10 More Perfect Rock Albums Of The 70s With No Bad Songs
No record collection is complete without these masterpieces...
The 1970s was a time when rock started to fracture into ever more varied and intriguing sub genres. Weirder electronic sounds were becoming more prominent. The heavy boot of punk was starting to make an impression. The psychedelic bands of the '60s were discovering the allures of the synthesiser, and the avant-garde bohemians of New York were beginning to write more commercially accessible hits. This was an era when American heartland rock was born and new wave starting coming out to play. It was an exciting time for music.
With all the evolving trends, came a wave of new and old musicians exploring untrodden territory. Although it wouldn't be long before rock music would be choked by clouds of hairspray, and constricted by skintight leopard print leggings, the '70s was when rock was a rebellious but repatriable genre.
The decade was so saturated with albums of such high repute that it would take lifetime of dedicated and intensive listening to pay them the correct dues. So for now, here's ten of the best.
10. Rumours - Fleetwood Mac (1977)
This was the defining album of the Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham fronted incarnation of Fleetwood Mac. Musically, everything came together for the band just as their personal lives started to fall apart. In the most clichéd of broken marriage tropes, Mick Fleetwood had just found out his wife was running off with his best friend. John McVie and Christine McVie were both reeling from their recent divorce, and Nicks and Buckingham were dealing with the complications of sharing a stage and a bed together.
This should have been a recipe for disaster. But, as is the way with so much great art, all the interpersonal turmoil helped birth one of the greatest creative endeavours ever to be pressed to vinyl.
Although the themes of the album resolve around the break down of romantic relationships, the scope spans a multitude of sceneries, from sadness, despair and anger to optimistic musings on the future.
This record contains a track to score every stage of a breakup, should you wish to live your life like a movie. You've got the bitter expressions in Go Your Own Way, there's the remorseful reflections in Dreams and the optimistic resolve in Don't Stop. There isn't a song on this record you don't know every word too.
Someone should have told Taylor Swift, this was the only breakup album the world ever needed.