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So... when I was getting started with this My Past In Popular Music series, I needed to decide what to do first. For a number of reasons, but mostly because it was the 50th anniversary of the year, I decided to start with 1970.
In retrospect, maybe that wasn't the wisest choice.
I knew ahead of time that starting with a year like 1983 or even 1976 would make my task incredibly tough... but those are two of the years widely acknowledged as among the very best ever in pop music. Nobody talks about 1970 in the same almost-reverent terms. That's probably due to 1970 not having a lot of truly *excellent* songs; seriously, most of the truly great years have LOTS of GREAT songs. Still, once I looked at it, this task is arguably even tougher: out of the biggest hits of the year, what strikes me is the sheer volume of GOOD songs, and the relative lack of actual clunkers. (This doesn't hold up as the Seventies move along, trust me. We're only four years away from what has been described widely as one of the WORST years ever for pop music.) Hell, even 1976 had more BAD songs than 1970, if you ask me, though that is overcome by the sheer amount of really GREAT stuff the latter year had going for it.
Anyway, with the previously posted ground rules in mind, let's look at the first quarter of 1970: Billboard's weeks ending January 3rd through March 28th, 13 weeks total. It's popular with some YouTube critics to rank either the Top 20 songs for the immediately past quarter, or to pick a week near change of seasons and rank the Top 20 for that week. When doing my calculations for 1970, I worked out that sometimes there's very little difference between, say, number 20 and number 21. So it would be more fair to find a spot in the 20s where there was a DISTINCT gap in the points level. For the first quarter, that obvious gap was between numbers 26 and 27, so the top 26 it is! (NOTE: Within a tier, the songs are listed in no particular order.)
( MEH TIER )
( DECENT TIER )
( GOOD TIER )
( EXCELLENT TIER )
So that's the first quarter. Cheers? Jeers? Disagreements? Put 'em down in the comments. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more about 1970.
In retrospect, maybe that wasn't the wisest choice.
I knew ahead of time that starting with a year like 1983 or even 1976 would make my task incredibly tough... but those are two of the years widely acknowledged as among the very best ever in pop music. Nobody talks about 1970 in the same almost-reverent terms. That's probably due to 1970 not having a lot of truly *excellent* songs; seriously, most of the truly great years have LOTS of GREAT songs. Still, once I looked at it, this task is arguably even tougher: out of the biggest hits of the year, what strikes me is the sheer volume of GOOD songs, and the relative lack of actual clunkers. (This doesn't hold up as the Seventies move along, trust me. We're only four years away from what has been described widely as one of the WORST years ever for pop music.) Hell, even 1976 had more BAD songs than 1970, if you ask me, though that is overcome by the sheer amount of really GREAT stuff the latter year had going for it.
Anyway, with the previously posted ground rules in mind, let's look at the first quarter of 1970: Billboard's weeks ending January 3rd through March 28th, 13 weeks total. It's popular with some YouTube critics to rank either the Top 20 songs for the immediately past quarter, or to pick a week near change of seasons and rank the Top 20 for that week. When doing my calculations for 1970, I worked out that sometimes there's very little difference between, say, number 20 and number 21. So it would be more fair to find a spot in the 20s where there was a DISTINCT gap in the points level. For the first quarter, that obvious gap was between numbers 26 and 27, so the top 26 it is! (NOTE: Within a tier, the songs are listed in no particular order.)
TERRIBLE TIER -- empty!
BAD TIER -- empty!
( MEH TIER )
( DECENT TIER )
( GOOD TIER )
( EXCELLENT TIER )
So that's the first quarter. Cheers? Jeers? Disagreements? Put 'em down in the comments. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more about 1970.
