Continuing my look at the albums of 1976…
Before I get to nine albums I gave my first real listen for this series, I want to run through a handful of 1976 albums I have written about already as part of artist deep dives.
My favorite of the bunch is Jackson Browne’s The Pretender, which ended up as my fifth favorite of his 14 albums. Recorded in the backdrop of his wife’s death by suicide, the album is a lot more upbeat than you’d expect.
Bob Marley’s Rastaman Vibration didn’t fare as well in my rankings, falling to #11 of his 13 releases. Interestingly, it was his most commercially successful album despite featuring none of the songs you likely know by heart.
Joni Mitchell’s Hejira ended up as my seventh favorite of her 19 albums. I described it as a “lush, emotional, warm record, brimming with great poetry and beautiful music” but also said the nine-song, 50-minute record was “a bit of a chore.”
My lowest ranked album of this bunch was The Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue, which landed at #20 of 23 albums, though I called it a “fun enough listen.” Even mediocre Rolling Stones is worthy.
Finally, Elton John’s Blue Moves didn’t get the full deep dive treatment (that was more of a shallow dive before I officially started doing those), but I did make note of the great ‘Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word‘ from that otherwise forgettable album.
It’s hard to say for sure
Whether what I hear is music
Or the wind through an open door
There’s a fire high in the empty sky
Where the sound meets the shore
There’s a long distance loneliness
Rolling out over the desert floor
And the years that I spent lost in the mystery
Fall away leaving only the sound of the drum
Like a part of me (It speaks to the heart of me)
Forget what life used to be (You are what you choose to be)
It’s whatever it is you see
That life will become
Whatever it is you might think you have
You have nothing to lose
Through every dead and living thing
Time runs like a fuse
And the fuse is burning
And the earth is turning
Though the years give way to uncertainty
And the fear of living for nothing strangles the will
There’s a part of me (That speaks to the heart of me)
Though sometimes it’s hard to see (It’s never far from me)
Alive in eternity
That nothing can kill
Oh Lord
Are there really people starving still?
Look out beyond the walls of Babylon
How long will their needs go unfilled?
I wanna say right now I’m going to be around
When the walls and towers are crumbling
(When the towers are tumbling down)
And I will tune my spirit to the gentle sound
(I want to hear the sound)
Of the waters lapping on a higher ground
(Of the children laughing)
Say yeah
Yeah yeah yeah
Meet Me In Montauk 
It seems to me that many of the greats from the 60s and early 70s lost their way in the mid to late 70s, particularly those who tried to stay relevant during the disco era. Fortunately, at least some of them, like Jackson Browne, Paul Simon, and the Rolling Stones had a resurgence and put out some of their better material by the mid to late 80s.