A friend has given me discs including the Billboard Top 100 for every year since they began keeping the annual chart (it was top 30 for the first few years), from 1946 through 2004. Needless to say, this is a glorious present. Needless to say, I am obsessing over it. And I am embarking upon another silly Project:
I have loaded my mp3 with every song on the 1970s disc* (a bit over a thousand, since in some cases they included both sides of a single). I have set it on shuffle -- it's always on shuffle, actually -- and I'm playing Survival: as I get sick of songs, they come off the player. Every song must be listened to all the way through at least once. If it survives, the next time it comes around it must be listened to all the way through again. If that makes me wince, I know it's time to delete the song. I'm genuinely curious what ends up surviving to my final hundred, fifty, ten.
So far, through twelve songs, I'm finding that this has me listening closely to songs I've never paid much attention to, from ones I've always enjoyed ("For the Love of Money", "Cold as Ice") to ones I've always hated ("Tonight's the Night", "Spill the Wine"). In fact, I've found a good deal to admire in the ones I hated -- in the case of the two I just named, I think the hatred is so visceral that I can't articulate it, and is probably fundamentally not about music. I can see myself changing my mind about a lot of songs this way. And that's good -- I'd always rather be open minded and able to appreciate whatever is there to appreciate -- but it may make this project end up taking a lot longer than I had planned. At any rate, I'm on the thirteenth song now ("Our Love" by Natalie Cole) and I haven't ejected a song yet.
[addendum: song 14 -- "Star Wars Theme / Cantina Band" by Meco -- is the first one-and-done. Now that's a stinky cheese.]
*n.b.: I love 1970s pop and rock music. If you think the 1970s suck, I don't care. Especially if you think the 1960s were far, far superior.
Lizzie F.
God, that sounds like a great project. If I had an ipod and those disks, I might do it too.
If you have a visceral hatred of "Tonight’s the Night” and “Spill the Wine”), why not delete them now? For what it's worth, I hate those two songs too, mainly for what I feel are their monotonous rythyms.
I can't think of many 70s pop songs I like, but I'd probably be reminded of some if I had to listen to a bunch like this.
Somebody on the Well told me about radionigel.com and I've been listening to new wave 80s and blissing out.
Scraps
Thanks for the link; I've registered there.
The visceral hatred is from childhood. I didn't delete them right away because, paying attention to them this time, I heard stuff I liked that I hadn't heard there before. I doubt they'll make it through several plays, but they earned at least one more shot. (I think "Spill the Wine" will make it further than "Tonight's the Night".)
Much of the point of doing this is reconsidering my old old reactions to songs that I've never thought twice about.
I do think the 60s were better for music - but I count them as being the musical period from about 1963 to 1975.
Scraps
I think that is a more or less distinct musical period, yes. But I think 1974 to 1981 or so is possibly the best period in post-1955 popular music; or at least, the period with the highest peaks: a disproportionate number of my favorite albums ever come from those years.
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