Listed below are the best albums of the 1970s as calculated from their overall rankings in over 58,000 greatest album charts. (Chart last updated: 4 hours ago).
"Van Morrison is a musical genius. The way he utilises such a vast array of instrumentation is so impressive and he makes the sound uniquely his own. There is no one who sounds like Van Morrison in relation to his singing and also his music. His sound is so rich and grand which makes for an extrem...""Van Morrison is a musical genius. The way he utilises such a vast array of instrumentation is so impressive and he makes the sound uniquely his own. There is no one who sounds like Van Morrison in relation to his singing and also his music. His sound is so rich and grand which makes for an extremely satisfying listen. This works best on side 1 where he just goes on a run of 5 outstanding tracks in a row. It is a near perfect side 1 which does lead to an obvious dip in quality on side 2. He maintains his quality musicianship on this side however and we are treated to some rewarding deep cuts such as These Dreams Of You and Everyone. This side may hold the record back in terms of being amongst the very greatest due to it not being consistent but it is still very good. Overall, if side 1's quality was maintained this would be in the argument for greatest album of all time but its second side is still thoroughly enjoyable which makes this well worth a listen. "[+]Reply
"I find it impossible to say that this one or that one is the best Pink Floyd album. I own 14 or 15 and love everyone of them just like children. They are all different and have personalities. Meddle is great and I could listen to Echoes on an endless loop. The one Pink Floyd album that can't seem...""I find it impossible to say that this one or that one is the best Pink Floyd album. I own 14 or 15 and love everyone of them just like children. They are all different and have personalities. Meddle is great and I could listen to Echoes on an endless loop. The one Pink Floyd album that can't seem to find any love from anyone but me is Ummagumma. it is definitely a headphones album! Maybe I just like it so much because when I first heard it 40 years ago I was tripping?"[+]Reply
"Best album by one of the greatest American rock bands. John Fogerty is also one of the great American songwriters as well (he was an absolute hit factory). He's also got one of the best rock voices as well. Any CCR album is good but get this one first!"Reply
"I never knew for sure why this album has always been my favorite Led Zeppelin album. I feel it's intense like the other albums, but also very sensible, honest and smooth. "Caught you smiling at me, That's the way it should be, Like a leaf is to a tree, so fine" I also want to add that I feel sorr...""I never knew for sure why this album has always been my favorite Led Zeppelin album. I feel it's intense like the other albums, but also very sensible, honest and smooth.
"Caught you smiling at me, That's the way it should be, Like a leaf is to a tree, so fine"
I also want to add that I feel sorry for people who can't see the beauty in their lyrics. They are so simple still they say so much to me. Fine like a leaf is to a tree? This could easily be quoted from a Buddhist book."[+]Reply
"This is a band that is completely relaxed, completely focused on the music as they had noting to prove anymore. One of the best Blues albums I know. The only band besides the Beatles (Abbey Road) that succeeded to top their best work with their last recorded album, as many groups run out of energ...""This is a band that is completely relaxed, completely focused on the music as they had noting to prove anymore. One of the best Blues albums I know. The only band besides the Beatles (Abbey Road) that succeeded to top their best work with their last recorded album, as many groups run out of energy and inspiration after their debut.
It is one of these rare albums that I can listen to on endless repeat, with the most commercial song "Love Her Madly" as the weakest one."[+]Reply
"Patti Smith has never been given her due recognition for being the first female rock and roller to lead a band and have complete creative control over her music. Before Patti, a rock band would have a "chick" singer but the boyz in the band were the primary players of the music. Smith became an i...""Patti Smith has never been given her due recognition for being the first female rock and roller to lead a band and have complete creative control over her music. Before Patti, a rock band would have a "chick" singer but the boyz in the band were the primary players of the music. Smith became an icon to subsequent generations of female rockers. She never relied on sex appeal for her success — she was unabashedly intellectual and creatively uncompromising, and her appearance was usually lean, hard, and androgynous. "Horses" is a benchmark because Patti was the first of a plethora of CBGBs bands to get signed; she beat the Voidoids, Television, Blondie, the Talking Heads and even the Ramones to the recording studio and in doing so she became the godmother of American punk. "[+]Reply
"Perhaps there is no figure who approached music as a science more capably than Suffolk's sagacious Brian Eno. Eno, the preeminent sonic architect, crafts his tiniest compositions with the delicacy of an artisan with his most grandiose and longform exhibitions resembling sprawling city blocks desi...""Perhaps there is no figure who approached music as a science more capably than Suffolk's sagacious Brian Eno. Eno, the preeminent sonic architect, crafts his tiniest compositions with the delicacy of an artisan with his most grandiose and longform exhibitions resembling sprawling city blocks designed for optimal traversing, with each street name and traffic sign strategically plotted and placed. It seems as if any resulting emotional potency is unintentional, or at least, coincidental. Eno never sought out a comfortable groove in which to ride out his over fifty-year career. Instead, he opted to eschew convention and complacency, hell bent on meeting fresh, uncultivated sediment which was ripe for exploration. After opting out of Bryan Ferry's gyrating, glam force majeure, 'Roxy Music', Eno's subsequent musical forays produced far less immediate and less carnal fruits. Often categorized by complexity and an inherent pension for the abstract, his first pair of solo efforts embraced the unconventional, just as Ferry's project had, but now it was on his own terms as he set coordinates for the great beyond. It wouldn't be out of line to declare that nobody quite looked at music the way that Brian Eno did and, by 1975, he had severed the tendrils of his peers and was ready to deliver a idiosyncratic, alien, and career defining artifact.
'Another Green World' commences with 'Sky Saw', a serrated, buzzing entity with a taste for the dissonant. 'Sky Saw' is the first of a line of tracks linked by DNA and could only exist as mysterious fauna native to an entirely different cosmos. The robotic, ory instrumentation employed makes it seem like a fashionable dance track at a futurist discotheque. When Eno's vocals finally penetrate the aluminum atmosphere, it ends up jarring in a way that's welcomed. It's the lone piece of humanity amidst a mosaic of auditory gadgetry and a stark introduction to record's genetic code. Second track, 'Over Fire Island', contains a far more earthy timbre, largely centered on percussion and wet bass. It wouldn't be out of place at a tribal soiree but the whirring coda ends the dream and places you squarely back into a chilly reality. The track briefly embodies a memory of an AI recreation of native music, yet without a discernable, anthropomorphic soul. The most urgent cut on 'Another Green World' has to be fourth track, 'St. Elmo's Fire'. It's catalyzed with uptempo, accelerative energy with Robert Fripp's proggy guitar solo flooding over the dam and washing overtop of the rest of the components. It's a brilliant approach to the art of the earworm and a visionary compromise between the horizon-less limits of Eno's sonic fantasies and the hard line of pop music's rigid boundaries. The album takes a nefarious turn on 'In Dark Trees' with Eno as its lone captain. The sensation of tumbling downward is tactile, as the shallow, unloving electronic drums dutifully chug on, unswaying throughout the track. It's a brief showcase, but by the end of it, you'd swear you were subterranean and devoid of the sun's kiss. Fifth outing, 'The Big Ship', doesn't include a vocal feature from Eno, a trend that carries throughout the majority of the record. In it's place, a tangible sense of scale is meticulously constructed. The track harbors the qualities of an iceberg, with it's peak gloriously basking in warmth the sun, while the base is left to remain untraversed and unable to be properly gauged. Eno's synth work is frothy and luminous, bestowing the honor of "most winsome" onto 'The Big Ship'. However, its aesthetic beauty is perched above the aforementioned impression of scale and labyrinthian real estate held below like oil resting comfortably on top of the sea. The track is gigantic to the ear despite its minimal instrumentation and Eno's excellence creates a cognizance of a world uncharted between the notes.
The most sugary offering on the record is 'I'll Come Running', which bottles a domestic, romantic syrup into a nearly four-minute nocturne, à la The Beatles' 'When I'm Sixty-Four'. The frolicking piano, which strides to and fro, projects a sensation of repetitive bliss and the notion that life's banalities make for gratifying exertion when in service of a special someone. It's strangely human for Eno, or perhaps, deceptively snide. Side one ceases with the title track, a brief , patient transitional that pokes its head out of the clouds just to be quickly shrouded once more. Eno's 'Desert Guitars' parabola as the track comes and goes like a sun shower. Side two, unfurls with a pair of wordless pieces with alternating physiology. 'Sombre Reptiles' is charged with locomotive energy powered by pistons set to world music of the Peruvian variety. Its straight-line fidelity is in stark divergence with follow up tune, 'Little Fishes', which effectively meanders in a way which could easily harmonize within the confines of a sound studio or underneath an electron microscope. Possibly the most apropos moniker on the LP, the track's prepared piano conjures an image of a minnow swimming up and downstream, susceptible to the gentlest of currents. It's clear by this point that Eno is reserving ample space for some of his most three-dimensional soundscapes. Track ten, 'Golden Hours' surely contains helium, as its carefully batted around expertly by Eno and Fripp. It also holds some of the album's finest lyrical pearls as Fripp's guitar solo sews the track shut with thin kevlar. Subsequent track, 'Becalmed' sounds as if Eno has harnessed the full weight of artificial placidity as the track swells and shrinks at the moments most opportune. Impressively, the music remains terrifically pastoral while also sounding akin to a deep-space, cosmic happening. 'Zawinul/Lava' plays like a wise man recounting an ancient prophecy or event responsible for population bottleneck, with more than a hint of dread as fretless bass drops leave the back door open for distant howls propelled by the wind. It's a musing piece that depicts what's coming and what has occurred without a moment's thought for the present. Eno carves out one more slot for a ballad, as to not drift too far into the ether, but even Eno's narratives inject a dose of the illusory. 'Everything Merges with the Night' depicts a love affair, but in which stage we never know. It's as if Eno wrote a treatment for a couple he viewed on a canvas, no doubt one with soft, pastellic edges. Our subject has been "waiting all evening or possibly years" as Eno's piano ensures us that the character is not displeased or even losing patience. Finally, the record concludes with 'Spirits Drifting', which feels evocative of an ending, yet strangely behaves as if it could run parallel to the entire album. The synth work does indeed achieve spectral ambience, but the track functions more effectively as the main mode of transit for the lost souls of Eno's gaseous, nearly imperceptible world of sonic dominion.
When entering the studio for what would become the third record under his stewardship, Brian Eno was without much of a foundation, save for the knowledge that he had begun to tire of the rock's dependent formula that still lingered on his previous two efforts. His lack of sonic provision actually proved to be a strength in the studio as it aided in the construction of a fossil which relished its own formlessness and supernatural ideology. As the sessions commenced, Eno's vision began to take shape, a vision that permeated like a vapor while remaining stoic and shapeshifting with no classification able to weigh down its ascent. 'Another Green World' was indeed the composer's first step into a new paradigm, where music was kinetic and a naturally occurring element with conscious, sonic landscapes capable of forming their own chemical makeup. It marked the beginning of four-decade long pilgrimage to a haven of musical liberation which had long thought to be bestiary. It was a place that married well with Eno's disdain for the shelters of sonic conventionalism and it's a dimension that Eno has yet to bid adieu to.
Standout Tracks:
1. The Big Ship
2. Becalmed
3. St. Elmo's Fire
92"[+]Reply
"I know taste is subjective and all but, this album being below 7 Radiohead albums just shows how absurd this website is lol Basically Elton's greatest hits album with what is probably one of the best openers of all time. Candle of the Wind, Bennie and the title track are also amazing tunes. Overa...""I know taste is subjective and all but, this album being below 7 Radiohead albums just shows how absurd this website is lol
Basically Elton's greatest hits album with what is probably one of the best openers of all time. Candle of the Wind, Bennie and the title track are also amazing tunes. Overall one of the best 50/100 albums of all time easily"[+]Reply
"The title track is excellent, Motion Pictures is basically perfect, but then he goes ahead and closes the album with Ambulance Blues. A perfect album closer, among the best ever, and certainly the best acoustic ballad album closer aside from Desolation Row. I might even prefer it for it's emotion...""The title track is excellent, Motion Pictures is basically perfect, but then he goes ahead and closes the album with Ambulance Blues. A perfect album closer, among the best ever, and certainly the best acoustic ballad album closer aside from Desolation Row. I might even prefer it for it's emotional impact. It's such a devastatingly beautiful song. I've literally spent hours listening to it on repeat. There are some weak moments on Side 1, but Side 2 is breathtaking.
Edit: Oops, realized this is my 2nd comment (not counting my response to another comment). I don't think I can delete it."[+]Reply
"Kick out out the Jams, motherfuckers! Turns out the MC5 were just the warm up band. Utterly stripped down, Funhouse basks in being lean and young, stalking & swaggering through the city streets. After being restrained by John Cale for platter number one, Iggy Pop turns into a feral beast on this ...""Kick out out the Jams, motherfuckers! Turns out the MC5 were just the warm up band. Utterly stripped down, Funhouse basks in being lean and young, stalking & swaggering through the city streets. After being restrained by John Cale for platter number one, Iggy Pop turns into a feral beast on this bad boy, alternating rasping primordial screams with the seductive cooing of the world’s slimiest playboy. Every time I hear this, I feel dirty. Rock would never sound this dangerous and menacing again."[+]Reply
Freddie55 | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +13 votes (13 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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patriciatoledo | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +7 votes (7 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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DriftingOrpheus | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.
