Even with and expanded scoring system it's tough giving each record a score. You may be familiar with the term "a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work". This is the approach I'm trying to go for with my scoring logic.
The Temptations are one of my favourite music acts from this era but my least favourite of their big hits by far is "Papa Was a Rollin Stone". Many of us have stand out records we don't like by our favourite musicians and for me and The Temptations this is the one.
In theory I should give this record zero, but when you take an average record by an artist you can take or leave such as "Daniel" by Elton John and ask would I really prefer to listen to this record than The Temptations one, the answer would be no.
On the other hand you have a band like Focus. All I know about them is they're a Dutch progressive rock band and have never heard any other their records outside the 2 that feature in this batch which were their only 2 Top 40 hits. "Sylvia" is just brilliant, rather short for a progressive rock tune but I feel I could easily listen to a 20 minute version. "Hocus Pocus" is just bonkers and a good record in it's own right but suffers from the fact it's not "Sylvia".
In 2nd place we have the Top 40 debut of Thin Lizzy with "Whisky In The Jar". It would take another 3 years until we'd see them in the Top 40 again.
Then we have some Motown in 3rd place with "Take Me Girl I'm Ready" by Junior Walker & the All Stars, a more obscure one but great partly for that reason. Some northern soul in 4th place with "There's Gonna Be A Showdown" by Archie Bell & the Drells.
Next up we have "Roll Over Beethoven" by ELO which would rank near the bottom in my ratings of their hits but that's a sign of how good they were, this is a great record.
None of the records are bad enough to score zero but the worst record is "Take Me Home Country Roads". It's an inferior cover of a song that I don't particularly like.
In some ways 1973 is unchartered territory for me. In my numerous attempts at exploring the 70s charts I begin with 1970 but don't make it this far. At the same time it pre-dates the Top of the Pops reruns. However I'm quite encouraged by this batch of records generally speaking.
Score: 55
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