1974 poll results: Albums

what a nadir means

Here are the ninety-five albums that received at least two votes in our 1974 poll. (Numbers in parentheses are points, number of votes, and highest points given. Tiebreakers are points per vote, then points excluding highest vote.)

1. Steely Dan: Pretzel Logic (523.5 37 30)

2. Big Star: Radio City (513 36 30)

3. New York Dolls in Too Much Too Soon (473 35 25)

4. Joni Mitchell: Court and Spark (460 35 25)

5. Gram Parsons: Grievous Angel (371 34 30)

6. Richard & Linda Thompson: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (304 25 25)

7. Neil Young: On the Beach (288.5 31 15)

8. Randy Newman: Good Old Boys (266.5 25 25)

9. Brian Eno: Here Come the Warm Jets (253.5 25 20)

10. Bob Marley & the Wailers: Natty Dread (250 24 20)

11. Miles Davis: Get Up with It (227 19 30)

12. Stevie Wonder: Fulfillingness’ First Finale (170.5 20 12.5)

13. Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (165 16 25)

14. Van Morrison: It’s Too Late to Stop Now (163 16 20)

15. Bob Dylan & the Band: Before the Flood (144 14 20)

16. Van Morrison: Veedon Fleece (121 9 30)

17. John Cale: Fear (113.5 14 20)

18. Parliament: Up for the Down Stroke (110 14 15)

19. The Velvet Underground: 1969 Velvet Underground Live (103 9 25)

20. Eric Clapton: 461 Ocean Boulevard (98 10 20)

21. Bob Dylan: Planet Waves (93 11 12)

22. Lou Reed: Rock ’n’ Roll Animal (91 10 15)

23. Linda Ronstadt: Heart Like a Wheel (90.5 11 20)

24. Roxy Music: Country Life (87 11 10)

25. Funkadelic: Standing on the Verge of Getting It On (85 12 10)

26. Mott the Hoople: The Hoople (72 8 17)

27. Jorge Ben: A Tábua de Esmeralda (71 7 20)

28. Labelle: Nightbirds (71 9 10)

29. Toots & the Maytals: In the Dark (65 7 10)

30. Lynyrd Skynyrd: Second Helping (65 8 19)

31. King Crimson: Red (65 10 10)

32. Leonard Cohen: New Skin for the Old Ceremony (58.5 8 10)

33. Roxy Music: Stranded (53 5 17)

34. Kraftwerk: Autobahn (50 5 10)

35. Raspberries: Starting Over (50 5 15)

36. Miles Davis: Big Fun (49 7 10)

37. Ry Cooder: Paradise and Lunch (46 7 10)

38. Willie Nelson: Phases & Stages (44 6 10)

39. Keith Hudson: Pick a Dub (40 4 10)

40. David Bowie: Diamond Dogs (40 4 20)

41=. Bryan Ferry: These Foolish Things (38 5 10)

41=. Dolly Parton: Jolene (38 5 10)

41=. The Wailers: Burnin’ (38 5 10)

44. The Wild Magnolias (37 5 10)

45=. Betty Davis: They Say I’m Different (35 3 15)

45=. Sunny Ade & His African Beats: The Master Guitarist Vol. 11: Sunny Ti De (35 3 15)

47. Robert Wyatt: Rock Bottom (32 4 10)

48. Batsumi (32 4 11)

49. Meters: Rejuvenation (30 3 10)

50. Joe Henderson ft. Alice Coltrane: The Elements (28 3 12)

51. Ema Sugimoto: Ema Is Love (26 2 20)

52. Fela Kuti: Confusion (26 3 10)

53. Henry Cow: Unrest (26 4 10)

54=. Andy Fairweather Low: Spider Jiving (25 3 10)

54=. Betty Wright: Danger High Voltage (25 3 10)

54=. Jackson Browne: Late for the Sky (25 3 10)

54=. John Coltrane: Africa Brass, Vol. II (25 3 10)

54=. Queen: Sheer Heart Attack (25 3 10)

59. Thomas Jefferson Kaye: First Grade (24 4 8)

60. Lou Reed: Sally Can’t Dance (23 4 7)

61. Al Green Explores Your Mind (23 4 8)

62=. Aretha Franklin: Let Me in Your Life (20 2 10)

62=. Can: Soon Over Babaluma (20 2 10)

62=. Cluster: Zuckerzeit (20 2 10)

62=. Franco: Untitled (Azda) (20 2 10)

62=. Franco: Untitled (Mabele) (20 2 10)

62=. Indoda Mahlathini: Ngibuzindlela (20 2 10)

62=. John Lennon: Walls and Bridges (20 2 10)

62=. Johnny Pacheco & Celia Cruz: Celia & Johnny (20 2 10)

62=. Mulatu Astatke: Ethio Jazz (20 2 10)

62=. Shirley Brown: Woman to Woman (20 2 10)

62=. Sly and the Family Stone: Small Talk (20 2 10)

62=. Various artists: Umculo Kawupheli/Soweto Never Sleeps (20 2 10)

74=. Richard & Linda Thompson: Hokey Pokey (20 2 15)

74=. Slapp Happy (20 2 15)

76. Average White Band: AWB (20 3 10)

77. Brownsville Station: School Punks (18 2 10)

78. Gladys Knight & the Pips: Claudine (17 2 10)

79. Aerosmith: Get Your Wings (17 2 12)

80. Spinners: Mighty Love (16 3 6)

81. Harmonia: Musik von Harmonia (15 2 8)

82=. Abdullah Ibrahim: African Space Program (15 2 10)

82=. Bonnie Raitt: Streetlights (15 2 10)

82=. Chie Sawa: 23 (Twenty-Three Years Old) (15 2 10)

82=. Gene Clark: No Other (15 2 10)

82=. Rolling Stones: It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (15 2 10)

82=. Tangerine Dream: Phaedra (15 2 10)

82=. Tom Waits: The Heart of Saturday Night (15 2 10)

89=. Millie Jackson: Caught Up (15 3 5)

90=. Yes: Relayer (15 3 5)

91. Harry Nilsson: Pussy Cats (11 2 6)

92=. Bad Company (10 2 5)

92=. Barry White: Can’t Get Enough (10 2 5)

92=. Blue Oyster Cult: Secret Treaties (10 2 5)

92=. Ronnie Lane: Anymore for Anymore (10 2 5)

You can see all publicly-posted ballots in the voting thread.

One reason I chose 1974 was I wasn’t sure who was going to win, and indeed, it came down to the last ballot counted assigned 30 points to the Dan (blame this guy.) The other reason was, as I said when I announced the poll, I thought the year was “the nadir for Anglo-American music in the rock era”, and maybe you’ll believe me when I say I tried pretty hard to prove myself wrong over the last six weeks. And I guess I did: I’ll amend my statement to “the nadir for Anglo-American albums, excluding jazz, in the rock era”. Singles are hard to count, so we’ll get to them next week. Regarding non-jazz albums, I have no problem with our poll’s closely fought top four and somewhat more distant number five. Beyond that, well, I’m at least glad The Wild Magnolias made the top fifty.

In U.S.—and, pace Neil, Canadian—rock there’s a lot of “yeah, but what about everything else the artist did in the Seventies.” Young’s the paradigm: On the Beach is a perfectly respectable piece of work; the following year he made Tonight’s the Night, and a world where Tonight’s the Night exists is not one where I play On the Beach often. Same for Planet Waves vs. Blood on the Tracks except for the “perfectly respectable”. And while I do respect Randy Newman for making an album I can’t play in public in 2024, it’s not mean enough given the subject.

Soul continued its excellent proto-disco run of singles, but nobody seemed to get around to making a great album. The year’s terribly titled Stevie Wonder doesn’t match the two before and the one after, and was still better than just about all the competition. However, there were at least a couple of albums that, given time, could shoot up in my future estimation. The writing on Millie Jackson’s Caught Up doesn’t always live up to the concept, but Jackson absolutely makes the most of what she gets, turning song into conversation when that helps verisimilitude. And Funkadelic’s Standing on the Verge of Getting It On surprisingly outclassed Up for the Down Stroke in my estimation: where the latter is just a taster for Parliament’s classic run in the second half of the Seventies, the former is an intriguing combination of their early Eddie Hazel rock and their subsequent nation-uniting groove thang; neither element is at its very best but there’s enough there.

With British—and, pace Van, Irish—music I mostly can’t even. Eno easily beats the rest of the Art Guys, not least including his former bandmates, but I can’t wait for him to reach his 1975 mental breakthrough and just chill out. With the Thompsons I recognize what they’re doing is very artful and even beautiful; I apparently just have finite interest when their marriage isn’t disintegrating in my ears. The British album with the most potential for growth in my estimation is The Hoople: there’s too much of it, but the excess, besides being part of the point, isn’t too bad in and of itself. Still, give me the obvious classics by these artists and “Killer Queen” and I’m good for now.

I had figured it was a low point for jazz too because fusion was starting to run things into the ground (even the Mileses seem uneven, especially when Pete Cosey wasn’t around) and the loft scene had yet to hit its stride in the studio. It might’ve been ECM’s peak year, and it was certainly Jan Garbarek’s, but apparently I’m prejudiced enough that even Witchi-Tai-To didn’t make my list. The ’74 jazz album that did, despite a hackneyed concept, was Joe Henderson’s and Alice Coltrane’s The Elements, probably the genre’s best integration of Western and South Asian instrumentation up to that point, with tablas and drones not limiting the improvisation (“Earth” might have the deepest jazz harp I know of, not that I know of much besides A. Coltrane.) And there was plenty of stuff that sounded good that I didn’t have time to give multiple focused listens to—Cecil Taylor’s Spring of Two Blue-J’s for sure, plus somehow John Coltrane had a busy ’74—so maybe I was wrong about jazz. Mea culpa.

Still, it seems to me that perhaps for the first time in the album era, the U.S./Canada/Europe took a clear L to Team Rest of the World. Bob Marley you know about, and I certainly need to dive deeper into Jamaica: the U-Roy self-titled that Frank Kogan had at number one sounded on one play to be at least somewhat prophetic. Asia, as always, I and almost everyone else under-researched. I did sample from Dave Moore’s Japan ’74 project, and while I found the pop to be rather static (compared to the subsequent city pop that Sabrina Carpenter for one is appropriating this season), Gedō’s self-titled live record might be the best heavy rock album in (and you’ll be shocked, shocked I’m saying this) a down year for the genre. Meanwhile South America provided two albums that ended up on my ballot, one new to me. Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango does everything I used to think old school classical music was supposed to do—take some related themes and capital-D Develop them—while remaining, well, fun. Piazzolla’s a revelation (to me) on bandoneon, squeezing out sparks I didn’t know were possible for the instrument to produce. And Jorge Ben’s A Tábau de Esmeralda, which I previously thought was a prime example of the 1974 dip compared to Gil & Jorge and África Brasil, sounded very much list-worthy. Maybe that means it was a weak year, or maybe he was the Americas’ best artist of the mid-Seventies, or both.

And then there’s Africa, but that requires a whole other post which we’ll save for tomorrow.

My top ten non-African albums of 1974:

1. Joni Mitchell: Court and Spark

2. The New York Dolls in Too Much Too Soon

3. Bob Marley & the Wailers: Natty Dread

4. Joe Henderson ft. Alice Coltrane: The Elements

5. Astor Piazzolla: Libertango

6. Gram Parsons: Grievous Angel

7. Jorge Ben: A Tábua De Esmeralda

8. The Wild Magnolias

9. Steely Dan: Pretzel Logic

10. Big Star: Radio City

Might make my list if I ever re-do it:

Funkadelic: Standing on the Verge of Getting It On

Gedō

Millie Jackson: Caught Up

Mott the Hoople: The Hoople

U Roy

plenty of jazz