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Song of the Day #1,425: ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’ – Fleetwood Mac

Best Albums of the 70s – #9
Rumours – Fleetwood Mac (1977)

Considering I was five when it was released, I’ve never known Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours as anything but a classic, record-breaking album. It is the 9th best-selling album in the United States and 10th in the world.

How great must it have been when this was just the new Fleetwood Mac album? When songs like ‘Dreams,’ ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘Don’t Stop’ emerged from your speakers for the first time, did they already sound like classics?

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Song of the Day #1,424: ‘I Would Be in Love (Anyway)’ – Bomb Dawg

Best Albums of the 70s – #9
Watertown – Frank Sinatra (1970)

Frank Sinatra’s broken-heart concept album Watertown is one of only two albums that I’ve represented in their entirety on this blog. You can read my track-by-track analysis of the project here.

I wrote more about the lasting emotional power of Watertown in those 11 posts than I could hope to convey again here, so suffice it to say that the record may be the last transcendent moment Sinatra committed to tape and it works both for that reason and because it is a marvelous bit of theatrical storytelling.

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Song of the Day #1,423: ‘Kitty’s Back’ – Bruce Springsteen

Best Albums of the 70s – #10
The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle – Bruce Springsteen (1973)

With one or two exceptions, I didn’t hear any of the albums on this list during the actual 70s. I discovered them mostly in the 80s and 90s, as I became a bigger music fan and dug through bins at used record stores to find CDs I’d read were important.

So in most cases, while I haven’t known these records since they were released, I have lived with them for 20-30 years.

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Song of the Day #1,422: ‘It Wasn’t Me’ – Jenny Lewis

The Random iTunes Fairy chose an interesting pair of songs this weekend. While yesterday’s track showcased the importance of the single, today’s selection is all about the deep cut.

The final track on Jenny Lewis’ 2005 album Rabbit-Fur Coat, ‘It Wasn’t Me’ is in no danger of winding up on the radio. But it’s a lovely little closing track, one that deserves to be heard. It’s the antithesis of a song like The Corrs’ ‘Breathless’ that was born to wind up on one of those NOW compilations.

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Song of the Day #1,421: ‘Breathless’ – The Corrs

To some degree, I have embraced the era of the single. While I still consider myself an “album guy” and wouldn’t consider not buying the latest album by any of my favorite artists, I have warmed up to the idea of owning individual songs.

This flies in the face of my vehement anti-‘greatest hits’ stance, because what is a collection of unrelated songs by a single artist if not a greatest hits collection? But my objection to those records has always been that they rob a listener of the deep album cuts that are often even better than the hits. I guess I’ve finally gotten around to acknowledging that sometimes (with some artists) the hits are all you need.

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