The year was 1976. Everything was weird, but especially the music. Everyone was walking around saying “Dy-no-mite!” » or “In your nose with a rubber hose.” Jimmy Carter became the first president to attend the Allman Brothers. The Apple computer and the VHS player were invented. So it was The puppet show. Farrah Fawcett’s poster was everywhere. The radio was full of Stevie Wonder and Kiss. On Saturday evening liveLorne Michaels offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite. A few months later, George Harrison showed up to recover. It was that kind of year.
You could go to the movies and see Sly Stallone in RockyRobert De Niro in Taxi driverand Sissy Spacek in Carrie. (Blood had a big year.) Or you could sit at home, get stoned and watch the tube, for example. The Jeffersons, Charlie’s Angels, What’s Happening!!, Family Feud, Good timesOr Welcome back, Kotter. It was a great summer of baseball, thanks to Bad news bears And rolling stone cover star Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. Richard Pryor was dating Pam Grier. Everyone was working on their night moves.
But nothing was weirder – or cooler – than music. So, let’s break this down by celebrating the 76 best albums of 1976. Stevie Wonder became everyone’s favorite with Songs in the Key of Life. New sounds were emerging, from Jamaican dub to CBGB punk, from outlaw country to stoner rock. The band played its farewell show “Last Waltz” on Thanksgiving. Frampton came to life. P-Funk met Dr. Funkenstein. It was the summer of the Bicentennial immortalized in Dazed and confused. Rush traveled to 2112. The Eagles checked into the Hotel California, and last we heard, they were still arguing with the front desk.
It was a glorious year for single hits on radio – number one hits included “Disco Duck” (feathers in the club), “Play That Funky Music” (“white booooo“), “A Fifth of Beethoven” (classic disco), “Convoy” (trucks on CB radio) or “Afternoon Delight” (not aaa ask). But it’s the classic albums we’re toasting right now. Our list includes disco, prog, soul, folk, metal, Chicago blues, Brazilian samba and New Orleans funk. We have classic debuts from the Ramones, Boston, Blondie, the Runaways. We have gems from singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Al Green and Warren Zevon.
But what do all these albums have in common? They still sound like rubbish, 50 years after their release. So here’s the Spirit of 1976. Don’t fear the reaper, folks, and have a great day.
Hall & Oates, “bigger than both of us”
Welcome to 1976, the kind of year when the hottest boy-boy duo in pop history could introduce themselves by asking the question: “Do you believe in sexy cars, leather bars and movie stars?” Philadelphia dogs Daryl Hall and John Oates take the spotlight with their groundbreaking album Bigger than both of us and their first number one smash, “Rich Girl”. It also features Me Decade’s great pep talk “Do What You Want, Be What You Are,” in which Daryl sings the wise words: “The strong give up and move on / While the weak give up and stay.” » “John and I were never lovers,” Daryl told Rolling Stone. “Not my type. Too dark and small.” But 50 years later, they are still on top… (touch the earpiece) Wait, seriously? Did they break up?For what? Pull yourself together, you two! But Bigger is an archetypal pop classic from 1976 and the perfect place to start this party.–Rob Sheffield
James Brown, “Get Up From This Thing”
By 1976, the Godfather of Soul was becoming interested in the disco sounds of artists like Earth, Wind & Fire and the Ohio Players. But he wasn’t interested in their lavish productions, and his sound remained as raw as ever. His second LP of three that he released in 1976 opens with the Scream in the Red that kicks off its title track, a nine-minute jam inspired by an audience at a show in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who remained seated during Brown’s set. Their lameness is our lucky break – the song is one of his last true classics. Get up from this thing also has “I Refuse to Lose,” an empowerment anthem for the stagflation-plagued ’70s doldrums, and the good-natured workouts “Can’t Take It With You” and “This Feeling.”–Jon Dolan
Al Stewart, “The Year of the Cat”
Scottish singer-songwriter Al Stewart got his start on the London folk scene of the mid-’60s, briefly sharing a flat with another scene unknown named Paul Simon. By the mid-1970s, he was riding the soft-rock wave, with a taste for literary lyrics, meticulous arrangements, and light, airy guitar work. Stewart achieved his greatest success with his seventh album,Year of the Cat. “On the Border” floats an evocation of the anti-colonial struggle on a sea breeze melody; on “Flying Sorcery,” the planes in the fog are a metaphor for doomed lovers; “Broadway Hotel” tells the story of a single woman having an affair with a hotel room service employee. This all comes together in the hit title song, a Casablanca-inspired plot about a man on an exotic vacation who falls in love with a mysterious patchouli-scented woman and finds his travel itinerary upended and his life turned upside down.–JD
Loretta Lynn, “When the Tingle Becomes a Chill”
By the time Loretta Lynn is 27th solo album out on shelves, she had already spent the last few years releasing songs that redefined the way a woman in country music was able to sing about sexuality and desire (“The Pill,” “Rated X”). Made in grower Owen Bradley’s barn in Mount Juliet Tennessee, When the tingling becomes a thrill boasted a title song, written by Lola Jean Dillon, that traced what happens when the spark leaves a relationship and the bedroom (“the body plays but the soul has no will,” ouch). Lynn also delivered a gloriously brilliant version of Glen Campbell’s hit “Rhinestone Cowboy,” the brooding misdirection of “Red, White and Blue” and “All I Want From You (Is Away),” which showcased her keen sonic sense of humor. —Marissa R. Moss
Kiss, “Rock and Roll Over”
Following the conceptual phase of their other 1975 album, Destructive (see issue 25), Kiss returned to straight-up hard rock on their fifth studio LP, hailed by some fans as their best album. It was their first time in the studio with ultra-reliable producer Eddie Kramer, who had mixed their groundbreaking 1975 live album. AliveIand the sound is much punchier than their previous, sometimes murky records. “I Want You” begins as sensitive acoustic schlock but quickly morphs into irresistibly swaggering pop-metal, and the solid songs keep coming, from “Take Me” to “Calling Dr. Love” to “Hard Luck Women,” originally written for Rod Stewart and containing a spot-on impression of Rod on drummer Peter Criss’ vocals.-JD
Burning Spear, ‘Garvey’s Ghost’
Garvey’s ghost was the pioneering dub version of Burning Spear’s radical reggae statement, Marcus Garvey. Winston Rodney was in tears in 1976 – he also published The man in the hills. Garvey’s ghost was mixed in London, but the aim was to take dub to a new sonic place. “Now you get a lot of artificial dubbing effects in Jamaica,” producer Jack Ruby explained in Sounds“but I didn’t use any with this record, so as not to interfere with the music.” Spectral grooves cast a spell focusing on individual instruments, particularly Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace’s drumming, for an eerie sense of dread. “Jamaican surf music,” Greil Marcus called it. “Suffice it to say that slave ships are visible on the horizon.”–RS
KC and the Sunshine Band, ‘Part 3’
A disco party, with a big rainbow on the cover. On Part 3KC and the Sunshine Band offer a three-way plan for spiritual unity: (1) shake, shake, (2) shake, shake, (3) shake your booty. Then start again at the top. The Miami funkateers, led by Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch, wanted to strut their stuff after their 1975 self-titled smash, so they upped the ante, refining disco bliss into pure tantric repetition: “Shake Shake Shake (Shake Your Booty),” “I’m Your Boogie Man,” “I Like To Do It” and, best of all, “Keep It Coming Love.” KC and the Sunshine Band appeared on Dolly Parton’s variety show in December 1976: you didn’t live until you saw Dolly perform with them on “That’s the Way I Like It.”–RS
Merle Haggard, “My Love Affair with Trains”
On Merle Haggard’s twentieth album, My love affair with trainsthe slow death of the black iron horse is a metaphor for the loss of a way of life and a vision of America itself. On the title song written by Dolly Parton, Merle plays a sedentary family man whose wanderer’s blood boils every time he hears that lonely whistle. “Here Comes the Freedom Train” travels through our nation’s history with democratic progress pumping the engine and heroes from Washington to Lincoln to MLK as conductor. The heart of the album lies in the nostalgia of “Where Have All the Hobos Gone” and “No More Trains to Ride,” songs that, in Hag’s words, “can make you a little sad when you realize what we leave behind.”–JD
Foxy, “Foxy”
It was the golden age of funk…
Gn entert
