Ranking each year of music in the 1970s from worst to best

Before we get to our final collection of great songs from the 1970s, I thought I’d try something a little different. That final genre is pop, the easiest genre to recognize and the hardest to define. That’s because it really isn’t a genre at all – at least not one defined by recognizable musical elements or lyrical concerns. “Pop” is simply short for “popular.”  The label evolved as a way to categorize songs that had an outsized impact on the public. Thus, as public tastes evolved, so did the meaning of “pop.”

It may be broadly true that in the rock & roll era, which is what we are currently discussing, mid-tempo ballads, often focused on romance, were the most generic form of pop. However, as the decade wore on and disco became increasingly dominant, pop also became more interested in a dance beat.

Even allowing for that doesn’t begin to get at the expansive nature of what we call pop music. There is always something new on the horizon. There’s a reason why we invented terms for power pop, bubblegum pop, and pop rock. They would soon joined by Britpop and dance-pop, Europop, and even pop-punk.

The 1970s was a great decade for music but which year was the best?

If it was popular, it could be called pop.

When I finally complete this and do a pop songs list, I will not stay beholden to the Billboard charts. By that, I mean I won’t simply defer to what was most popular at the time and claim these songs represent the best of “pop” music from the ‘70s.  I intend to use some judgment so that if a song shares many of the qualities of the biggest hits but does not chart quite as high, I may select it if I think it is a better song. That’s where we get to use the gifts of time and perspective.

To wit, Billboard’s biggest song of 1979 was “My Sharona” by the Knack. I remember distinctly when “My Sharona” came out. I remember listening to it about fifty-thousand times. I loved “My Sharona” back then. Today, not so much. I mean, I don’t hate it the way some do today. That grows as much out of what we now know about the song’s creation and the queasiness associated with Doug Fieger’s obsession with 17-year-old Sharona Alperin.

That is a discussion for another time. For me, I have just grown to appreciate some of Fieger’s slightly more nuanced explorations into that obsession. (“That’s What the Little Girls Do” is equally queasy but a flat-out better song.)

Enough about the Knack. Except for this…

I wanted to acknowledge the songs that, for better or worse, were just plain popular in the 1970s. So here’s what I decided to do, you know, just to make it a little more interesting.

I am looking at the Billboard year-end top tens from each year in the decade. Ten songs from each of the ten years that represent what the public was most into. I am going to give each song a score from one to ten and then add up the totals for each year. That way, I intend to show what the ‘70s best year was for pop music. And the worst year. And all the years in between.

Let me offer this one disclaimer. I am rating 100 songs here. The one-to-ten score will be based on my own opinion of how good the song is. That’s it. I absolutely guarantee that you will disagree with some – maybe a lot – of my scoring. That’s OK. I’m doing this to remind or introduce readers (depending on your age) to a lot of interesting songs. The ratings are just a way to put a marker down that you can discuss and debate.

So let’s begin with the worst decade of the 1970s in terms of popular music – as represented by the year-end top ten songs.

1977 - score - (35 points)

1. Tonight's the Night
2. I Just Want to Be Your Everything
3. Best of My Love
4. Evergreen
5. Angel in Your Arms
6. I Like Dreamin’
7. Don’t Leave Me This Way
8. Higher and Higher
9. Undercover Angel
10. Torn Between Two Lovers

Disco wouldn’t be a tidal wave until the following year, but you can see it here in the presence of Andy Gibb’s soporific pap “I Just Want to Be Your Everything.”  Add to that one of the worst top songs of any year in Rod Stewart’s equally sleepy stab at seduction. The best of the group, Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” is a decent middle-of-the-road dance number. But when surrounded by cutesy hack romances like “I Like Dreamin’” (with its inexplicable apostrophe), “Undercover Angel,” and “Torn Between Two Lovers,” middle-of-the-road dance is a welcome relief.