Why 1974 was the worst year in pop
Was 1974 the worst ever year for popular music?
Cast your minds back 50 years to the denim patched, flared jeans and longhaired height of the sexy Seventies, when rock was in its progressive, heavy and glam pomp, funk was steaming up the disco mirror balls, whilst introspective singer-songwriters swanned about Laurel Canyon brooding upon the meaning of life. And at the top of the charts, the bestselling record of the year in the United Kingdom of pop was … Tiger Feet by Mud.
That’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right … we really loved that trite faux rock’n’roll ditty by a bunch of cockney wide boys who had jumped on the glam rock bandwagon with a cheesy chat up song about a “dance hall cutie” with – for no explicable reason – the feet of a feline predator.
You don’t hear it played much now – thank the Lord for small mercies – but that song was inescapable in 1974. And it wasn’t even an anomaly. It was a year when the singles charts were jam-packed with complete rubbish and the album charts were stuffed with Greatest Hits compilations, while the big guns of rock were firing blanks or taking breaks.
The only debut of note arrived from overblown panto rock artists Kiss, and you would be very hard pressed to identify an album from that year that has acquired the status of all-time classic. When it comes to the kind of 50th anniversary reissues so beloved of our retro obsessed rock culture, there is only so much mileage that can be squeezed from a half century of Genesis’s bonkers prog rock opera The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and Ringo Starr’s Goodnight Vienna. 1974 was a dud. A dodo. A dead rubber.
If you detect a certain tone of bitterness, I might as well come clean. 1974 was the year I purchased my first single. I was 13 at the time, and I’m still embarrassed to admit that I blew my hard-earned newspaper-round money on Seasons in the Sun, a maudlin weepy about death by one-hit-wonder Terry Jacks.
But perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Seasons in the Sun was the second biggest single of 1974, and it wasn’t even uniquely terrible in a chart stuffed with novelty songs (The Streak by Ray Stevens, Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas), cabaret showtunes (Don’t Stay Away Too Long by Peters and Lee, Y Viva Espana by Sylvia), and drippy tearjerkers (Billy Don’t Be a Hero by Paper Lace, The Most Beautiful Girl by Charlie Rich).
In the top 50 bestselling singles in the UK in 1974, you’d have to scroll a long way down to find a record that has stood the test of time, The Air that I Breathe by the Hollies. It offers a lonely flash of enduring class, jostled on all sides by the gaudy cheer of The Wombles, The New Seekers, Showaddywaddy and The Rubettes.
And don’t kid yourself things were any better across the Atlantic, where the ubiquitous Terry Jacks weepy was only held off the top spot by Barbra Streisand’s even weepier The Way We Were, while superannuated 1950’s teen wonder Paul Anka scored a US chart topping triumph with chauvinist singalong (You’re) Having My Baby. “Whoa, the seed inside you, baby, do you feel it growing?” Anka croons with patronising relish. It regularly tops polls of The Worst Song of All Time, but in 1974 that was enough to put Anka back on top.
So was 1974 really the worst of the worst? It might seem an absurd proposition given the overcrowded and underwhelming state of contemporary music, a seemingly endless churn of hits that no one remembers, and album charts filled with old favourites from yesteryear.
But nostalgia can play funny tricks on us. There were indeed a fistful of stone classic albums in the top 10 of 1974, from Paul McCartney & Wings (Band on the Run), Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon), Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells) and Elton John (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) … all of which had actually been released in 1973. Now that really was a good year for music. Actually the bestselling album of 1974 was a Greatest Hits compilation from American easy listening sibling duo The Carpenters.
The only 1974 album of note amongst the year’s bestsellers was David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, an overblown rock opera loosely inspired by George Orwell’s 1984 that represents a blip in his seventies hot streak. Rolling Stone magazine dismissed it as “muddy”, “tuneless” and “cheesy,” and noted of its inscrutable storyline that “the music exerts so little appeal that it’s hard to care what it’s about.” “It’s Okay, but is it really necessary?” was NME’s unenthusiastic verdict.
Even Bowie seemed unconvinced. In the middle of a US tour, he scrapped the elaborate Diamond Dogs set and started performing the stripped back soul of Young Americans, which would come out in 1975. Now that was a fantastic year, replete with classics from Bob Dylan (Blood on the Tracks), Led Zeppelin (Physical Graffiti), Bruce Springsteen (Born To Run), Pink Floyd (Wish You Were Here), Queen (A Night at the Opera), and Patti Smith (Horses).
1974 was one of those in-between years, when music was in a state of flux, scenes were dying or mutating, and (certainly judging by the abundance of novelty records) a lot of chancers were rushing to fill the void. While Bowie discovered his inner soul man and Brian Eno abandoned Roxy Music in favour of ambient experimentalism, glam was sustained by old rockers slapping on lipstick (Sweet, Gary Glitter, Alvin Stardust).
Progressive rock was becoming ever more obtuse, as signalled by Rick Wakeman’s orchestral rock symphony Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Hawkwind’s impenetrable Hall of the Mountain Grill. Amongst the giants of rock, Led Zeppelin fell silent and the greatest lineup of the Rolling Stones came to an end when guitarist Mick Taylor quit, the band filling time with the slapdash It’s Only Rock ’n Roll.
Yet of course there was wonderful music in 1974, from Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark to Neil Young’s On The Beach and Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves. There was some glorious funk and soul (Parliament, Stevie Wonder, Betty Davis, Minnie Riperton) while John Lennon’s Walls and Bridges was amongst his finest solo albums and Bob Marley split from Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer to release his solo debut, Natty Dread.
But if these records were actually being released today, it is interesting to speculate on whether they would rise to the TikTok top or be swept away amidst Spotify’s torrential digital flood?
There is an awful lot of music for any listener to grapple with in the modern world, and it can sometimes seem as if we are drowning in a sea of mediocrity. Yet whenever someone tuts at the state of the pop charts and declares that music was so much better in the past, it is worth thinking about what we were really listening to in those bygone glory days. All together now: we had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun …
Five other dreadful years of pop
1962
UK top single: I Remember You by Frank Ifield.
UK top album: West Side Story Soundtrack
The lull before Beatlemania. UK stars Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele and Helen Shapiro all fail to crack America, where post army Elvis Presley’s only hit is the anodyne Good Luck Charm. Australian country singer Frank Ifield yodels his way to the top.
1989
UK top single: Ride on Time by Black Box
UK top album: Ten Good Reasons by Jason Donovan
The day glo 80s lose their shine, as the trite europop of Stock, Aitken and Waterman rules the airwaves, only seriously challenged by a mashup craze led by Jive Bunny and a model miming to a novelty House hit from Italian producers Black Box. In the US, Bobby Brown is king.
1998
UK top single: Believe by Cher
UK top album: Talk on Corners by the Corrs
Britpop is over. Grunge is dead. Trip hop is fading. Hip hop is stagnating. Plastic pop is back on top, with Boyzone, Billie and B*witched. Cher’s Believe unleashes Auto Tune on an unsuspecting world.
2005
UK top single: Is This the Way to Amarillo by Tony Christie with Peter Kay
UK top album: Back to Bedlam by James Blunt
A comedy charity record narrowly keeps X Factor nonentity Shayne Ward and novelty irritant Crazy Frog from registering the hit of the year. James Blunt becomes a star. Faux grunge rockers Nickelback are the bestselling band on earth, shifting 19 million copies of All Around the World. Let that sink in.
2019
UK top single: Someone You Love by Lewis Capaldi
UK top album: Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent by Lewis Capaldi
We are fully engulfed in a streaming tsunami with more music on offer than ever before in pop history, yet somehow Britain unites around a raw voiced, foul mouthed Scottish belter of old-fashioned misery ballads.
