My Top 50 Albums of 1970
Here's the Spotify playlist with a deep cut from each album:
1. Black Sabbath - Paranoid
2. Grateful Dead – American Beauty
3. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory
4. Neil Young - After The Gold Rush
5. The Velvet Underground - Loaded
6. Curtis Mayfield – Curtis
7. The Allman Brothers Band - Idlewild South
8. George Harrison – All Things Must Pass
9. The Who - Live At Leeds
10. Joni Mitchell – Ladies Of The Canyon
11. Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection
12. The Kinks – Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One
13. Van Morrison – Moondance
14. Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
15. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Déjà Vu
16. The Doors - Morrison Hotel
17. Funkadelic - Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will
Follow
18. The Beatles - Let It Be
19. Derek and the Dominoes – Layla And Other
Assorted Love Songs
20. The Stooges – Fun House
21. Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
22. Santana - Abraxas
23. The Jackson 5 - ABC
24. Todd Rundgren – Runt
25. Laura Nyro – Christmas And The Beads of Sweat
26. The Beach Boys – Sunflower
27. Leon Russell – Leon Russell
28. Grateful Dead – Workingman’s Dead
29. Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled
Water
30. Cat Stevens – Tea For The Tillerman
31. John Lennon – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
32. Yes - Time And A Word
33. Stevie Wonder - Signed, Sealed and Delivered
34. The Band – Stage Fright
35. Joe Cocker – Mad Dogs & Englishmen
36. Tim Buckley – Starsailor
37. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Pendulum
38. Elton John – Elton John
39. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III
40. Brewer & Shipley – Tarkio
41. Attila – Attila
42. James Taylor – Sweet Baby James
43. James Brown – Ain’t It Funky
44. David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World
45. Rodriguez – Cold Fact
46. Bob Dylan - New Morning
47. The Mothers of Invention – Weasels Ripped My
Flesh
48. Roberta Flack – Chapter Two
49. Jimi Hendrix - Band Of Gypsys
50. Aretha Franklin - Spirit In The Dark
A lot of informal cultural markers separate the '60s from the '70s (Altamont, the deaths of Jimi and Janis), but the biggest is probably the end of the Beatles. It's been interesting working backwards through the '70s, ambling through their solo careers, to finally arrive at the end of the Beatles era. In a way it's the most Beatles-related product that's ever been released in a year, between Let It Be and five solo albums, one of them a triple LP. In the end, though, I just couldn't fit McCartney or either Ringo album into my top 50. Now I'm going further back into the era where it was the norm for artists to release two albums in one year, and I hate pushing out some artists just to include multiple albums by another. But in a year that Sabbath, the Dead, Elton and CCR each released a pair of classics, the list just feels like it's bursting at the seams.
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