Best Song: Rita Coolidge - We're All Alone
After listening to the Top 40 I found myself singing this whilst doing other things, then a couple of hours later I listened to it again. Therefore it seems a no brainer to pick this as best song. Not sure when I first heard this, but it was a song I vaguely knew and when I saw it on the Top of the Pops reruns I thought this song is pretty good. On listening to it here, initially I thought it wasn't as good as I remembered it but then the chorus came in and I thought actually yes it is as good as I remember.
Worst Song: Rod Stewart - I Don't Want To Talk About It
The king of crap covers does a crap cover as a double a-side with another crap cover. This was the record that stopped The Sex Pistols topping the charts and was released as a budget single. This song was from his album 2 years prior and the other side "First Cut Is The Deepest" was from his album the year before. I'm guessing a lot of people bought it purely to keep The Sex Pistols off the top and probably never listened to it.
Top 40 Review
1977 was said to be the year punk rescued music much like the Beatles had done back in 1963. Is this true though?
Well if we begin with punk, we have just 2 punk records in this Top 40. There's "God Save The Queen" by The Sex Pistols and "Peaches" by The Stranglers. Both good records, so we're off to a good start even if the amount of punk is a little thin on the ground.
Progressive rock, the genre punk was said to kill off had more of a presence in the charts. There were hits from Emerson Lake & Palmer, Genesis, Supertramp and John Miles. The latter had a disco inspired single in "Slow Down", but all the singles from the progressive rock artists in my opinion are crap.
Disco was the dominant genre in the charts, the only Motown record was a disco record in "Got To Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye. There was a disco re-recording of "Feel the Need" by Detroit Emeralds which is the version I'm most familiar with and the only one I've given full marks to out of all the records purely in the disco camp.
Gladys Knight & the Pips once again narrowly missed out on the best song with the excellent "Baby Don't Change Your Mind". Some will view that as disco music but I would say it's more funk myself.
Elsewhere we have good records from 10cc and Electric Light Orchestra, both bands were always a breath of fresh air when watching the Top of the Pops re-runs from the early days.
Beyond that, there's nothing else I truly like. Still a lot of bland music like there was in 1976. Is 1977 and improvement on 1976 though? Well yes, but only just.
Score: 13
Table
Ironic how the year punk rescued music gets the same score as the year The Beatles rescued music:
No comments:
Post a Comment