That Seventies list: A debrief

With graphs!

The list:

Numbers 77–51

Numbers 50–26

Numbers 25–1

Corrected near-complete Spotify playlist (the YouTube interface is too annoying for me to make something similar there, sorry):

What it means to be against the Seventies

I frequently tell my group chat or Facebook equivalent that I hate the Seventies, which of course is mostly a rhetorical flourish. I’m an album-lover at heart, and the ‘70s were the first decade in which LP-making was a genuinely worldwide pursuit, which meant that cutting this list to 77 was harder than cutting my Sixties list to 60. The comparative weakness of the Seventies is, quite simply, the United States of America. There are 29 US albums on my ‘70s list, counting Rumours and Colón & Lavoe’s Lo mato but filing Celia Cruz under Cuba, compared to 38 on my shorter ‘60s list. This breaks down to 19 in jazz/soul/funk/disco, 9 in rock/folk/country, plus 1 salsa. The Roches and Have Moicy! seem sufficient representation for folk. Country was unlucky. With respect to Willie and No Fences, it was still a singles music back then, and Dolly aside, timing just didn’t work out for its major artists: Loretta’s great songs are unfortunately evenly split between decades. That leaves Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, and four arrows pointing towards New Wave: the New York Dolls, Television, Blondie, and the B-52’s. Notably absent: heavy rock, yacht-adjacent rock, prog. It might well be a personal failing of mine that I like-not-love the Stooges and Stevie Dan, but looking over my list there’s absolutely nothing I’d bump for Fun House or Pretzel Logic. For prog, well, between Brazil, Miles, and arguably even Sly, it’s a pretty progressive top ten.

As to whether a quarter of the list being African-American music is good or not, it depends on your baseline. In the Fifties and Sixties, a majority of the entries were by Af-Am artists, which wasn’t sustainable once the rest of the world (including African-Africans) started developing domestic markets for long-players. Still, I think there’s reason to be slightly disappointed with Actually Popular Black Music (jazz makes a solid showing but has clearly drifted away from mass appeal.) The handful of soulsters who were among the late twentieth century’s greatest singers and were at or close to their peaks make their appearances, and disco, also mostly a singles music, does as well as can expected. So I think the issue is with… funk, and the progressive end of soul. Doesn’t help that the Hardest Working GOAT in Show Business showed no interest in great albums (yes, that includes Sex Machine), but even beyond him, so many funk albums are great as sources of samples for rap yet aren’t as consistent as I’d like as start-to-finish experiences: even The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire quickly reaches the ‘just get to “September” already’ stage of the calendar. As for What’s Going On, all I have are the AARP-eligible arguments that (i) it isn’t in the same league as There’s a Riot with regards to depth or innovation, (ii) it doesn’t have that many actually good songs. I look forward to trotting out the same arguments against Frank Ocean (substituting Kendrick for Sly) when millennials decide Blonde is the all-time GOAT in my old age.

Years

There’s a bias toward the later part of the decade, though it’s not as pronounced as it was in my ‘50s and ‘60s lists. Part of this is structural: the rules allow compilations that “feel Seventies”, which is more likely to be met by a 1979 best-of than a 1970 one, though I would’ve permitted Sly’s Greatest Hits if he hadn’t made the album of the decade the following year. And yet the low count for 1970 (just Neil/Aretha/Van) is an outlier even accounting for this. The main explanation is the LP biz outside of the Anglosphere was still ramping up, plus several of that year’s most well-remembered albums were heavy rock, which see above.

Gender

The gender count is 9 female, 16 mixed, 52 male, which of course in an absolute sense is bad. For comparison, my Sixties top 60 had 11 female, 2 mixed, 47 male, so the big improvement is in the mixed category. Semi-subjectively breaking down the 16 I classified as “mixed” in the ‘70s list:

• Male auteur(s) with women musicians in the group: 5

• Female auteur with male musicians in the group: 1 (X-Ray Spex)

• Compilation with both male and female artists: 2

• Major contributions from both men and women: 8

The last category is the most interesting. Here’s who I have there:

Nelson Ângelo & Joyce
The Staple Singers
Novos Baianos
Elis & Tom
Joe Henderson & Alice Coltrane
Fleetwood Mac
Blondie
The B-52’s

Yay for gender cooperation in Brazil? Eight out of 77 in total isn’t much, but I don’t know if any subsequent decade will do better. Sad!

Countries

First a belated note on my overall list approach. I wanted to be fair to both albums I’ve listened to my entire adult life and to albums I discovered during my research for this project. So to prevent the former categories from swamping everything, I considered future potential as well. That is, I’ve derived more life-so-far enjoyment from The Clash (#5) than África Brasil (#2) because I’ve heard it many dozens more times, but I’m forecasting that over the rest of my life I’m going to get more out of the latter. Will I be right, I dunno, ask me in the 2050s. Anyway, this approach means instead of having an 80+% Anglo list, there’s a much more reasonable balance.

The total for the US + UK + Canada is 39 while the rest of the world sums to 38, so it looks like a win for Team Anglosphere. HOWEVER the US figure includes the collab between Willie Colón/Héctor Lavoe, both definitely American and both very much not Anglo. So I’ll award a Dusty Finish victory to Team World. Though Team Anglosphere may grumble, they should be strong favorites for my Eighties list, with Australia and New Zealand ready to come off the bench and a new weapon prepared to hippie-to-the-hop its way into play. Meanwhile, while I’m sure Brazil and Jamaica will still be represented, it’s unlikely they’ll come close to the numbers they put up for the ‘70s. Africa will still be strong, while with Latin music I don’t know what I don’t know.

Popularity

The most streamed album on the list by a long way is Rumours, with 8.3 billion Spotify plays (plus another half billion for “Silver Springs”), averaging 758 million per song. Fleetwood Mac are the artist with the most monthly listeners, with Dolly suddenly rising to second for obvious reasons.

The other end is more interesting. Here are the artists with under 5,000 monthly listeners:

• Nelson Ângelo: 3,589 (Joyce has 147k)

• Batsumi: 3,160

• Air: 2,108 (Henry Threadgill has 17k)

• Arthur Blythe: 1,548

• Frank Lowe: 456

• Louis Moholo-Moholo: 148/Louis Moholo: 104

• Hannibal and the Sunrise Orchestra: 130 (Marvin Hannibal Peterson: 260)

• Zuhura Swaleh: 11 (Zuhura & Party: 184)/Matano Juma: 21

The artists from Africa Dances I can find on Spotify range from S.E. Rogie with 27k monthly listeners to M. Makhuvele with 2. (That’s two, not 2k.) As with the Sixties, the most underheard stuff is African or free jazz or both. I’ll just say that Moholo-Moholo’s (non-Spotify) Spirits Rejoice! is lots of fun and requires no special knowledge of avant-jazz conventions. Hopefully a couple of hundred of you will agree.

What’s next

I’ll take my time figuring out how to approach a top 80 of the 1980s (sadly can’t make it a top 88 since SOME people ruined that number) and think about what I don’t currently know well enough besides, like, the world. I’ll try to publish next summer, hopefully earlier summer rather than late. In the meantime I’ll enjoy not having any big project deadlines hanging over me.

… oh right, I said I was going to do a 1996 poll, didn’t I? <opens a dozen Discogs tabs>

Previous decade lists:

Top 50 albums of the Fifties

Top 60 albums of the Sixties