You saw the list yesterday, the one with Barry Manilow, the Captain and Tennille, Olivia Newton-Fig, the Carpenters and so on. Today's stroll will not include any of them, due to my insistence that I have to like something to post it!
1975 was, in retrospect, the last year of the 60s in music. Heavily influenced by what had come before, often performed by the same people. Soon it would be all disco, punk, new wave.
Llet's get this out of the way quickly. I'm an ABBA fan. I think their songs are musically very clever with lots of hooks and well thought out instrumentation. Uh-oh. I sound defensive. Oh well! Here they are doing their big hit, SOS.
This English group, Hot Chocolate, was originally signed to Apple Records and was produced by the Animals' producer, Mickie Most. What a great song to play pinball to! For you youngsters, pinball was the Wii of its day. And not this crazy pinball of today where you have to get 60 million points for a free game. No sir. Points were tough to come by. 1200 was usually good for the replay.
It's interesting how much music from 1975 still revolved around the British "invasion" era. 10CC included Graham Gouldman who wrote For Your Love (Yardbirds) and Look Through Any Window (Hollies). Also in the group was Eric Stewart who'd been in the Mindbenders (Game of Love, Groovy Kind of Love). This hit song came a decade after that.
What a nut! Look at this guy! He looks like a nut! And Cher, in the introduction, is about an equal partner. This is Elton at his peak, I think. The vocal is terrific. We all know he played with T Rex, right? Now he's Sir Elton John.
I think this John Lennon song must have been influenced by Elton John's music. That's a guess. This pretty much did it for John until he came back in 1980. He was off to being a stay at home father.
Meanwhile Paulie was making hit records. This was back when he could still write a song. Most of this Wings stuff sounds better to me than his dirgy songs at the end of the Beatles.
Maxine Nightingale didn't much like this song at first. She preferred disco, which is funny because....well, never mind. I bet she liked this a lot better when it went into the top ten.
Paul Carrack is the lead singer here for Ace, on this big hit. Do any of you watch that Jools Holland show on Ovation? Holland was the keyboard player for Squeeze and when he left Carrack took that spot. And with Squeeze Carrack was the singer on Tempted (by the fruit of another). I think it's a pretty good career when you can sing on two songs, for two different groups and have both of them be so recognizable.
nazareth love hurts
The things you can learn by using Wiki! I knew that this Scottish group had a big hit with a Roy Orbison tune but now I see it's not an Orbison number at all, although he did record it, but an Everly Brothers number, written by longtime Everlys writers, Boudleaux and Felice Bryant.
Reggae had broken in the United States, finally, and here's the king of it all with my favorite of his.
