck this.

John Denver - Thank God I'm a Country Boy
Number 1 song from June 7th-13th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
You see, if you're gonna write a country song and put it atop the charts, make it a real country song, not fake pop-country crap like the previous one. This is no masterpiece, but at least it's real country-folk music, and there's a place for that.

America - Sister Golden Hair
Number 1 song from June 14th-20th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Sister Golden Hair might be America's most well-put-together song, but it's still only "decent" in my mind. The song really never makes use of any of the energy it seems so eager to pull down. Not a bad song, but nothing I can't live without.

The Captain & Tenille - Love Will Keep Us Together
Number 1 song from June 21st-July 18th, 1975 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
The Captain and Tenille are a group I have no explanation for. They were terrible, on this song and on every other that I've heard. Believe it or not, this is actually one of their better songs, which might explain how it became the number one song of the entire year, winner of the Grammy for song of the year. This is the sort of crap that the mid-seventies were stuffed with, and I can't get through it fast enough.

Paul McCartney & Wings - Listen to What the Man Says
Number 1 song from July 19th-25th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I'll give it this much, this song has a much better beat and sound to it than Wings usually wound up with. McCartney still meanders all over the place aimlessly, but at least it's tolerable, for the most part.

The Eagles - One of These Nights
Number 1 song from August 2nd-8th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I swear to God, I'm actually a huge Eagles fan. They just seem to keep throwing their worst songs at the top of the charts. One of These Nights is warbling dreck, a useless waste of five minutes as they repeat themselves over and over. And the Disco style simply doesn't go well with the Eagles' style.

The BeeGees - Jive Talkin'
Number 1 song from August 9th-22nd, 1975 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
A relentlessly funky song, Jive Talkin' catapulted the Bee Gees back into relevance after a five year fallow period. I can't say I object. This song is incredibly tight, and the Bee Gees vocals are just perfect for it, with a breathless quality that renders the song more interesting than their usual falsetto might have. If the rest of the year would give me stuff like this, I would be much happier.

Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds - Fallin' in Love
Number 1 song from August 23rd-29th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Full disclosure, when I was eight, I thought Elmer Fudd was the singer. "Baby, baby, fawwin in wuv. I'm fawwin in wuv again!" You will never hear anything else.

No, this song is completely unremarkable, save only for the fact that Canadian rapper Drake sampled it in 2010 and promptly got the pants sued off him. Why he chose to sample this is beyond me.

KC and The Sunshine Band - Get Down Tonight
Number 1 song from August 30th-September 5th, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
This is one of the great disco classics, at least the refrain is. The song overall is not tremendously remarkable absent it. Still, I can't hate on it particularly much.

Glen Campbell - Rhinestone Cowboy
Number 1 song from September 6th-19th, 1975 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
A cross between Sloop John B and the Mary Tyler Moore theme, turned into a country ballad. And yet... I don't really hate this song. It's at least self-aware about its fake country nature. Given the history of country-on-the-charts, one could do far worse than this.

David Bowie - Fame
Number 1 song from September 20th-26th, October 4th-10th 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I'm an unabashed Bowie fan, but Fame is just sort of... there. It's not a bad song by any standards, incredibly intricate and well put together, as one might expect from a song where John Lennon was the co-author. But the song just isn't that satisfying, a simple lament on how fame can screw up your life. Even Bowie claims to not be too fond of it in retrospect, and I defer to his judgment.

John Denver - I'm Sorry
Number 1 song from September 27th-October 3rd, 1975 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
This is why John Denver never got any respect. A languid melancholy acoustic ballad that makes Denver sound just whiny, I have no use for a song this boring.

Neil Sedaka - Bad Blood
Number 1 song from October 11th-31st, 1975 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I'll say this for this song, it's a considerable step up from Sedaka's other single this year. That still only elevates it to "decent", but one takes what one can get.

Fun fact, that's an uncredited Elton John on the backing vocals.

Elton John - Island Girl
Number 1 song from November 1st-21st, 1975 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Ah, the innocent days when, somehow, Elton John was thought to be straight by the wider world. Island Girl isn't one of his best songs, but it's a nice little energetic piece about (allegedly at least) a transsexual prostitute from New York. Not that he'd know anything about such subjects...

... nor that I would...

KC and the Sunshine Band - That's the Way (I Like it)
Number 1 song from November 22nd-28th, December 20th-27th, 1975 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
Now this is one I can get behind. Like KC & The Sunshine's last hit, this song is based almost entirely around a single, strong refrain. Unlike that song, That's the Way I Like it is simply stronger both in and out of said refrain, with a relentlessly funky disco beat, and a generally excellent sound, to the point where the repetitive nature of the song doesn't get in the way.

Silver Convention - Fly Robin Fly
Number 1 song from November 29th-December 19th, 1975 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
This song has six words in it. SIX. Fly, to, the, up, sky, and robin. I tend to be a music-over-lyrics kind of guy, but this is just ridiculous. Silver Convention were a Europop disco act who didn't bother to actually sing about anything in their various hits. I have no use for this.

The Staple Singers - Let's Do It Again
Number 1 song from December 27th, 1975-January 2nd, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
A boring, endless soul song from a movie I've never heard. The perfect way to finally close out this endless year.

Supplemental Songs

I've made an alteration or two to my policy for the Supplemental songs. Too many classic songs never charted anywhere, not even on the Hot 100. And given the sheer quantity of crap I have to listen to for this thing, I feel entitled to a few good songs to keep me going. As such, I'm also going to include noteworthy songs I like that DIDN'T hit the top 100 on this list, as I don't feel like listening to nothing but more crap going forward.

Oh, the reason for this change? Because the year-end top 100 list for 1975 yielded not one single fucking song worthy of being called out. FUCK this year.

Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
1975 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: B
Thank god, something worth listening to. Born to Run was Springsteen's first big hit, though not his best. I always thought he sounded rather drunk on the vocals of this one, but to hell with it. The Boss was in full force here, and I'll take anything after the year I just had.

Thin Lizzie - The Boys are Back in Town
1975 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: B
Borderline case this one, but I do really enjoy this song, and yes, I'm well aware of the subtext of it. It's just a good classic rock tune, nothing earthshattering, but a worthy one nonetheless.

Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion
1975 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: B
I was wondering when Aerosmith would show up on these damn lists. And not a moment too soon. Granted, Sweet Emotion is not the best song on their 1975 album Toys in the Attic, but it's still a very solid classic rock piece that deserves a listen to. Ah, but what WAS the best one off that album, you ask? Well...

Aerosmith - Dream On
1975 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: A
This is one of the great songs of the 1970s, a soaring anthemic beast of a song, the one that put Aerosmith on the map to begin with. It's one of my favorite Aerosmith songs of all time, and I don't particularly care if it was ignored by the pop charts that year. Dream On is one of the greatest songs of the decade, and I'll add it back into its rightful place if I choose.

The Eagles - Desperado
1975 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: B
I know nobody else likes this song, but it's one of my favorite Eagles tunes, which is, of course, why it did not appear on any of these lists. I don't care if any of you like this or not. I need a break from all the shit this year.

Pink Floyd - Welcome to the Machine
1975 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: B
Of all the works the Lords of Prog gifted us with over the course of their career, this might be their strangest. Well... okay, maybe not, but it's still a wonderfully atmospheric piece, midway between acoustic rock and synthesized insanity. This is a great song, despite its length, well worth hearing again.

Billy Joel - Piano Man
1975 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: A
I'm a great admirer of Billy Joel's, but in terms of perfect songs, this might be his. Piano Man is an almost uncharacterizable song, one that conjures up more of a sense of place than anything I've heard. It was first released in 1973, but this was the year it got a solo single release, which obviously went nowhere. I don't care. Piano Man is a wonderful song, melodic and evocative and emotional in all the right ways. And it's the best place to finally leave 1975 to rest.

Other noted songs from 1975:
War - Why Can't We Be Friends
The Isley Brothers - Fight the Power
Barry White - You're the First, the Last, My Everything
Joe Cocker - You Are So Beautiful
James Taylor - How Sweet It Is
The Three Degrees - When Will I See You Again
Queen - Killer Queen
Evil Woman - Electric Light Orchestra
ABBA - Mamma Mia
Aerosmith - Walk this Way
Hot Chocolate - You Sexy Thing
David Bowie - Young Americans

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:12 pm

And because I was bored...

1976
Yearly GPA: 1.903

1976, one of the so-called greatest years in music, a year put up there with 1966 and 1983 in the pantheon of revolutionary years of sound. After two consecutive years of crap, I had high hopes for this one.

As it turns out, '76 isn't a banner year because the charts were encrusted with classics, but because the overall quality of the general filler was considerably higher. Don't get me wrong, there's a number of songs here I do like, but it's the lack of complete crap that really helps this year become one of the best ever, though mathematically, 1966 still has it beat.

Bay City Rollers - Saturday Night
Number 1 song from January 3rd-9th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: B
I actually really like this song for reasons that are patently indefensible. It does drag, a lot, but it's a solid, upbeat, pop-rock number, well worthy of being listened to. It's probably nostalgia that places it as highly as I did, but to hell with it. After the crap I've had to listen to, I will take what I can get.

CW McCall - Convoy
Number 1 song from January 10th-16th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I know, I know, Convoy is the worst gimmick song ever written, blah blah blah. Motherfuckers, you have not heard the shit I've heard, and Convoy, stupid and nonsensical though it might be, is not that bad a song. Yes, it was created by a marketing executive at a bread company. Yes, it does not explain why the police are trying to stop the truck convoy. Yes, it's a stupid gimmick song. But listen to the whole thing. One could do far worse than a song like this, and I suspect one will.

Barry Manilow - I Write the Songs
Number 1 song from January 17th-23rd, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
It's not like he didn't try, guys. Yes, I Write the Songs is easy to interpret as a tremendous ego trip, but the song isn't about that, and frankly I'm not about to condemn a song simply because it's about something objectionable (except in particularly egregious cases). The same people who condemn this song for being egotistical happily listen to things like Kanye's or Lil' Wayne's entire discography. Taken as a song alone, it's not that bad, frankly. Barry Manilow always had a pretty solid ceiling as to how hardcore he was going to get, but this song at least has the bombastic sweep that it should have when you're singing as a stand-in for some kind of deity. Of all the songs to hate on in the mid-70s, this is hardly one I would pick out for solid criticism. This is the year that brought us Disco Duck.

Fun note: Barry Manilow performed a duet of this song in 1997 with Rosie O'Donnel. Her verse was "I Wreck the Songs".

Diana Ross - Theme from Mahogany
Number 1 song from January 24th-30th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I really don't like Diana Ross, and this is one of the reasons why. This song could have been better in the hands of a more powerful singer, but Ross' simpering violet voice just can't infuse it with the necessary power. And the worst part is, she doesn't have a weak voice, she just prefers to pretend some sort of lounge singer. As it stands, this thing is just a boring mess.

The Ohio Players - Love Rollercoaster
Number 1 song from January 31st-February 6th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I gave this one a pass simply because it's a well-put-together song, even if it isn't put together for much purpose. But what's most noteable about this song is the urban legend that sprang up that the faint scream heard at about 2:34 was actually the woman from the above album cover being murdered in the control booth. Of course said woman is still alive today, and the scream was actually produced by one of the band members trying to hit a super-high note, but the band, upon hearing the urban legend for the first time, immediately decided to swear a vow of silence on the subject, in their words "because you sell more records that way".

You beautiful, beautiful bastards.

Paul Simon - 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
Number 1 song from February 7th-27th, 1976 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
This cool little number from Paul Simon would go on to be his biggest solo hit, and it's easy to see why. It has a wonderful little irony to it, a cool bass-and-drum combo that underlies the entire story, along with lyrics that are purposefully over-intricate, the better to play around with the language. I'm a fan of Simon from the S&G days, and less so afterwards, but it's hard to object to this song in any sense.

Rhythm Heritage - Theme from SWAT
Number 1 song from February 28th-March 5th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
INSTRUMENTAL SONG ALERT!!!
A classic disco theme by any standards. It's not one of my favorites, but I do respect it. It does instantly conjure up images of badass cops doing badass things to the accompaniment of a badass 70s theme.

The Miracles - Love Machine (Part 1)
Number 1 song from March 6th-12th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I'm not wildly fond of this song, but it is certainly memorable, the biggest hit the post-Smokey Robinson Miracles ever obtained. Like most disco tracks, this song is based around a supremely funky and solid beat, which is not a bad place to start. And even if the song never really goes anywhere, it still has enough funk to see itself through.

Frankie Vallie & The Four Seasons - December, 1963 (Oh What a Night)
Number 1 song from March 13th-April 2nd, 1976 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
That's not Frankie Vallie you hear on this track, but Four Seasons' drummer Gerry Polci, with Vallie singing the bridge. Instantly the song is better than most things the Seasons put out. Honestly, for all the hate I have for the Four Seasons, this song is actually very, very good, a wonderfully nostalgic disco/dance-rock piece that covers all its bases well. I can easily groove to this song, and that's good enough for me.

Oh, by the way, the original lyrics of this song? "Fifth December, 1933". The day Prohibition ended.

Johnny Taylor - Disco Lady
Number 1 song from April 3rd-30th, 1976 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
This is actually the first song ever to have "Disco" in its title on the top of the charts.

I almost gave this song a D, so bad is Taylor on it. He sounds like he's trying to be a cross between James Brown and Marvin Gaye and succeeding at neither thing. But the song grows on you over time, and the underlying jazz-funk fusion is tight enough to carry it, albeit barely.

The Bellamy Brothers - Let Your Love Flow
Number 1 song from May 1st-7th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
You know, to my astonishment, I actually kinda like this song. Perhaps this is the sort of country-crossover song that I simply like, honest and simple and not overdone. It could stand to be a lot better of course, but given what it is, this is hardly the worst crossover hit I've ever heard.

John Sebastien - Welcome Back
Number 1 song from May 8th-14th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
The Anti-SWAT, this theme song to Welcome Back, Kotter, is a terrible slice of mid-seventies crap (as was the show itself). It sounds like something out of Sesame Street, plodding and without direction, save that Sesame Street's songs are invariably better orchestrated. There is thus no excuse.

The Sylvers - Boogie Fever
Number 1 song from May 15th-21st, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
The Sylvers were a nine-sibling-strong disco band that vanished without a trace after this song, which I find... okay. It's got a strong bass, like all disco, and the concept is simple enough and committed to. I just wish it wasn't so lightweight. But then that's the story of disco.

Wings - Silly Love Songs
Number 1 song from May 22nd-28th, June 12th-July 9th, 1976 (5 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
You would indeed think that people would have had enough of silly Wings shit, er... love songs. Honestly, this song is just too little too late. It might have worked at two and a half minutes, but a six minute ordeal is far too much for this thing to support. No.

Oh, and as usual, this song, one of the most forgettable bits of the year, was the number one song of the year.

Diana Ross - Love Hangover
Number 1 song from May 29th-June 11th, 1976 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
I just can't get away from Diana Ross, can I? This lugubrious disco number is intended to sound "sexy" and "sultry", and I've even seen comparisons made to Billie Holliday. Forget that. This is a rambling mess of a song, a cash-in if ever I heard one. When the Jason Derullo cover version is better than the original, you know there's some problems with this song.

Starland Vocal Band - Afternoon Delight
Number 1 song from July 10th-23rd, 1976 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
1976's Band of the Year, folks!

No, to be perfectly frank, this song, while nothing special, is not nearly as bad as it's accredited as being. Don't get me wrong, it IS a bad song, but it's nothing close to the worst song of the year. Hell, we've already heard three or four I'd consider worse. That said, it is an almost aggressively boring song, and one of the less sexy sex songs of the decade. Enough said.

The Manhattans - Kiss and Say Goodbye
Number 1 song from July 24th-August 6th, 1976 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Now this is more like it. Slow though it is, this Soul R&B classic has stood the test of time, with or without the introduction (which the radio edit omits). This song simply oozes style, languid though it might be.

Elton John and Kiki Dee - Don't Go Breaking my Heart
Number 1 song from August 7th-September 3rd, 1976 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I actually didn't know this was an Elton John song. This is a weird little number, stupid as all hell, but reasonably energetic. I'm gonna give it a break simply because of the tempo and the general quality of the singing, despite the idiotic lyrics.

Incidentally, the video I linked above is worth watching, as it might be the cheapest music video ever shot. The director, pulled off a Rod Stewart video for ten minutes, was asked to film the two of them pretending to sing the song, while they were asked to "improvise". If the video thus looks like some kind of candid footage of two people awkwardly trying to figure out what to do, that's because it absolutely is.

The Bee Gees - You Should Be Dancing
Number 1 song from September 4th-10th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
This is the song that launched the Bee Gees into disco, but frankly, they were capable of considerably better than this. The song simply doesn't go anywhere, despite the high tempo, and there's only so long I can listen to purposeless falsetto singing without getting bored.

KC & The Sunshine Band - (Shake Shake Shake) Shake Your Booty
Number 1 song from September 11th-17th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I don't love Shake Your Booty, but I do respect it. It runs on too long, but it's a supremely well-crafted song, like all of KC & The Sunshine's compositions. It overstays its welcome somewhat, but the elaborate nature of the production wins it some points from me.

Wild Cherry - Play That Funky Music
Number 1 song from September 18th-October 8th, 1976 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
Famously inspired by a line shouted at frontman Rob Parrisi during a concert in Pittsburgh, Play that Funky Music is one of the classics of the 70s, an awesome, funk-rock anthem that is justly remembered fondly by largely everyone who has ever heard it. To quote Todd in the Shadows, if you don't like Play That Funky Music, the problem is YOU. This song is awesome, and I will hear no bullshit from haters concerning it.

Walter Murphy - A Fifth of Beethoven
Number 1 song from October 9th-15th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
INSTRUMENTAL SONG ALERT!!!
A strange little instrumental piece that I guarantee you've heard before, Walter Murphy played every part of this instrumental ensemble to produce a disco rendition of Beethoven's Fifth. I like it, though not so much that I'm going to add it to my iPod or anything. Still, an extremely impressive piece.

Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots - Disco Duck (Part 1)
Number 1 song from October 16th-22nd, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I warned you, didn't I?

Look, the music isn't terrible in this one, but LISTEN TO THE THING. It's a song about a disco-dancing duck, cored around a terrible Donald Duck impersonation. I try not to judge songs based on what they're about, but this is the sort of song that renders that impossible. Disco Duck is, under no circumstances, the sort of thing that one should be making number 1 hits about. No no no.

Oh, and DUCKS DON'T CLUCK, YOU BLITHERING IDIOTS!

Chicago - If You Leave Me Now
Number 1 song from October 23rd-November 5th, 1976 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
I don't hate chicago as much as... some... but this song is indefensible. Those who claim it sounds like a lullaby are correct, it's slow and boring and languid enough to put children to sleep. And while Peter Cetera's voice does have its uses musically, this is not one of them. The less said about this thing the better.

Steve Miller Band - Rock'n' Me
Number 1 song from November 6th-12th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
The Steve Miller band is a group I've always wished I liked more than I did, but I can't ever help thinking that they're sort of The Eagles light, which is saying something. That said, The Joker was an excellent song, and this one, while not as good, is still worth a listen, despite being a bit too simple for my tastes. YMMV.

Rod Stewart - Tonight's the Night
Number 1 song from November 13th, 1976-January 7th, 1977 (8 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I had no idea this song was this popular. It's not that good, though I give it a break only because it fails in strange ways, and the sound overall isn't as awful as most soft rock of the period. Rod Stewart's voice has never been that good, but there are times that works for him. And though the double entendres here are just painful to listen to, I can't honestly hate it overmuch.

Supplemental Songs

So then why is 1976 regarded as so great a year? Sure it had some good number 1 songs, and the overall quality was a bit higher. But if I had to guess, some of the reason the year is so fondly remembered might have to do with the following...

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
1976 Billboard Top 100 position: 18

Havoc's Grade: A
I should hope this song needs no introduction. Queen's operatic signature song was, at the time, the most expensive single in history, both for the song itself and the revolutionary video that came with it, a video which more or less created the high age of the Music Video. This song is absolutely wonderful, bombastic and quiet all at once, a colossal song, one that by itself would have sufficed to make Queen the monster they became. I am a great fan of Queen, and others may not be, but this song defies all preference. This song is sublime. And nobody I've ever met has anything bad to say about it.

Nazareth - Love Hurts
1976 Billboard Top 100 position: 22

Havoc's Grade: B
Nazareth's cover of the Everly Brothers' 1950 country classic is my favorite rendition of all. A soft, haunting guitar ballad that would be copied to produce many of the ridiculous power ballads of the 80s. I don't care if you don't like the song or think it's too Emo, there's a wonderful simplicity to this one that cements its place for me.

The Eagles - Take it to the Limit
1976 Billboard Top 100 position: 24

Havoc's Grade: B
There's something wonderfully plaintive about this song, in the way that many Eagles songs have. I don't know what to call it precisely, but there's a sense of loss and nostalgia that oozes through this song so powerfully that I can't help but be fascinated. I know the Eagles aren't the most popular band ever, and that many, including the Dude, hate them, but this song is one I have long admired, and unfortunately for you all, these are my lists.

KISS - Rock and Roll All Night (Live Version)
1976 Billboard Top 100 position: 96

Havoc's Grade: B
Oh shut up, this is probably KISS' best song. It's not the finest rock song ever made or anything, but it has its place, and I'm prepared to go out on a limb and add it in here. The song by itself is nothing special, but KISS hit on the idea to record a live version from one of their concerts, and the resulting burst of energy elevated the song.

Boston - More Than a Feeling
1976 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: A
This is the sort of shit that I was missing by restricting myself. More than a Feeling is one of the greatest rock overtures of all time, a soaring guitar-driven piece of 70s Hard Rock lore that absolutely deserves a place on any list of awesome music. This is Boston's best work, and it deserves to be listened to, dammit.

Other noted songs from 1976:
England Dan & John Ford Coley - I'd Really Love to See You Tonight
Gary Wright - Dreamweaver
Eric Carmen - All By Myself
Larry Grose - Junk Food Junkie
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird
KISS - Detroit Rock City

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:48 pm

Too many Cs, really. Not a criticism of your rating, just a boring thing to read about. Terribly low ratings are hilarious, and high-rated songs are awesome. Cs are just blah.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:53 pm

An alternative cover for Boston's contribution:

Because of this:

[youtube][/youtube]

As usual though, your love of soft serve shines through, but more I am amazed by the fact that Nazareth apparently brought the first power ballad back in 1976. Props to them, of course, but damn.

LadyTevar · Post by **LadyTevar** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 6:41 pm

I just find it ironic that the majority of the bands that reached Top of Charts have been long since forgotten, while the "Supplimental" songs you list are still the songs people hear and often sing too. Eagles, Queen, Kiss, they broke out from the "pop Charts" in a way no other music did prior.

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:24 pm

White Haven wrote:Too many Cs, really. Not a criticism of your rating, just a boring thing to read about. Terribly low ratings are hilarious, and high-rated songs are awesome. Cs are just blah.

I have to kind of call them as I see them, man. When the songs are mediocre, so will be the ratings.

LadyTevar wrote:I just find it ironic that the majority of the bands that reached Top of Charts have been long since forgotten, while the "Supplimental" songs you list are still the songs people hear and often sing too. Eagles, Queen, Kiss, they broke out from the "pop Charts" in a way no other music did prior.

I have a distinct suspicion that is a process that will continue as we go on. It's the reason why I created the supplemental list in the first place :)

Although to be fair, there's also something of a selection bias involved. I'm only posting the supplemental songs I consider great songs. There's a PILE of shit surrounding each one.

fgalkin · Post by **fgalkin** » Mon Apr 28, 2014 3:23 pm

Wait, wait, wait. Did Havoc just give Volare, a song so famous it was covered by Bobby Rydell, Dean Martin, Al Martino, David Bowie, Cliff Richard, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, Dalida, Gipsy Kings, Chico & the Gypsies and Barry White a D, saying that

Havoc's Grade: D
Italy's Eurovision entry in 1958, if you can believe it. The fifties were so fallow that this was apparently the best thing around for more than a month. I think it sounds like a Lounge Singer crossed with the Exorcist.

What are your musical qualifications to be reviewing, again?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » Mon Apr 28, 2014 11:17 pm

Hey Galkin, what are your qualifications to wrestle a 6'1" 260 pound dude?

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Mon Apr 28, 2014 11:28 pm

fgalkin wrote:Wait, wait, wait. Did Havoc just give Volare, a song so famous it was covered by Bobby Rydell, Dean Martin, Al Martino, David Bowie, Cliff Richard, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, Dalida, Gipsy Kings, Chico & the Gypsies and Barry White a D

Hell freaking yes I did. The song is as boring as paste, irrespective of who covered it. None of those artists' versions were number 1 hits. This one was. And my opinion on it, and the year it was amidst, has not changed.

fgalkin wrote:What are your musical qualifications to be reviewing, again?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Motherfucker, did you see the list of shit I've gone through thus far? My qualifications are the ability to go through every hit song from 1958-1976 without committing ritual suicide. I defy you to do the same for 1963 or 1975.

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Fri May 16, 2014 5:53 pm

1977
Yearly GPA: 1.442

After highs, the lows. 1977 is actually not as bad a year as its score makes it out to be, mostly because a single song near the end of the year single-handedly obliterates all chance of it scoring well. But it's bad enough, as the year was mired in a general lack of enthusiasm and imagination. Though some acts were still just hitting their stride, this is where Disco started to show its cracks, and we will see increasing evidence of this as time goes on, though hopefully we will see some improvement over this...

Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr. - You Don't Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show)
Number 1 song from January 8th-14th, 1976 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Utterly generic husband-and-wife duet number, barely worth even remembering. If I hadn't accidentally deleted this entry twice over and had to recreate it several times, I doubt I would even remember that this song existed.

Leo Sayer - You Make me Feel Like Dancing
Number 1 song from January 15th-21st, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Not only does this song not make me feel like dancing, but I cannot conceive of how anyone is supposed to actually dance to it.

Stevie Wonder - I Wish
Number 1 song from January 22nd-28th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
One of the great revelations of this project so far is the fact that I don't actually like certain artists as much as I thought I did. Stevie Wonder is one such artist. This song is simply boring, light easy-listening semi-funk. I'm just sick of this sort of crap from a so-called superstar artist.

Rose Royce - Car Wash
Number 1 song from January 29th-February 4th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
A song so often sampled as to become something of a joke, Car Wash is actually considerably funkier a disco song than I remember it being. It's not wonderful by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not that bad a song, to be perfectly honest.

Mary MacGregor - Torn Between Two Lovers
Number 1 song from February 5th-18th, 1977 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
So what happens when Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, & Mary) writes a song on his own? This. Easy listening crap at its finest, the sort of which would reach apotheosis in the first couple years of the 1980s.

Manfred Mann - Blinded by the Light
Number 1 song from February 19th-25th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: B
Now this is more like it. Manfred Mann's cover of Bruce Springsteen's original is one of the unfairly forgotten classics of late-70s rock. It's not particularly hard, but it's got a wonderful easy-rock vibe to it, perfectly in keeping with other classics of the genre. I will admit that it goes on for too long, but with Manfred Mann, we should consider ourselves lucky that they cut it off at seven minutes.

Oh, and it's "Revved up like a Deuce", not "Douche". The Deuce was the Ford Model B sedan produced in 1932.

The Eagles - New Kid in Town
Number 1 song from February 26th-March 4th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I'm a big Eagles fan, but this is way too slow even for me. Lacking the edge that most great Eagles songs had, this thing just meanders along rather pointlessly. It's a borderline case, but I just can't find any reason for this song to exist at all.

Barbara Streisand - Evergreen
Number 1 song from March 5th-25th, 1977 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Speaking of things I can't understand the appeal of, here we have Barbara Streisand singing the theme song to A Star is Born. I can think of only one song of Streisand's I even come close to liking, and this one sure ain't it. It's the usual piano-pop ballad that Streisand always put out. No thank you.

Hall & Oates - Rich Girl
Number 1 song from March 26th-April 8th, 1977 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
Hall & Oates are a criminally underrated duo, but while I do respect this song, I'm not fond of the melody it has. Still, any song from 1977 that can come right out and sing about a "bitch girl" with the style of Hall & Oates is a pretty good contender. The rumors were that this was written about legendary playgirl Patty Hearst, but supposedly it was actually about Oates' girlfriend's ex, genderswitched to make the song sound better. So just imagine it was written about trust fund bro-douches, and it might just make you like it better.

ABBA - Dancing Queen
Number 1 song from April 9th-15th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: A
I have yet to meet someone who could honestly tell me that they dislike Dancing Queen. In fact I'm probably one of the people who likes it the least of everyone, and yet I still un-ironically groove to the thing, Europop though it might be. It's widely regarded as one of the greatest pure pop songs ever written for a reason, despite the dated lyrics and the disco sensibility. It's one of the finest disco songs ever, and whether you think that's much of an accomplishment or not, it's still a hell of a song.

David Soul - Don't Give Up on Us
Number 1 song from April 16th-22nd, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Meet the star of Starsky and Hutch, singing his only US number 1 hit. That is the only interesting thing I could dig up about this song, certainly more interesting than the music is.

Thelma Houston - Don't Leave Me This Way
Number 1 song from April 23rd-29th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
A reasonably high-energy dance-disco number, notable for becoming (somehow) an unofficial theme of sorts for the AIDS epidemic among gay men in the Western US. I'm not sure what the song has to do with that, but far be it from me to tell people what songs they can and can't use as themes. I'm not wildly fond of this style of late-70s dance stuff, but for what it is, it's not terrible.

Glen Campbell - Southern Nights
Number 1 song from April 30th-May 6th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I don't hate this song, but it gets very repetitive very quickly, and Glen Campbell is not an artist I'm desperately fond of to begin with, being firmly on the easy-listening/comedy end of the Country spectrum. This is supposedly about sitting out in the open in Louisiana telling tall tales to one another, something I'd rather experience than hear bad songs about.

The Eagles - Hotel California
Number 1 song from May 7th-13th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: A
THE definitive Eagles song, one of the most iconic pieces from the era of album-oriented rock, the song everyone knows and most like, even if they hate the Eagles and everything they stand for. I admit, as do most, that the coda runs on a bit, but this is still one of the finest pieces of its era, a luxurious ode to the excesses and hedonism of southern California in the seventies, complete with labyrinthine lyrics whose meanings are still debated to this day. I don't give a damn how hipsterish you want to appear to be, Hotel California is one of the great masterpieces of popular music. Period.

Leo Sayer - When I Need You
Number 1 song from May 14th-20th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Not a great rendition (at all), but this adaptation of a Leonard Cohen song is simple enough to cover for at least some sins. I grant that this is faint praise, but I hate it far less than a lot of crap I've heard this year.

Stevie Wonder - Sir Duke
Number 1 song from May 21st-June 10th, 1977 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
I have nothing against the many great early black performers that Stevie is singing a tribute to in this song, in fact I'd far prefer to listen to them than Stevie's mealy-mouthed, buzzword-laden anthem about equality and such. It's just not an interesting song, either musically or lyrically. What else am I supposed to do?

KC & The Sunshine Band - I'm Your Boogie Man
Number 1 song from June 11th-17th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I usually like KC & The Sunshine Band, but this song is just endless droning. The bridge, verses, and chorus are indistinguishable from one another, meaning that the song just goes on and on and on until you forget that you're even listening to it.

Fleetwood Mac - Dreams
Number 1 song from June 18th-24th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I have limited tolerance for Fleetwood Mac's folk-pop act, but Dreams is at least a semi-decent song, albeit one that wears its welcome out fairly early. Like fellow folk star Bob Dylan, I've always thought Fleetwood Mac's songs sound better when sung by someone else (Landslide is a perfect example of this). Still, I can't complain overmuch about a song that's not outright difficult to listen to.

Marvin Gaye - Got to Give it Up
Number 1 song from June 25th-July 1st, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
Technically the number one hit here was "Part 1" of this song, but after listening to this thing, I have no interest in finding Part 2. This song is undifferentiated boredom, redeemed from the dreaded F simply by not being incompetent enough. It's Marvin Gaye. There's a limit to how bad he can suck. And this is probably it.

Bill Conti - Gonna Fly Now
Number 1 song from July 2nd-8th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
I simply flat out don't believe anyone who tells me they don't at least kind of like this semi-instrumental fanfare-laden theme from Rocky. One of the original montage songs, this isn't something I'd listen to by choice, but it's a solid enough song that I can see why the charts gave it a week.

Alan O'Day - Undercover Angel
Number 1 song from July 9th-15th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
This one just barely squeaks in, but I'm a sucker for harmonized pop rock, and so I'll give it a passing grade despite my better judgment. This was the very first song released by Pacific Records, an "indie" label of Warner Brothers, that never managed to find another hit.

Shaun Cassidy - Da Doo Ron Ron
Number 1 song from July 16th-22nd, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: C
Oh shut up. This bubblegum pop cover of The Crystals' 1963 Doo Wop song is inoffensive enough, despite the stupid name and punchable face of the lead singer. Music is an auditory medium, guys, I don't care how smugly simpering the bastard looked. I'll take this song over basically anything from the year the original came out.

Barry Manilow - Looks Like We Made It
Number 1 song from July 23rd-29th, 1977 (1 week)

Havoc's Grade: D
I don't hate this song, but I have very little use for it. Manilow is always kind of a cheeseball, which is fine, but this song's just boring, the sort of thing Barbara Streisand ought to be singing. No.

Oh incidentally? This song is about how the couple in question "made it" with other people. It's a breakup song. Who knew.

Andy Gibb - I Just Want to Make You my Everything
Number 1 song from July 30th-August 19th, September 17th-23rd, 1977 (4 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Stayin' Alive this ain't. Indeed it reminds me of a Carl Weathers song that was buried under Kung Fu Fighting the year before. This song by one of the Gibb Brothers has decent production quality, but it's not a very interesting song overall, and goes on far too long.

The Emotions - Best of my Love
Number 1 song from August 20th-September 16th, September 24th-30th, 1977 (5 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
Yes, I know this is heresy, but I've never liked this damned song. It just repeats itself endlessly, and I don't find its gospel pretensions convincing. It's not horrific by any stretch of the imagination, but I always think it's three times longer than it is, which is never a good sign. I can only assume it was so popular because of a lack of options.

Meco - Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band
Number 1 song from October 1st-14th, 1977 (2 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: B
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the best selling instrumental single of all time, the only instrumental single ever certified Platinum by the RIAA. Capitalizing on the explosion that was Star Wars, this thing sold two million copies, and served as the theme song to CBS Sports' NFL Football coverage in 1977-8.

Yes, the idea is goofy, and the song overlong, but this is still a pretty good disco re-imagining, and Williams' original score is just that strong.

Debbie Boone - You Light Up My Life
Number 1 song from October 15th-December 23rd, 1977 (10 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: D
And I'm being generous.

Yes, this song is about God. Debbie Boone was then and later became more explicitly, a Christian act. There's nothing intrinsically wrong about with this. Most Christian acts suck because of their music, not the content. This one's no exception though. Slower than molasses in January, this song is to blame for a lot of the hyper-chaste easy listening bullshit we're going to see from here on out, and it singlehandedly torpedoes this entire year. Thanks a million.

The Bee Gees - How Deep is your Love?
Number 1 song from December 24th-January 13th, 1977 (3 weeks)

Havoc's Grade: C
I actually have very fond memories of this song, as it used to play on the radio station I listened to at the age of 7 when I was going to bed. I still think it's a soothing, lullabyesque song, and I mean that in a good way this time. It's nothing tremendously special for the era I suppose, but I remember it well, and I'm glad to end this fairly miserable year on it, as opposed to on Debbie Freaking Boone.

Supplemental Songs

A bad year can often have a heap of good music sitting unnoticed just beneath the surface. Scratch this year, and you will uncover gold.

Kansas - Carry on Wayward Son
1977 Billboard Top 100 position: 58

Havoc's Grade: B
That intro...

A wonderful Prog/Hard rock piece from Kansas, Carry on has all the right hallmarks of late 70s classic rock. Obscure, biblio-mythological lyrics, indulgent guitar/bass solos appearing for no reason in the middle of everything, sudden, drastic tonal shifts seemingly added at random, you know the sort. It's a very good song, the pinnacle of Kansas' work, and very much worthy of a place in any musical history.

Foreigner - Cold as Ice
1977 Billboard Top 100 position: 68

Havoc's Grade: B
I'm not fantastically wild about this song, but its good qualities outweigh its negatives, specifically the main refrain, the wonderful minor-chord-laden baseline, and the general up tempo style of the thing. You simply didn't hear a lot of songs this aggressive (subject-wise) in 1977, and that's something to be recognized.

Aerosmith - Walk This Way
1977 Billboard Top 100 position: 90

Havoc's Grade: B
This is a song I respect more than I actually like. It has a mean riff, and Tyler's flaming lyrics do complement it well, but I've always found the chorus to be a bit anemic by comparison, and the song runs out of energy too fast. This may be why they would eventually go on to punch it up with the aid of Run DMC.

Ram Jam - Black Betty
1977 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: B
An instantly recognizeable classic rock song based on an old black work song from the early 1900s, this song meanders a bit, but it's hard to argue that the meanderings aren't fun, and nobody ever forgets that wonderful hook.

AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
1977 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: B
Not my favorite AC/DC song in the world (we'll get there), but words cannot express how glad I am to see them show up at all. One of the godfathers of hard rock and early metal, this was their first really big song, and remains a fun, rocking anthem to working class crassness, in all its glory.

Cheap Trick - I Want You to Want Me
1977 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: B
I've heard this song called Beatles with rock guitars, but frankly, I just love the energy and overall tone of this song, insipid though the lyrics might be. It's just a fun, poppy, metal song, which makes no sense until you realize that this was the exact thing Cheap Trick were trying for. "Heavy Metal does ABBA" was the line used. Hell, if it works, who cares?

Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill
1977 Billboard Top 100 position: DNQ

Havoc's Grade: A
I absolutely adore this song for reasons that I'm not entirely sure I can describe coherently. The imagery, the sound, the bass line, the riff, everything about this song is just perfect to me, and yet I'm fairly certain that none of you will agree. This, to me, is Prog Rock distilled down to its purest form. Mock if you will, I will take this over all the crap that actually hit number 1.

Other noted songs from 1977:
Rita Coolidge - Higher and Higher
Jimmy Buffett - Margaritaville
Steve Miller Band - Fly Like an Eagle
Foreigner - Feels Like the First Time
Crosby, Stills, & Nash - Just a Song Before I Go
Johnny Rivers - Slow Dancing
Fleetwood Mac - Don't Stop (Thinkin' About Tomorrow)
Heart - Barracuda
Bob Seger - Night Moves
Supertramp - Give a Little Bit
Carly Simon - Nobody Does it Better
Queen - Somebody to Love
Tom Petty - American Girl
The Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen
Stevie Wonder - Isn't She Lovely
Steve Miller Band - Jet Airliner
AC/DC - Let There Be Rock
The Eagles - Life in the Fast Lane
Talking Heads - Psycho Killer

LadyTevar · Post by **LadyTevar** » Fri May 16, 2014 8:16 pm

Yep, that was the year I started taking dance/majorette lessons, and the StarWars theme was one we had a routine to. Having SEEN the movie, I was serious disappointed that we were not "saber fighting" with our batons at points.

Solsbury Hill is one of those songs that just gets to you. I have no clue why, there's just something about the tune and the lyrics that hits the brain in just the right way. The ~dun, dun da dum~ of the flute in the minor key over the jangly upbeat strings, it just -works-

I also agree that "Walk This Way" worked better with the 'punch' from RunDMC. When I hear the original on the oldies station, I always sing the 'newer' version.

BTW: I didn't know that Debbie Boone sang StarWars: "Debbie Boone - Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band"

General Havoc · Post by **General Havoc** » Fri May 16, 2014 10:53 pm

LadyTevar wrote:BTW: I didn't know that Debbie Boone sang StarWars: "Debbie Boone - Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band"

Woops. Fixed.

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