Ranking each year of music in the 1970s from worst to best
By Jonathan Eig
1978 (38 points)
1. Shadow Dancing
2. Night Fever
3. You Light Up My Life
4. Stayin’ Alive
5. Kiss You All Over
6. How Deep is Your Love
7. Baby Come Back
8. Thicker Than Water
9. Boogie Oogie Oogie
10. Three Times a Lady
The year of disco. Five of the top ten songs were courtesy of the Gibb family. Three came from their band, the Bee Gees, who performed songs for the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. Two more were solo works from the Gibbs’s younger brother Andy, whose “Shadow Dancing” finished the year on top. Four of those five songs were forgotten within a few years.
The only one that wasn’t is also the only thing really separating ’78 from ’77. “Stayin’ Alive” (apostrophe totally appropriate) is one of the greatest disco songs from the entire disco era. Otherwise, Exile’s lusty “I Want to Kiss You All Over” is decent enough, and even Bee Gee’s “Night Fever” is OK if you forget it. There’s not much else keeping 1978 alive.
1975 (49 points)
1. Love Will Keep Us Together
2. Rhinestone Cowboy
3. Philadelphia Freedom
4. Before the Next Teardrop Falls
5. My Eyes Adored You
6. Some Kind of Wonderful
7. Shining Star
8. Fame
9. Laughter in the Rain
10. One of These Nights
Weighted down by one of the worst top songs of the decade, 1975 at least had fewer objectionable big hits than ’77 or ’78. And it had one standout in Earth, Wind & Fire’s ultrafunky “Shining Star.” “Rhinestone Cowboy” is far from Glenn Campbell’s best, but even medium Campbell is pretty good. The same applies to the overly sentimental-but-sweet Frankie Valli number “My Eyes Adored You.” The movie/dance epic “Fame” and rockers “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “One of These Nights” (OK – soft rocker) are also easy to listen to even if they don’t bring the house down.
1979 (50 points)
1. My Sharona
2. Bad Girls
3. Le Freak
4. Do Ya Think I’m Sexy
5. Reunited
6. I Will Survive
7. Hot Stuff
8. YMCA
9. Ring My Bell
10. Sad Eyes
The best of the disco years are owed to very good songs from Chic, Gloria Gaynor, and two from Donna Summer. I think Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” was the best of the top ten in ’79, but “Le Freak” and “Bad Girls” are close behind. I’ve already talked about “My Sharona,” and I just don’t want to talk about Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell,” or Robert John’s “Sad Eyes,” because that require listening to them again, and well, I’m not as strong a Gloria Gaynor. I don’t know if I will survive another chorus of “Sad Eyes.”