My favorite 1970s Albums

(estimated reading time: 4 minutes)

In the beginning...

Ahh the 70s! The golden age of music.

The summer of love was over and many of the '60s heroes were on their way out. Both The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel would fatefully release their final LPs right at the start of the decade ("Let it Be" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water", respectively, came out in 1970), and The Doors would soon follow (with "L.A. Woman", in 1971). 

The world didn't bat an eye and the 1970s also saw the rise of new and exciting acts like Queen, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath, as well as some bands that had been around since the Psychedelia phase, like Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac, finally achieve stardom and wider recognition.

Long were the days of cute Pop/Rock boy bands (at least for a while) and musical experimentation reigned supreme. The '70s were also the golden age of Progressive Rock (better known as Prog), and most household names emerged from that decade (Genesis, Yes, Rush, to name a few). 

While Prog and Classic Rock dominated the first half of the '70s, the second half saw the arrival of Punk as well as the popularization of Disco and Soul. All the while Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones just kept rolling out records, unperturbed and unbothered.

Making the list

Being my favorite decade music-wise and seeing that most of my favorite albums are from the 70s, around 4 years ago, I decided to compile a kinda ultimate, end-all be-all, LISTEN-TO-BEFORE-YOU-DIE top 10 list of the best 70s records.

Now, as a former prog-head, I knew that I was heavily biased towards Prog albums and I suspected that even with the vaaaast musical knowledge I had amassed throughout the years, there were some flaws in my, let's call it, musical education.  

So I decided to start this journey by first consulting 5 different "Top 1970s Albums" lists in various sites and magazines (I included the sources at the end, in case you're curious) and made a short list with the most unanimous ones. I then marked the ones that I had never heard and decided to give each one of them multiple listens before making the final list. This process took 4 years, in part out of my passion and dedication to making this list, but mostly due to laziness and life getting in the way in general.

This was how that short list looked btw:

The Rolling Stones, Exile On Main St. (1972) – in 5 of 5 lists

The Who, Who’s Next (1971) – in 5 of 5 lists

Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks (1975) – in 4 of 5 lists

Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On (1971) – in 4 of 5 lists

Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (1975) – in 4 of 5 lists

Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV (1971) – in 4 of 5 lists

David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972) – in 4 of 5 lists

Stevie Wonder, Innervisions (1973) – in 4 of 5 lists

Fleetwood Mac, Rumours (1977) – in 4 of 5 lists

The Clash, London Calling (1979) – in 4 of 5 lists

In green, I marked the LPs I already knew well, in orange the ones I had listened to at some point in my life but didn't remember well and in red the ones I had never listened to.

Without spoiling the final result, I will say that some of those "new" albums were a very, very pleasant surprise (looking at you Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Marvin Gaye) and just barely didn't make the final list. Others, like "Blood on the Tracks" were really meh for me, but then again, I guess I never really got into Bob Dylan.



Scoring

Being a statistics junky, getting to the final scores was a lengthy process, but I will not pain you with the details.

However I would like to mention that, when I looked at the first version of the "final" list, it became obvious to me that my love of Prog was still outshining everything else and while this IS a personal opinion list, I would also like this to be a list we could show our future Alien overlords in an attempt of persuading them humans are worth saving.

Having said that, for the final calculation, I introduced a negative factor for Prog albums, to balance the bias, and also a positive factor for historical context, for albums that maybe didn't age too well but were innovative when they came out.

I also pondered if I should avoid having 2 records by the same band in the list. In the end I chose to slightly penalize albums other than the highest one from each band, unless they were both historically relevant.

So now, without further ado, here is the final list!

Sources:

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/1970s/best-albums-of-the-1970s/

https://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/2017/07/50_greatest_albums_of_the_1970.html

https://top40weekly.com/top-albums-of-the-70s/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/858d1v/100_best_albums_of_the_70s_according_to_rolling/ (extracted from the original top 500 list published by the Rolling Stone magazine)