When asking what the absolute worst era for music actually was, most Boomers and Gen-X-ers will probably answer the 1970s and the early 70s in particular. A time immediately predating me, I have no authority on what it was really like or how things turned so… brown coming out of the comparatively Day-Glo 1960s. Browsing through a list of the era’s number one hits, one finds support to back up this notion: “Tie A Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Ole Oak Tree”, “The Candy Man”, “My Ding-A-Ling”—all easy targets for sure, but don’t forget when bad hits happened to good people like Paul McCartney’s putrid “My Love”. On the other hand, “It’s Too Late”, “You’re So Vain”, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” and Macca’s own “Band On The Run” also topped the charts. No matter the era or the year (as we’ll see here), there was always plenty of excellent pop music to go with all the bad stuff.

Scan through the following list of fifty songs and you’ll see there’s a lot going on: the golden age of the singer/songwriter with figures as disparate as Randy Newman, Todd Rundgren and Cat Stevens; the last great gasps of Top 40 AM radio (The Fortunes, George Baker Selection); truly new sounds from other lands (CAN’s krautrock, the peculiar, Polish vocalese of the Novi Singers); psychedelic hangovers (the Martyn’s, Linda Perhacs); perennial, titanic figures at their peaks (Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison, Elton John, Paul Simon); UK glam-pop (T. Rex, Sweet) and UK art-rock (Pink Floyd, Roxy Music and their ex-member Brian Eno.)

Arguably, the creative leaps in music made by African-American artists most crucially defines this period. While Dionne Warwick and James Brown each push their aesthetic (baroque pop-soul and relentless funk, respectively) as far as they reasonably can, an upstart such as Gil Scott-Heron heavily anticipates hip-hop, another like Bill Withers writes songs rivaling Newman’s own and Curtis Mayfield, a relative veteran redefines the times by singing explicitly of them. The Pointer Sisters recontextualize the past for the present, The Fifth Dimension convey how sophisticated the latter could be and Barry White and Gladys Knight & The Pips thrillingly look ahead towards what would later become disco.

All that and novelties (Redbone), Broadway (Pippin), the rock movie musical (Paul Williams, more convincing there than as a singer-songwriter) and of course, the inaugural international smash from Eurovision-winning ABBA, whom we’ll see plenty of in the next couple of years. We officially begin next week with 1975!

1970-74: Keep On Keepin’ On

1. Al Stewart, “A Small Fruit Song”
2. Rodriguez, “Crucify Your Mind”
3. Novi Singers, “Torpedo”
4. John Martyn & Beverly Martyn, “Auntie Aviator”
5. George Baker Selection, “Little Green Bag”
6. Tom Jones, “Daughter of Darkness”
7. Linda Perhacs, “Parallelograms”
8. Van Morrison, “Into The Mystic”
9. George Harrison, “What Is Life”
10. Randy Newman, “Have You Seen My Baby?”
11. Cat Stevens, “Don’t Be Shy”
12. Harry Nilsson, “Jump Into The Fire”
13. Redbone, “The Witch Queen Of New Orleans”
14. Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
15. Bill Withers, “Harlem”
16. Serge Gainsbourg, “Melody”
17. Dionne Warwick, “Amanda”
18. James Brown, “Hot Pants”
19. The Fortunes, “Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again”
20. The Who, “My Wife”
21. Ben Vereen/Pippin Original Cast, “Magic To Do”
22. Big Star, “The Ballad of El Goodo”
23. CAN, “Spoon”
24. Carly Simon, “You’re So Vain”
25. Curtis Mayfield, “Superfly”
26. The Fifth Dimension, “(Last Night) I Didn’t Get To Sleep At All”
27. Paul Simon, “Mother and Child Reunion”
28. Lou Reed, “Satellite of Love”
29. T. Rex, “Telegram Sam”
30. Todd Rundgren, “I Saw The Light”
31. Barry White, “I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little More Babe”
32. Bryan Ferry, “A Hard Rain A-Gonna Fall”
33. Elton John, “Grey Seal”
34. Gladys Knight & The Pips, “I’ve Got To Use My Imagination”
35. Sweet, “Little Willy”
36. The Pointer Sisters, “Yes We Can Can”
37. Stevie Wonder, “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing”
38. John Cale, “Paris 1919”
39. Pink Floyd, “The Great Gig In The Sky”
40. Al Green, “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)”
41. ABBA, “Waterloo”
42. Brian Eno, “Mother Whale Eyeless”
43. Steely Dan, “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”
44. Richard & Linda Thompson, “I Want to See The Bright Lights Tonight”
45. Kiki Dee, “I’ve Got The Music In Me”
46. Leonard Cohen, “Who By Fire”
47. Sparks, “Hasta Manana, Monsieur”
48. The Staple Singers, “City In The Sky”
49. Roxy Music, “Prairie Rose”
50. Paul Williams, “The Hell Of It”