1970s in music
In popular music, embracing the '70s meant both an elitist withdrawal from the messy concert and counterculture scene and a profiteering pursuit of the lowest common denominator in FM radio and album rock.
"[11]According to Christgau, the decade also saw greater fragmentation along stylistic lines because of the rise of semipopular music: "It goes back to whenever arty types began to find 'the best' rock worthy of attention in the '60s, but in the '60s tolerance was the rule; it was easier to name rough substyles—say British invasion, folk-rock, psychedelic, and soul—than to analyze their separate audiences (even racial distinctions were fuzzy).
And only in the '70s did genres start asserting themselves: singer-songwriter and interpreter, art-rock and heavy metal and country-rock and boogie, fusion and funk and disco and black MOR, punk and new wave, and somehow straddling them all, the monolith of pop-rock.
[15] The flamboyant lyrics, costumes, and visual styles of glam performers were a campy, playing with categories of sexuality in a theatrical blend of nostalgic references to science fiction and old movies, all over a guitar-driven hard rock sound.
[18] Major British soft rock artists of the 1970s included 10cc, Mungo Jerry, the Hollies, Rod Stewart, the Alan Parsons Project, and Paul McCartney and Wings.
Other successful British new wave bands in the late 1970s included the Police, Echo & the Bunnymen, Adam and the Ants, Roxy Music, Squeeze, XTC, the Cure, the Stranglers, Joy Division, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
It then spawned artists such as Stevie Wonder, Rufus, the Brothers Johnson, Kool & the Gang, Chic, Earth, Wind & Fire, the Spinners, King Floyd, Tower of Power, Ohio Players, the Commodores, War, Confunkshun, Gap Band, Slave, Cameo, the Bar-Kays, Zapp, and many more.
Other popular artists in the mainstream were Bill Withers, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Three Dog Night, the Stylistics, the Fifth Dimension, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the O'Jays, Barry White, and Issac Hayes.
The Jacksons — brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael — were the first act in recording history to have their first four major label singles, "I Want You Back", "ABC", "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There" reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
Some of the more notable pop/soft rock groups during the 1970s were the Carpenters, the Jackson 5, Seals & Crofts, the Bee Gees, the Doobie Brothers, Hall & Oates, Bread, Captain & Tennille, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Bay City Rollers, and the Osmonds.
Female soloists who epitomized the 1970s included Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Roberta Flack, Donna Summer, Barbra Streisand, Rita Coolidge, Olivia Newton-John, and Helen Reddy.
Acts like Sonny & Cher, Glen Campbell, John Denver, Tony Orlando and Dawn, husband and wife team Captain & Tennille, brother and sister Donny & Marie Osmond.
Major soft rock artists of the 1970s included Carole King, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Chicago, America, the Eagles, and Fleetwood Mac, whose Rumours (1977) was the best-selling album of the decade.
Bob Dylan's 1975–1976 Rolling Thunder Revue reunited him with a number of folk-rock acts from his early days of performing, most notably Joan Baez, who returned to the charts in 1975 with "Diamonds & Rust".
Some of the most successful singers and songwriters were: Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Jim Croce, John Denver, Neil Diamond, Barry Gibb, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Carole King, Elton John, Don McLean, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Kris Kristofferson, Carly Simon, Donna Summer, Gordon Lightfoot, and Harry Chapin— some had previously been primarily songwriters but began releasing albums and songs of their own.
[13] Popular British acts were the Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Leo Sayer, the Bee Gees, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Supertramp, and the Who; whose lead singer Roger Daltrey made a splash in the 1975 film Tommy, playing the title role, based on the group's 1969 album of the same name.
During the first half of the decade, British acts such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep and Black Sabbath were at the height of their international fame, particularly in the United States.
By the second half of the decade, many other acts had also achieved stardom, namely, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, Alice Cooper, Cactus, James Gang, AC/DC, Blue Öyster Cult, Kiss, Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Ted Nugent.
Psychedelic rock declined in popularity after the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison of the Doors, the self-imposed seclusion of Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd, and the break-up of the Beatles in 1970.
The group – several years removed from their 1965 hit "Flowers on the Wall" – successfully used their vocal harmonies on songs including "Bed Of Rose's," "Do You Remember These," "The Class of '57," "I'll Go To My Grave Loving You," and "Do You Know You Are My Sunshine."
In 1979, a third group – the Fort Payne-based band Alabama, the core being cousins Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry, and Jeff Cook, along with drummer Mark Herndon – emerged, releasing the mellow love ballad "I Wanna Come Over"; although only reaching the mid-30s on the country chart, "... Over" was a foreshadowing of what was to come for one of the most successful country music groups/bands of all time, with their blend of soft rock and Southern rock (which would be featured on their next single, "My Home's In Alabama," recorded in 1979 and released in January 1980).
By the later half of the 1970s, Dolly Parton, a highly successful traditional-minded country artist since the late 1960s, mounted a high-profile campaign to crossover to pop music, culminating in her 1977 hit "Here You Come Again", which peaked at No.
On August 8, 1975, Williams was nearly killed in a mountain climbing accident on the Ajax Peak in southwestern Montana; his recovery took two years, and it was thereafter that he adopted his signature look – a beard, sunglasses, and a cowboy hat.
The most successful of these were Ricky Nelson ("Garden Party", 1972), Paul Anka ("(You're) Having My Baby", 1974), Neil Sedaka ("Laughter in the Rain" and "Bad Blood", both 1975), and Frankie Valli as both a solo artist (1975's "My Eyes Adored You") and with The Four Seasons (1976's "December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)").
[32] The early seventies also marked the deaths of rock legends Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, gospel great Mahalia Jackson, and Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas.
Additional top music acts in Australia and New Zealand included Little River Band, Sherbet, Skyhooks, John Paul Young, Marcia Hines, Jon English, Stevie Wright, Richard Clapton, Dragon, Hush, and the Ted Mulry Gang.
Musical artists in the 1970s included, in particular, Momoe Yamaguchi, Saori Minami, the Candies, Pink Lady, Hiromi Go, Hideki Saijo, Yuming, Saki Kubota, Judy Ongg and Sachiko Kobayashi.
Original Pilipino music (OPM), mostly sentimental ballads, developed in the mid-1970s and became the dominant form of Filipino pop, helped by government-set local content quotas on radio that begun in 1973.
Some major Filipino acts of the decade are Freddie Aguilar, Rico J. Puno, Rey Valera, APO Hiking Society, Claire dela Fuente, Imelda Papin, Hotdog, Sampaguita and VST & Company.
The Argentine defeat in the Falklands War in 1982 followed by the fall of the mhilitary junta that year diminished need of Nueva Canción as protest music there in favour of other styles.
