Throwing back to the week of June 29, 1974, we find Canadian folk rocker Gordon Lightfoot atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Sundown.’ This was Lightfoot’s only #1 hit in the U.S., though he reached #2 with ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ and #5 with ‘If You Could Read My Mind.’
I like Lightfoot’s sound and I’m only familiar with those hits, so maybe I’ll add him to the potential deep dive list. He released 20 studio albums, however, so perhaps a shallow dive is a better idea.
Throwing back to the week of June 8, 1974, we find Paul McCartney atop the Billboard Hot 100 just as he was a decade earlier. Of course, this time it’s with Wings rather than The Beatles.
‘Band on the Run’ is the title track from Wings’ third studio album, and it’s certainly one of the best songs the band ever released. It finds McCartney imagining a band breaking out of jail, an image he says was inspired by increasing police crackdowns on musicians’ marijuana possession.
After a Taylor Swift detour we’re back to Throwback Weekends, and this is a fun one. The week of May 18, 1974, saw country/pop artist Ray Stevens atop the Billboard Hot 100 with his novelty song ‘The Streak.’
Written in response to the rise in streaking at public events, the song finds Stevens portraying both a TV reporter and the main witness to streakers at a supermarket, a gas station, and a basketball game.
Throwing back to the week of April 20, 1974, the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 was ‘TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia),’ a disco instrumental by soul band MFSB, a Philly-based group comprised of more than 30 musicians. Vocal group The Three Degrees show up to deliver the song’s only words, the repeated phrase “Let’s get it on, it’s time to get down.”
This track was written as the theme song for Soul Train, and became the first TV theme to ever reach #1. Four more repeated the feat, and rather than give those away here I’ve made a note to do a week on them after I finish with Cowboy Carter.
When Cher was last featured on Throwback Weekends, it was for her #1 hit ‘Half-Breed,’ which topped the charts in October of 1973. The video for that song found her dressed in a bikini and a Native American headdress.
Given that history, I was a little nervous when I saw that her next release, which reached #1 the week of March 23, 1974, was titled ‘Dark Lady.’ Fortunately, though the no-longer-acceptable word “gypsy” does appear a few times in the song, it’s nowhere near as bad as I feared.
Meet Me In Montauk 