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The cream of the crop overall may have managed to be almost as impressive as ever as the 70s petered out into the relative musical dead zone of the early 80s, but sadly the same cannot be said for the bottom of the barrel. This worst list was frankly more of a slog than I’mContinue reading “The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1979”

The 70s ended with a bang, for better and for worse. The disco bubble finally burst in July with the infamous “Disco Demolition Night” at Comiskey Park in Chicago, and in its wake a massive power vacuum formed in the pop world as labels scrambled to abandon the genre in favor of something, anything else,Continue reading “The Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 1979”

‘78 may have been the disco-iest year in music history, but the rogue’s gallery for the year nonetheless managed to wind up fairly diverse. Rock still offered up a few bottom-of-the-barrel misfires, Grease gave us a whopping three worst list entries, and a melange of other stinkers managed to fill out the remainder in aContinue reading “The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1978”

In the larger music world, 1978 was a strong and incredibly diverse year for music. From heavy metal and punk beginning to properly gain traction in the underground and beyond, to experimental oddballs like The Residents and Sun-Ra flourishing in the even-deeper-underground, to art school heroes like Kate Bush, Devo and Kraftwerk gaining or strengtheningContinue reading “The Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 1978”

Finally, eight years in, it feels like we’re really, truly in the thick of the seventies, and this year’s worst list plays out like a greatest hits compilation of all the most unpleasant musical impulses the decade produced. From songs drowning in seas of goopy strings to empty-headed dancefloor filler to even emptier-headed rock, everythingContinue reading “The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1977”

I know that in the intro to last year’s best list, I made a big to-do about ‘76 being THE year for ‘70s pop, an era-defining smorgasbord of enduring radio classics. I do stand by that, of course, but I also have to admit that you could probably make just as strong a case forContinue reading “The Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 1977”

Oddly, I kind of think the worst music of ‘76 is as in keeping with the year’s blockbuster quality as the best music is. This feels like one of the first years where the bad stuff is just as notorious and iconic as the good stuff, the first year where a casual reader might actuallyContinue reading “The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1976”

The way I see it, 1976 is to 70s pop as 1967 is to 60s pop. We can quibble and squabble all we want over whether this year or that year was “better” or “worse” for the charts, but this has to be the top contender for the year that most defined the 70s: chock-fullContinue reading “The Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 1976”

In sharp contrast with the best songs of the year, I feel like anyone who has been following this series would be able to accurately guess the contents of at least half of this year’s worst list. There are not a ton of surprises here: plenty of returning worst-list entrants and a lot of musicContinue reading “The Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 1975”

Bouncing back from the relative doldrums of ‘74, ‘75 was largely a return to the quality I’ve come to expect from the charts of this era. Oddly, as disco fever began sweeping the nation, I found that most of the best music of this year came from unexpected places, possibly as a function of beingContinue reading “The Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 1975”