“American Girl” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1977)
From their debut album, Petty’s first single dropped early in ’77 and caused barely a ripple. But as Petty’s subsequent releases began gaining more and more traction, people started listening to that first song with new ears.
He was scoring top ten hits by the end of the decade, but everyone recognized that “American Girl” was the song he would eventually be known for.
This was a new kind of American rock. Petty was from Florida, but this wasn’t country rock. Not like Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was called Southern Rock or Heartland Rock. Whatever you called him, Tom Petty, along with Bruce Springsteen, became old-school rock and roll’s major bulwarks against the drum machines of disco, the synths of new wave, and the pomposity of arena rock.
“Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads (1977)
Not that there’s anything wrong with new wave. Mainly when David Byrne is operating at the top of his game. “Psycho Killer,” from the band’s debut album, is the kind of song that sounds like it ought to have synthesizers, but unless Jerry Harrison is sneaking some into the mix, I don’t think it does.
The Talking Heads were at the forefront of the sound that would briefly supplant disco as the new challenger to old-school rock and roll. New Wave was dance music, but it often had more complex songs that reinvented blues and funk with new instrumentation.
“Psycho Killer” barely crept into the top 100 in the States, though, perhaps in a nod to German bands like Kraftwerk and Neu!, it was a surprise hit in the Netherlands.
“Radio Radio” by Elvis Costello (1978)
The most potent voice of all the new artists to emerge in the late ‘70s, Elvis Costello was a total package. He came from the singer/songwriter tradition that had spawned Dylan, but musically was equal parts punk and new wave. And though we didn’t notice at the time, that only scratched the surface of his musical ambitions. His first album was packed with dynamic songs.
By the time of his second, This Year’s Model, he had assembled his band, the Attractions. “Radio Radio” was his unsparing takedown of a philistine industry and an entire culture that was too – dare I say – sedated to demand better.
It would have been explosive under any circumstances, but when Costello performed it on SNL in late 1977, it made for a classic piece of live television. Costello was scheduled to play an established song, “Less Than Zero” – from the first album. After a few bars, he stopped the Attractions and launched into a new song that no one had ever heard, angering SNL producer Lorne Michaels.
Elvis meant what he said in “Radio Radio:” “I want to bite the hand that feeds me – I want to bite that hand so badly – I want to make them wish they’d never seen me.”
And thus, despite growing a bit older and battling a touch a middle-age spread, rock and roll lived on.