As I continue my ‘Decades’ look back at the year 1975, this week I’ll focus on five albums I’ve heard but don’t know well. The two weeks after that will be reserved for albums I’ve never heard in their entirety.
Olivia Newton-John’s Have You Never Been Mellow was the fifth studio album by the British-Australian chanteuse and her first non-compilation album to reach #1 (If You Love Me, Let Me Know, featuring hits from her first three releases, had reached the top spot a year before).
Yesterday I noted that Stevie Wonder was the youngest person ever to have a #1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100. Today we throw back to the week of May 12, 1973, to feature Wonder’s third #1 hit, released a decade after that first one.
‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’ was actually at #2 during the week in question, but it ascended to the top spot the following week. I’m highlighting it today because the song at #1 — ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree’ by Dawn featuring Tony Orlando — was in the same position a month ago when I kicked off Throwback Weekends.
A month in, I’m really loving Throwback Weekends. Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky with the song selection, but so far it seems like I’m unearthing plenty of gems.
Today we throw back 60 years to the week of May 11, 1963, when the Billboard Hot 100 was topped by 15-year-old Little Peggy March and her recording of ‘I Will Follow Him.’ The song spent 14 weeks on the Hot 100 and three in the top spot.
Continuing my look at 1975, first by counting down my own top albums of that year.
#1 – Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks
I once named Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks my favorite album of the 70s, so it follows that it would be the best album of 1975. No surprise here.
First, though, I want to give an honorable mention to another great Bob Dylan album that came out the same year. The Basement Tapes, recorded in 1967 with The Band after Dylan’s motorcycle accident, was released eight years later. This double album is a gloriously laid back collection of roots rock ramblings. It likely would have cracked my top five but I figured I’d spread the love and note it here instead.
Continuing my look at 1975, first by counting down my own top albums of that year.
#2 – Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
It might be nostalgia that has this album so high on this list, but who am I to argue with nostalgia? After all, as Mad Men‘s Don Draper famously said, nostalgia is a “twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.”
Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here is the album I most associate with my high school years. And like Draper’s slide carousel, the album is a time machine. It teleports me back into the body of a 16-year-old kid bonding with new friends over old music.
Meet Me In Montauk 