Best Song: The Clash - (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
Easy choice this week as this was also my record of the year for 1978. A great punk/reggae crossover song. It's beaten some pretty good competition too.
Worst Song: John Paul Young - Love Is In The Air
This is one of many examples of where disco went horribly wrong. The truth is there is a lot of decent disco music out there, but cheesy crap like this gave disco a bad name. The fact I've heard this so many times in my life probably doesn't help either.
Top 40 Review
We're now into the era of new wave and there were 3 records in this Top 40 that fall into that category. There's "Like Clockwork" by The Boomtown Rats, "Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand and "Pump It Up" by Elvis Costello And The Attractions. The latter gets half a mark but it's a zero for the other two.
Disco music is still dominating the charts and there is one forgotten gem in there from Sine with "Just Let Me Do My Thing". The Rolling Stones have jumped on the bandwagon with "Miss You" but this is actually a good record. It's also the era of Saturday Night Fever with records from Tavares with "More Than A Woman", Yvonne Elliman with "If I Can't Have You" and the sort of title track from The Bee Gees with "Night Fever". Of those, I like the Tavares and The Bee Gees records.
We're also in the era of Grease with John Travolta And Olivia Newton-John at number one with "You're The One That I Want" but I can't say that record is to my liking.
Once again Electric Light Orchestra deliver the goods with "Wild West Hero". The biggest eye opener though is the number of late 70s tunes that I heard for the first time in the last 10 years that I've taken a liking to and started listening to are in this chart. These are "Airport" by The Motors, "Dancin' In The City" by Marshall Hain, "Davy's On The Road Again" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, "Making Up Again" by Goldie and "Substitute" by Clout.
At first glance it almost looks like this could be the best chart ever. But looking beyond what's already been mentioned, there's little else really worth listening to. Lindisfarne once again have a decent record in "Run For Home" and there are a number of ok songs, I was surprised to find the Black Sabbath record wasn't bad for example.
We're heading in the right direction though.
Score: 16
Table
1978 is second best year of the decade after 1970. Just one year of the 70s left to look at:
No comments:
Post a Comment