Best Albums of the 1970s

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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: 3 hours ago).

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1970s decade summaryThe best artists of the 1970s were Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, The Clash, Black Sabbath, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder and The Who.

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Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd

"The first time I heard this album was a bootleged copy off cassete when I was 14, laying on a hillside at night beside the girl who I thought at the time was the most beautiful and sexy in the world. You may like to add your own imagery to the setting, but it left a permanant mark on my psychie t..." [More] Reply
- marcel4tmh | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +15 votes (15 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

3,022 charts

Rank Score:

43,706

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

Overall Rank:

Average Rating:

Comments:

11.

"1 December 2013 "Blood On The Tracks". It's an album almost synonymous with maturity and the absolute expression of all the nuances of love and loss. It's an album that I notice I love more and more as my life ticks along. When I first heard it at the age of 12 I didn't get it. I didn't see what ...""1 December 2013 "Blood On The Tracks". It's an album almost synonymous with maturity and the absolute expression of all the nuances of love and loss. It's an album that I notice I love more and more as my life ticks along. When I first heard it at the age of 12 I didn't get it. I didn't see what was so great about it. And even now to this day, I feel their is a more relatable feeling I get from his 60s music. I am 24 years old as I write this. Dylan was 21 and 24 when he made my other 2 favorite albums of his. Is that all it comes down to? Perhaps. As for this album, well it's a legendary piece of art. It transcends my amateur description. There are just so many themes and details and emotions that are expressed here. The album is a roller coaster, it takes you through all the highs of love found and all the lows of regret. And in the end you leave this record wiser than when you entered. To name the highlights is basically to name off every track. It's literally that great. The songs that just absolutely gut me every time I hear them are "Simple Twist of Fate" (perhaps one of the most sobering songs ever), "You're A Big Girl Now", "Meet Me In The Morning" (so simple and beautiful and the fucking steel guitar and slide guitar at the end is pure aesthetic perfection), "Shelter From The Storm", and the closer "Buckets of Rain". Oh and about this closer...it's perfect. I use that word "perfect" too much, I know. But this song AS A CLOSER is perfection. It's like a little nugget of almost simpleton-level wisdom that floats in and soothes us after the emotional journey of the rest of the album that just ended. It's so damn simple and playful and REAL. This album feels so absolutely relaxed and natural. It's a grand example of the plain expression of very exact and thought-out art. It's an album that opens up more and more not only with each listen but also with each passing year of living. It's an album that is always there to help get me through. Thanks, Bob. Grade 100/100" [More] Reply
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Mercury | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +5 votes (5 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

1,868 charts

Rank Score:

20,359

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

Overall Rank:

Average Rating:

Comments:

22.

"Bruce Springsteen's most iconic album, and his breakthrough. It's amazing to think now, that he could have been dropped from his record label if this album had flopped. Fortunately for Springsteen and for us, it didn't, and we have one of the greatest careers in rock/pop music to enjoy. Born to r..." [More] Reply
- garycottier | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +9 votes (10 helpful | 1 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

1,613 charts

Rank Score:

15,090

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

Overall Rank:

Average Rating:

Comments:

28.

"What an outstanding 6 track run we have at the start of this record! Every single song in this run is simply phenomenal with the band giving us some incredible performances on every single instrument present on those songs. Every time I revisit this album I am completely blown away all over again..." [More] Reply
- Untitled | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +5 votes (5 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

1,372 charts

Rank Score:

11,934

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

Overall Rank:

Average Rating:

Comments:

31.

Queen

"Some albums are a tightrope act. Sure, Queen was a bit excessive, kitschy, but on A Night At The Opera their technical efficiency is on such a high level the resulting album is a dynamic breakthrough. A lesser band would have fallen flat on their faces attempting this record." Reply
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meccalecca | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +8 votes (9 helpful | 1 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

1,425 charts

Rank Score:

11,611

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

Overall Rank:

110

Average Rating:

83 (1,946 votes)

Comments:

131

46.

Horses

Patti Smith

"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..." [More] Reply
- GavinB | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +16 votes (16 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

1,024 charts

Rank Score:

7,687

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

Overall Rank:

195

Average Rating:

81 (1,212 votes)

Comments:

47.

Another Green World

Eno

"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" [More] Reply
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DriftingOrpheus | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

826 charts

Rank Score:

7,659

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

Overall Rank:

197

Average Rating:

83 (1,055 votes)

Comments:

126.

Tonight's The Night

Neil Young

"This album is an absolute masterpiece, and has a sound like no other album ever released, even by Neil himself. You can truly feel raw emotion here, and this is definitely Neil's most emotional album. After the loss of Daniel Whitten, Neil recorded this album on one dark night in 1972 in only one..." [More] Reply
- | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +6 votes (6 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

566 charts

Rank Score:

3,059

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

126

Overall Rank:

559

Average Rating:

82 (766 votes)

Comments:

152.

Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac

"I have 225 records and only 224 listed on this site, I kept going through them over and over to see which one I hadn't yet listed.... b4 doing this though, I went through the top 1000 albums on this site and added all of them to either my wish list or collection.... so when going through my recor..." [More] Reply
- jackbrown8786 | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +6 votes (6 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

452 charts

Rank Score:

2,575

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

152

Overall Rank:

673

Average Rating:

81 (660 votes)

Comments:

156.

Mothership Connection

Parliament

"I was first introduced to Parliament a year after I graduated from college by a girl who put "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)" and "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)" on a mix tape for me. It was only then that I discovered how badly I had always wanted to improve my intergalactic ..." [More] Reply
-

buzzdainer | Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +5 votes (5 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

Year of Release:

1975

Appears in:

420 charts

Rank Score:

2,442

Rank in 1975:

Rank in 1970s:

156

Overall Rank:

706

Average Rating:

80 (456 votes)

Comments:

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Total albums: 97. Page 1 of 10

Best Albums of the 1970s composition

Year	Albums	%

1970	110	11%
1971	99	10%
1972	97	10%
1973	112	11%
1974	94	9%
1975	97	10%
1976	88	9%
1977	94	9%
1978	106	11%
1979	103	10%

Artist	Albums	%

David Bowie	11	1%
Genesis	9	1%
Yes	9	1%
Jethro Tull	8	1%
The Rolling Stones	8	1%
Miles Davis	8	1%
Electric Light Orchestra	8	1%
Show all

Country	Albums	%

	388	39%
	373	37%
	43	4%
	39	4%
	38	4%
	20	2%
	20	2%
Show all

Compilation?	Albums	%
No	976	98%
Yes	24	2%

Live?	Albums	%
No	944	94%
Yes	56	6%

Soundtrack?	Albums	%
No	986	99%
Yes	14	1%

« View best albums of the 1960sView best albums of the 1980s »

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