Ranking each year of music in the 1970s from worst to best
By Jonathan Eig
1973 (57 points)
1. Tie a Yellow Ribbon
2. Bad Bad Leroy Brown
3. Killing Me Softly
4. Let’s Get It On
5. My Love
6. Why Me
7. Crocodile Rock
8. Will It Go Round in Circles
9. You’re So Vain
10. Touch Me in the Morning
1973 has the most diversity of any year in the ‘70s. There were only two songs to which I gave middling grades (4, 5, or 6) They were the top song on the list and the bottom song on this list. The others were all very solid pop hits, topping out with Elton John’s best major hit, “Crocodile Rock,” and supported by fine work from Marvin Gaye, Jim Croce, Roberta Flack, Billy Preston, and Carly Simon.
It is really only weighted down by very weak efforts from two of the finest songwriters of the era. Paul McCartney’s “My Love” is atrocious, while the recently departed Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me” is a fairly generic song of praise which is not elevated by Kristofferson’s mediocre vocals.
1971 (58 points)
1. Joy to the World
2. Maggie May
3. It’s Too Late
4. One Bad Apple
5. How Can You Men a Broken Heart
6. Indian Reservation
7. Go Away Little Girl
8. Take Me Home Country Roads
9. Just My Imagination
10. Knock Three Times
1971 was fascinating. You have two incarnations of the Osmonds: Donny’s solo cover of “Go Away Little Girl,” which may not be all that good but is significantly better than the original by Steve Lawrence a decade earlier. And The Osmonds as a group doing perhaps their best bubblegum pop song in “One Bad Apple.” You also have pre-Disco Bee Gees with the fairly maudlin “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”
But you also have actual rock & roll songs in the top ten. The Raiders’ “Indian Reservation” is the hardest rocker, but Rod Stewart’s Maggie May (a double-sided single with “Reason to Believe on the B side) and Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” (like with Stewart, a double-sided hit with the even better “I Feel the Earth Move” on the flip side) are also rock & roll songs. You also get the sublime Motown soul of the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination." A pretty good year.