21. “Everything is Beautiful” by Ray Stevens (12th on year-end chart)
Country music was still a force in 1970, but its power was waning. It’s not hard to see why. Music Row producers were exercising ever-increasing control over the Nashville recording process, and they were loath to try anything new.
“Countrypolitan” became the name for this homogenized brand of country pop, bathed in strings and background choirs, and usually offering maudlin lyrics about God and country and, of course, the heartbreak of infidelity. This one even had a children’s choir. Enough said. (Don’t worry, though – the outlaws were on their way.)
20. “Make it With You” by Bread (13th)
David Gates, who fronted the soft-as-cotton pop band Bread, was a pretty good songwriter. He wrote the weirdly wonderful “Saturday’s Child” for the Monkees. But for his own group, he just wrote softer and mushier. Nowhere was that worse than on the uber-icky “Make it With You.” I don’t doubt that many a deal was closed to Gates’ plaintive whine back in the day, but really, where was Barry White?
19. “The Long & Winding Road” by the Beatles (41st)
I doubt anyone is rushing to defend Ray Stevens or Bread, but now we border on sacrilege. The Beatles at 19? Especially given some of the bands and songs that will be ranked higher? This is a very sweet Paul McCartney composition that is utterly ruined by Phil Spector’s overproduction.
I’m not the only one who thinks that. McCartney did too. He hated all the strings and overly dramatic ambience that dwarfs a rather simple tune. He would eventually release the stripped-down version that Spector built on top of, and it is much better. Listen to that one.
18. “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison (not on the year-end top 100)
Wow -- no love for Beatles or former Beatles apparently. Truth is, I do love the Beatles. I love Harrison. I just don’t like when their lesser work is treated like gold. (And yes, I am talking directly about “Now and Then.”) “My Sweet Lord” is far more famous today for the decades-long lawsuit it inspired than for the song itself.
That’s a long story not worth going into here. As for the song, it’s OK, but it suffers from a problem that cursed some of Harrison’s best-known numbers. Extreme repetition. Can you say “Got My Mind Set On You?”
17. “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” by B. J. Thomas (4th)
This is a fairly average Burt Bacharach/Hal David ditty that was elevated in the public consciousness by its inclusion in the hit film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Now, by saying “fairly average Burt Bacharach/Hal David,” that means it is better than 95 percent of the other songs being composed in the era. But this one leans a little bit to the silly side, though it does boast typically tricky Bacharach rhythms.
Any song benefits from having Paul Newman joking around on a bicycle, as happens in the movie. It was a built-in music video in 1970. The only thing holding the song back just a tad is B. J. Thomas, a perfectly pleasant, somewhat generic country pop singer. His delivery is OK, but there’s a reason why the composing team wanted Dionne Warwick to sing most of their songs.
16. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Diana Ross (6th)
This is kind of like the Motown equivalent of countrypolitan. Motownpolitan. Is that a thing? It was Ross’s first number hit as a solo artist after leaving the Supremes, but the overproduced melodrama, which includes a lot of spoken word verses from Ross as well as strings and backing choirs, does the song no favors.
Remember how you can listen to McCartney’s original conception for “Long & Winding Road.” Well, you can, and should, do the same here. The original duet, performed by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell in 1967, is far superior.
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