My top ten 1971 albums represent some of the best music of the whole era, but that year was loaded enough to produce even more albums worth mentioning.
This week, I’ll feature tracks from five celebrated 1971 albums I don’t know very well. Some I’ve heard before, some I’m hearing for the very first time. They might not have cracked my own top ten list, but they all help round out the musical portrait of 1971.
This weekend has offered up one of those weird coincidences that come with true randomness.
Here we have a Beck song followed by a Ron Sexsmith song. The last time I’ve blogged about either of those artists was in November of 2017, when I posted a Beck song followed by a Sexsmith song. I won’t bother calculating the odds but they have to be pretty damn high.
I’m never disappointed when a Beck song pops up on Random Weekends. No matter the album or the track, it’s going to be interesting and entertaining.
‘Youthless’ is a cut from the 2008 album Modern Guilt, a record I’d rank near the middle of the pack of Beck’s discography. That still makes it better than most albums by most artists.
When I first perused the lineup of albums released in 1971 to prepare for this list, I immediately knew which would wind up at #1. Carole King’s Tapestry is one of the greatest albums of the 70s and one of the greatest of all time. It’s certainly the best album of 1971.
Recorded in January of that year and released in February, Tapestry would eventually sell more than 25 million copies worldwide and spend more than six years on the Billboard charts, second only to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It took home Grammys for Album, Record and Song of the Year.
Not bad for the sophomore album by a woman who was told she was better off writing songs for other singers.
My #2 album of 1971 is one of The Rolling Stones’ best albums ever, Sticky Fingers. This was the third album in a run of four classics that stand up as one of the best all-time musical streaks. Between 1968 and 1972, The Stones reeled off Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street.
Ranking those four would be tough, but I can definitely make a case for Sticky Fingers as the best of them.
Meet Me In Montauk 