The 74 Best Albums of 1974

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Welcome to 1974: the most Seventies year of the Seventies. The music world was changing fast, and so was the rest of the culture. America was dazed and confused from its Sixties hangover. Two years after winning one of U.S. history’s biggest landslide elections, Richard Nixon resigned when his Watergate tapes exposed years of criminal corruption. “Our long national nightmare is over,” Gerald Ford said. The kids were into streaking, 8-track tapes, Scooby Doo lunch boxes, and saying “Dy-no-miiite!” Muhammad Ali won the Rumble in the Jungle. Everybody was kung fu fighting.

You could hit the movies to see Blazing Saddles and The Godfather Part II, or stay home to watch Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man, Columbo, and Kojak. Sonny and Cher got divorced. The rec-room carpet was burnt sienna. Evel Knievel made the cover of the Rolling Stone. Steve Miller had feelings about the pompatus of love.

But music was exploding. The Sixties were finally over, which meant everything was up for grabs. A new breed of superstars was inventing the future: Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Neil Young, David Bowie. Experimental weirdos ran wild on the margins, from George Clinton to Brian Eno to Betty Davis. The radio was a love rollercoaster full of disco, glam-rock, prog, country, pop trash, Philly soul, mellow California gold. Veterans like James Brown, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon hung tough; rookies like Kiss, Queen, and ABBA rose up. The 1974 Rolling Stone Music Awards gave the best-album honors to Steely Dan, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, and the Stones, while the Single of the Year was George McCrae’s disco banger “Rock Your Baby.” (“Drug of the Year: Cocaine. Yes, again.”)

So let’s break it down: the 74 best albums of 1974. Some of these albums are timeless classics revered around the world. Others are buried treasures, cult favorites, rarities, one-shots. Some were blockbuster hits; others got slept on. There’s rock, funk, reggae, salsa, even a comedy record. But one thing these 1974 albums share: They all sound fantastic in 2024. As Lynyrd Skynyrd would say, turn it up.

Eagles, ‘On the Border’

Two years before they checked into Hotel California, and one year before Bernie Leadon poured beer on Glenn Frey’s head, the Eagles made their third album, On the Border. It marks the entrance of Don Felder and producer Bill Szymczyk, where the band churned out rockers like “Good Day in Hell” and “Already Gone.” They still left room for some tearjerkers, though, like their cover of Tom Waits’ “Ol’ 55” and Leadon’s Gram Parsons tribute “My Man,” while the closer, “Best of My Love,” earned them their first Number One hit. And don’t think they didn’t squeeze in a song about Watergate (it was 1974, after all). That would be the title track, though as Don Henley later told us, “It was a pretty clumsy, incoherent attempt.” —Angie Martoccio
George Jones, ‘The Grand Tour’

The Grand Tour was hardly George Jones’ first rodeo. Hell, it was the man’s 50th album. But many people in Nashville saw No Show Jones as washed up, fresh off his divorce from Tammy Wynette. His music and career had been in decline for years; his ex was selling far better. But he emerged with one of the great albums of his life — he sounded like a broken, scared, just-divorced man who also happened to be the greatest country singer who ever breathed. The title ballad sets the scene: Possum walks you through an empty house, after his wife has finally walked out. Ironically (or not), it was co-written by George Richey — Tammy’s next husband. But after this album, nobody ever wrote off Jones again. —Rob Sheffield
Supertramp, ‘Crime of the Century’

Like more than a couple albums on this list, the third Supertramp record is a prime example of why punk rock had to come along in a couple years and blow all this flabby, pompous bullshit straight to Hades. At the same time, it’s also pretty good. British soft art rockers Supertramp had an odd keyboard-driven sound, a saxophone, and two equally pretentious songwriters. Crime of the Century opens with the anti-school “School,” and continues apace through silly-but-undeniable highlights “Bloody Well Right” and “Dreamer.” The album has a concept — being yourself is hard in a society like ours — that was already bracingly unoriginal in 1974 yet remains with us to this day. —Jon Dolan
Tom Waits, ‘The Heart of Saturday Night’

Tom Waits’ dazzling debut, Closing Time, released a year earlier, was about those romantic late nights in cocktail lounges. But The Heart of Saturday Night takes it all outside, well after last call — the debut’s “Grapefruit Moon” is now “Drunk on the Moon.” Saturday Night, his first of many collaborations with producer Bones Howe, is a boozy affair not for the faint of heart, as Waits loosens up on the piano and wanders the city streets. The lullaby-like title track is on par with anything off its predecessor, while “Diamonds on My Windshield” introduces a lovably weird Waits rapping like a beatnik in an alleyway. Both are essential. —A.M.
Sparks, ‘Kimono My House’

Ron and Russell Mael were two brothers from L.A. with a decidedly kinky style of glam cabaret. With their third album, Kimono My House, Sparks reigned as Top of the Pops superstars in the U.K. and Europe, even if they couldn’t get arrested in their native land. Pretty boy Russell sang “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” and “Amateur Hour” in his dizzy falsetto, while elder brother Ron wrote the tunes, trimmed his pencil mustache, slicked back his hair, and glowered malevolently behind his keyboards. They’re more famous than ever these days, thanks to Edgar Wright’s acclaimed documentary The Sparks Brothers. —R.S.
Kiss, ‘Kiss’

The first album by Kiss only made it to Number 87 on the charts, but even if the world wasn’t exactly ready for them, they were ready to take over the world, shouting out loud to all their still mostly theoretical fans from Cleveland to to Miami St. Lou on “Kissin’ Time.” Soon all manner of misfits would be rushing to enlist in the Kiss Army (including these clowns), and within a decade, the glam metal they blueprinted on “Strutter” and “Deuce” would be more dominant than any other sound on this list. For the time being, however, the band was still learning on the job. Later in ’74, they’d venture out to L.A. to make the genuinely wretched-sounding Hotter Than Hell. —J.D.
Isaac Hayes, ‘Truck Turner’

Isaac Hayes, Black Moses himself, was riding high in 1974, in the wake of his Shaft soundtrack and Hot Buttered Soul. He not only scored the Blaxploitation flick Truck Turner, he starred in it. (Ike’s an L.A. bounty hunter chasing a killer pimp named Gator — better than Shaft’s Big Score, not as good as Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off.) The Truck Turner soundtrack became a prized cult item for Eighties-Nineties hip-hop heads, getting sampled by Pete Rock, Gang Starr, Ice Cube, and the Geto Boys. Quentin Tarantino also wove it into Kill Bill. Hayes sings the slow jam “Give It to Me,” but the pick is the nine-minute funk instrumental “Pursuit of the Pimpmobile.” —R.S.
Queen, ‘Sheer Heart Attack’

Sheer Heart Attack (the band’s second album of 1974) is when Queen went from inchoate art rockers to the Queen we know and love today, opening with the opera-metal maelstrom of “Brighton Rock” and the music-hall-glam bop “Killer Queen.” Freddie Mercury and Brian May are still figuring out how to affix their lavishly ridiculous ambitions to good songs, so the album is torn between bilious overkill (the Genesis-meets-Dracula “In the Lap of the Gods,” for instance) and sharp rockers like “Now I’m Here” and “Stone Cold Crazy.” They’d nail the formula a year later with A Night at the Opera, the best blast of killer Queen they’d ever come up with. —J.D.
Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco, ‘Celia & Johnny’

The New York salsa scene was exploding in the mid-1970s. And two 1974 albums marked peak moments for the movement: pianist-composer Eddie Palmiere’s The Sun of Latin Music, the first Latin album to win a Grammy, and this wonderful collaboration between legendary Cuban singer Celia Cruz and Dominican bandleader Johnny Pacheco. Just throw on the opening track “Quimbara,” in which Cruz’s voice soars over Pacheco’s white-hot rumba groove. Celia & Johnny recently topped Rolling Stone’s list of the 50 Greatest Salsa Albums of All Time, with list author Ernesto Lechner writing that the album “hits a sweet spot between retro danceability and modernist touches.” —J.D.
ABBA, ‘Waterloo’

When they began, ABBA were a folkie foursome exactly as promising as any other Swedish band, i.e., not at all. Until they won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with “Waterloo” — a surprise global hit, even invading the U.S. Top 10. Agnetha, Benny, Björn, and Anni-Frid launched their world conquest with this album. These kids were still a little out of their fjord when it came to singing in English, but that just added to the charm. They rock out in “King Kong Song,” a demented glam-metal stomp with the chant “Can’t you hear the beating of the monkey tom-tom?” Björn gets deep into his nihilistic vision with “Sitting in the Palmtree,” a reggae ode to rejecting human society (“I will stay here, among my coconuts”). But the planet surrendered to ABBA faster than Napoleon at Waterloo. —R.S.
Sweet, ‘Desolation Boulevard’

Sweet started out as the Sweet, doing bubblegum pop-rock tunes like “Funny, Funny,” “Little Willy,” and the even-more-problematic-than-it-sounds “Wig Wam Bam.” They kept that yummy-yummy/dummy-dummy quality intact when they decided to toughen up their sound and go hard rock on Desolation Boulevard. Along with the depraved glam stomp of “Ballroom Blitz,” “The Six Teens,” and “Fox on the Run,” you get deep cuts that are better than they need to be, like the bisexual hijinks of “A.C.D.C.,” the proto-Ramones mania of “I Wanna Be Committed,” and legitimate fake-Zeppelin bangers like “Set Me Free” and “Sweet F.A.” —J.D.
Bonnie Raitt, ‘Streetlights’

By 1974, Bonnie Raitt had three excellent albums under her belt, but with little commercial success. She tried to change that with Streetlights, enlisting producer Jerry Ragovoy, who wrote “Time Is on My Side” (made famous by the Stones) and “Piece of My Heart” (Janis Joplin). It wasn’t the pop crossover Warner Bros. hoped it would be, but it was a step forward for Raitt, who put her own heartfelt, rootsy spin on James Taylor’s “Rainy Day Man” and the title track, penned by Little Feat’s Bill Payne. But most famously, Streetlights is known for Raitt’s beloved cover of “Angel From Montgomery,” which brought John Prine’s classic mainstream recognition. —A.M.
Barry White, ‘Can’t Get Enough’

White’s stretched-out, string-bathed Philly soul and his ability to marry the slow-talking rumble of Isaac Hayes with the smoothness of Marvin Gaye and the intimacy of Al Green earned him six Number One R&B albums on the in the Seventies. It was a visionary sound that had a huge influence on the disco era, and he was at his best here, from upbeat hits like “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” and “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” to the molasses-paced 10-minute “I Can’t Believe You Love Me,” where his voice melts into a harp and the angelic accompaniment of his backup singers, Love Unlimited. A music-biz veteran and true studio technician, he wrote his songs’ luxuriant string parts by humming them to his co-producers. —J.D.
Golden Earring, ‘Moontan’

These Dutch rockers invaded America’s highways in the spring of 1974 with the scuzz-rock gear-shifter “Radar Love.” This song was responsible for 80 percent of U.S. speeding tickets in 1974. (The rest were caused by “Convoy.”) It remains one of the all-time coolest driving songs, with hypnotic bass and white-line fever poetry. “I’ve been driving all night, my hands wet on the wheel” — now there’s an opening line. Moontan took up residence in 8-track tape decks everywhere, keeping the vibe going with “Suzy Lunacy (Mental Rock)” and the rebel-grrrl glam anthem “Candy’s Going Bad.” Golden Earring bounced back with another U.S. hit in 1982, “Twilight Zone,” earning their stripes as two-hit wonders. They finally retired in 2021, after 60 years as Holland’s rock kingpins. —R.S.
Richard Pryor, ‘That N****r’s Crazy’

One night in February 1974, Richard Pryor walked into Don Cornelius’ Soul Train nightclub in L.A., and cut the most obscenely hilarious comedy album ever made. That N****r’s Crazy became a pop phenomenon, as the funniest man alive raged about sex, drugs, racism, preachers, vampires, how white people talk to cops (“Going bowling tonight?”) versus how Black people talk to cops (“I am reaching! Into my pocket! For my license!”). It topped Billboard’s R&B Albums chart for four weeks — an astounding feat for a comedy record. It kicked off Pryor’s classic trilogy, with Is It Something I Said? and Bicentennial N****r. “Whenever they have a list of the 100 greatest albums, Richard is never there,” Chris Rock once told Rolling Stone. “He’s not a musician, but Richard is one of the greatest recording artists ever. I’ll take That N****r’s Crazy over Frampton Comes Alive! any day.” —R.S.
B.T. Express, ‘Do It (’Til You’re Satisfied)’

B.T. Express were uncut NYC funk — their original name was Brooklyn Transit Express. On the cover of their debut album, they strike a pose on a subway platform, an indelible image of America’s obsession with Brooklyn street cool in the era of Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and Welcome Back, Kotter. The band had jazz chops and dance-floor muscle, in hypnotic grooves like “Mental Telepathy” and the title hit. It was a boom year for the funk: 1974 had cult faves from Mandrill (Mandrilland), Graham Central Station (Release Yourself), the Main Ingredient (Euphrates River), and Rasputin’s Stash (The Devil Made Me Do It). Yet they all shared the B.T. Express ethos: Do it, do it, do it ’til you’re satisfied. —R.S.
The Rolling Stones, ‘It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll’

History has redeemed “bad” Seventies Stones albums like Goat’s Head Soup and Black and Blue, but It’s Only Rock ’n Roll hasn’t really been afforded the same revisionist generosity. It was the first time the band had produced one of its albums, with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards helming the proceedings as “The Glimmer Twins.” You can’t help but tip your sailor’s cap to the autopilot decadence of blanched rockers like “If You Can’t Rock Me,” and there’s real jaundiced grandeur to slow-dissolve beauties like “Til the Next Goodbye” and “Time Waits for No One.” Fittingly, the coolest thing on here is the most raggedy and glazed — “Fingerprint File,” on which Mick lashes out at “some little jerk in the FBI,” over a falling-apart disco-rock groove they’d tighten as the decade progressed. —J.D.
Merle Haggard, ‘Presents His 30th Album’

Merle Haggard was only nine years into his career of making albums, so Presents His 30th Album is the boast of one driven workaholic. But he had a grand time playing the grizzled old outlaw, strutting his stuff as a songwriter for the first time in years. “Old Man From the Mountain” is a nasty-ass Western-swing barn-stomper, with hard-driving fiddle, guitar, and sax, as Hag sends word that he’s on his way back home — so his wife has a chance to get “Joe the Grinder” out of his bed. Merle raises hell in “Honky Tonk Night Time Man” (“I can’t stand no light”), an anthem tough enough for Skynyrd to cover, begs his woman to come home in “Holding Things Together,” and runs from the law in “The Seashores of Old Mexico,” later a hit for George Strait. —R.S.
The Grateful Dead, ‘From the Mars Hotel’

Leave it to the Dead to title a record From the Mars Hotel and have it open with a song called “U.S. Blues.” The post-Watergate boogie is just one of several highlights on Mars, the band’s first album off their new self-owned Grateful Dead label, released just a few months after they debuted the infamous Wall of Sound at their shows. The record also contains the Dead staple “Scarlet Begonias,” “China Doll,” and two Phil Lesh-sung gems: “Unbroken Chain” and “Pride of Cucamonga.” But the beautiful final track, “Ship of Fools,” penned by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, ties the entire album together — no matter what planet they’re on. —A.M.
Ohio Players, ‘Skin Tight’

In the mid-Seventies, Dayton, Ohio’s number-one musical export specialized in two things: vaguely S&M-tinged album covers that were sexist even back then, and meticulously tight proto-disco dance-floor ragers. Skin Tight was one of two albums they released in 1974, followed by chart-topping Fire, and perfecting a template that’d get them four straight Number One LPs. They capitalize on the popular streaking craze with the Sly Stone-gone-bubblegum-boogie of “Streakin’ Cheek to Cheek,” and ride the title track’s immaculate groove for eight sticky-sweet minutes. In one testament to the Players’ Seventies popularity, R.E.M. covered “Skin Tight” on the Green tour, and released their admittedly somewhat less-than-skin-tight version as the B side to “Stand.” —J.D.
Bob Dylan, ‘Planet Waves’

By the mid-Seventies, pop culture was hungry for some Sixties nostalgia: American Graffiti, the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer, and obviously, Bob Dylan. Fresh off the huge success of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Planet Waves is Dylan’s first Number One album. It’s also his only studio release with the Band, dropped right before they reunited for a massive tour. Don’t let “Forever Young” eclipse the rest of the record; “On a Night Like This,” “Going, Going, Gone,” and “Hazel” are spectacular in their own right, offering a glimpse into the true magic that awaited the following year with Blood on the Tracks. —A.M.
Kraftwerk, ‘Autobahn’

“Fun, fun, fun on the Autobahn,” the cyborg voices of Kraftwerk proclaimed, giving experimental electronic music a motorik kick in the tailpipe and more or less inventing synth-pop with the wildly innovative, self-consciously campy, undeniably transporting 22-minute robo-Beach Boys techno-hymn that occupies all of Side One on their fourth record. The rest of the album is mostly just drone-poem flotsam tied to awesomely teutonic titles like “Morgenspaziergang” and “Mitternacht.” Word to the wise: Skip “Kometenmelodie” and go straight to its much better sequel “Kometenmelodie 2,” space-traveling garage rock that forecasts generations of electro-punk to come. It’s almost as big a deal as “Autobahn.” —J.D.
Toots and the Maytals, ‘In the Dark’

Reggae great Toots Hibbert infused his Jamaican grooves with gospel and Memphis soul, belting with throaty fury whether he was partying or praying or resisting oppression. Following a breakout turn in the 1973 skasploitation flick The Harder They Come, he dropped the landmark album Funky Kingston and then the equally great In the Dark (the two LPs shared a few tracks on later U.S. releases). In the Dark has scorchers like “Time Tough“ and “Got to Be There,” the Otis Redding-level slow numbers “Sailing On” and “Take a Look in the Mirror,” and a mountain-high cover of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” where he replaces “West Virginia” with “West Jamaica.” —J.D.
Moe Bandy, ‘I Just Started Hatin’ Cheatin’ Songs Today’

Moe Bandy was the Seventies’ honky-tonk tragic clown, with his theme song “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life.” He started out riding bulls on the rodeo circuit — he’s in the Texas Rodeo Hall of Fame. But he took the pay cut to try his luck as a country singer, pawning his furniture to pay for a $900 recording session. The result: “I Just Started Hatin’ Cheatin’ Songs Today,” where Moe throws his last bottle at the jukebox because it won’t stop playing those damn cheatin’ songs. His debut album set him off on a career of chronicling the drink-sin-repeat cycle, from “I Wouldn’t Cheat On Her If She Was Mine” to “This Time I Won’t Cheat On Her Again.” “People were telling me, ‘Golly, you’re doing a lot of cheating songs,’” Bandy told Rolling Stone. “You gotta just sing about life, and that happens to be part of it.” —R.S.
Lou Reed, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal’

This list doesn’t have too many live LPs, but we made an exception for the special ones. Because there’s live albums, and then there’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal. Recorded at New York City’s Palladium (then called the Academy of Music), Lou Reed introduced Velvet Underground material to a new generation, while transforming classics like “Heroin” and “White Light/White Heat” into swaggering glam rock perfect for the coke-fueled masses. A year later, he’d drop the sequel Lou Reed Live, recorded that same night. But you won’t find a righteous eight-minute jam of “Sweet Jane” on there, will you? —A.M.
Harry Nilsson, ‘Pussy Cats’

Longtime Harry Nilsson fan John Lennon produced this record during his “Lost Weekend” period, when he was briefly estranged from Yoko Ono. Living in Los Angeles, the duo engaged in many evenings of drunken debauchery and rock-star excess, yet still managed to craft a great record jam-packed with quirky moments. Come for the bonkers covers of Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross” and Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” stay for the beautiful Nilsson classic “Don’t Forget Me.” Throughout the years, the duo’s wild times would often overshadow the greatness of Pussy Cats, troubling even Nilsson himself. “It still haunts me,” he told a journalist just days before his death in 1994. —A.M.
Ronnie Wood, ‘I’ve Got My Own Album to Do’

Ron Wood wasn’t officially a Rolling Stone yet — and nobody was really sure if he was still in the Faces. But he was the most beloved bloke in the English rock scene, with his loony grin and ragged guitar. So when Woody made this wonderful solo joint in his London house, none of his friends wanted to get left out. It’s one of the Seventies’ great dudes-hanging-out albums. George Harrison drops in for “Far East Man.” Mick and Keith are all over the place — Keith even takes a couple of lead vocals. (Maybe payback for nicking “It’s Only Rock & Roll”?) But Woody wrote the highlight himself, the torn-and-frayed ballad “Mystifies Me.” He sings his heart out with Rod Stewart, plus other mates from the Faces scene. “Mystifies Me” stands as arguably the best Stones-adjacent song from the interregnum between Exile and Some Girls. —R.S.
Can, ‘Soon Over Babaluma’

Coming out of Cologne, Germany, with killer albums like Tago Mago and Egy Bamyasi, Can invented krautrock in the early Seventies with their sui generis mix of spherical drone and clang-funk repetition. By 1974’s Soon Over Babaluma, singer Damon Sasuki had left the band, and rather than replace him they filled in the space with a cosmic slop that sounded like world music from another planet — futuristic and spaced-out, but primitive and relentless. The symphonic freak-out peaks with the 11 minutes of “Chain Reaction,” in which they seem to accidentally invent techno music 15 years before it existed, and “Quantum Physics,” a mumble-noise convulsion as sumptuous as it is scary. —J.D.
James Brown, ‘Reality’

The Godfather of Soul — a new nickname at the time, just a couple of years after the movie — drops some heavy funk on Reality. “Funky President (People It’s Bad)” is one of his hardest grooves ever, with the chant “People, people, we gotta get over before we go under!” It’s not just the grittiest anti-Richard Nixon song from the Watergate summer of ’74, but one of the first to double as an anti-Gerald Ford song, recorded soon after Tricky Dick resigned. In “Reality,” James Brown weighs in on “salvation, inflation, recession, and depression.” Then he croons a Cole Porter lounge ballad, “Don’t Fence Me In,” just because he feels like it. Bonus: The album cover showcases the Godfather’s brief facial-hair era, rocking one of the most 1974 mustaches of 1974. —R.S.
Van Morrison, ‘It’s Too Late to Stop Now’

As soon as Van Morrison released It’s Too Late to Stop Now in March 1974, it was hailed as one of rock’s most incandescent live albums, capturing the notoriously prickly Irish git in an uncommonly warm mood. It immortalizes his legendary 1973 tour with the Caledonia Soul Orchestra, the tightest and toughest band he ever had, with a horn section and string quartet to give his songs an intimate folk-jazz feel, thriving on vivid band/crowd interaction. It peaks with “St. Dominic’s Preview” and “Listen to the Lion,” where Van the Man roars, growls, and whispers until the music ebbs away, instrument by instrument, into a roomful of awestruck silence. He pays his respects to his blues elders, covering Bobby Bland, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke, and Ray Charles. The expanded 2016 version adds three more volumes from the same tour, with no dip in mojo. —R.S.
Aerosmith, ‘Get Your Wings’

The Bad Boys from Boston were still a year away from their big breakthrough with Toys in the Attic, but they already had their own grubby sound. Get Your Wings is the musical equivalent of a hot-wired Pontiac Firebird with a rusty muffler. “Lord of the Thighs” and “Same Old Song and Dance” are filthy rock bluster, while “Seasons of Wither” is a heavy proto-grunge lament that Steven Tyler wrote on a junk guitar scavenged from a dumpster. The guitar sound got beefed up with a couple of studio ringers: the Lou Reed/Alice Cooper power duo of Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, who kick ass on “Train Kept A-Rollin’.” —R.S.
Minnie Riperton, ‘Perfect Angel’

After the release of 1970’s Come to My Garden — a delicate orchestral affair that, despite the magnificent “Les Fleurs,” failed to become a hit — soul singer Minnie Riperton moved to Gainesville, Florida, with husband-collaborator Richard Rudolph with the intention of retiring. But with the help of an Epic rep and Stevie Wonder, Perfect Angel was born. Co-produced by Wonder, it’s a multi-genre record that properly introduces Riperton to listeners, showcasing her extraordinary talent and five-octave range that featured her iconic whistle register. There’s the energetic opener “Reasons,” the spellbinding “It’s So Nice (To See Old Friends),” and the soulful “Take a Little Trip,” written by Wonder. But the record is best known for the hit single “Lovin’ You,” an acoustic lullaby she wrote for her children; in the end, she sweetly sings “Maya” over and over, for daughter Maya Rudolph. —A.M.
Parliament, ‘Up for the Down Stroke’

With Funkadelic already a success, George Clinton reactivated his side band Parliament, with many of the same musicians, but a more R&B mission of interplanetary funkmanship. Up for the Down Stroke was his second Parliament album, after the 1970 debut, Osmium, but it’s the one where he perfected the P-Funk sound as we know it, tearing the roof off the sucker with Bootsy Collins’ bass and Bernie Worrell’s sci-fi synths. “Testify” was a remake of the 1967 one-shot hit by his harmony group the Parliaments, a nod to his past as he struck out boldly into the future. The big payoff would come a year later, when Parliament really dropped the bomb on Chocolate City and Mothership Connection. —R.S.
Elton John, ‘Caribou’

“The act is going to become a little more Liberace-ized,” Elton John told us in 1973. And it did: John cranked up the glam for Caribou, from the sparkling, spicy opener, “The Bitch Is Back,” to the swirling “You’re So Static.” The record was cut in just nine days, and though it seemed impossible for John to make a subpar album in the early Seventies, critics perceived it as a disappointment. But “Bitch” and “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” would become staples — especially when he rerecorded the latter with George Michael in 1991 — and “Pinky” and “Ticking” are hidden gems. —A.M.
Gene Clark, ‘No Other’

The Pink Moon of country rock. After briefly reuniting with the Byrds in 1972, Gene Clark made his masterpiece (he spent more than $100,000, enraging Asylum’s David Geffen). No Other contains eight brilliantly crafted songs rich in imagery (“Silver Raven”), grandiose production (the epic “Strength of Strings”), and straight singer-songwriter magic (the title track). It was a commercial failure and went underappreciated for decades, devastating Clark for the rest of his life. But with the passage of time — and some reissues, including 4AD’s excellent 2019 release — it’s now regarded as a cult classic. —A.M.
Smokey Robinson, ‘Pure Smokey’

The Motown mastermind was one of the few Sixties veterans who made it all the way through the 1970s with his mystique intact — he never missed a step. Smokey Robinson keeps up with the Me Decade on Pure Smokey, with candid tales of divorced dads, hot-to-trot single moms, wife guys, and fuckboys. Plus “Virgin Man,” one of his most startling Seventies hits, pleading, “Can you love a virgin man?” (Only Smokey would sing, “People say he must be funny/He ain’t had a taste of honey.”) He develops the mellow-soul formula he’d give a name to on his next album: A Quiet Storm. But Pure Smokey is so exquisite that George Harrison turned the title into his own love song to the Beatles’ songwriting hero. —R.S.
John Lennon, ‘Walls and Bridges’

John Lennon runs wild in Hollywood, in his Lost Weekend era, pickling his brain in Brandy Alexanders and getting thrown out of bars with Harry Nilsson. Walls and Bridges is the soundtrack to his craziest nights, the last album he’d manage in the Seventies. He teams up with Elton John for the delicious yacht-rock smoothie “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” Nilsson for the outlaw ballad “Old Dirt Road,” and groovy girlfriend May Pang for the sex-mystic reverie “#9 Dream.” “Surprise Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradox)” is his sultry L.A. love song for Pang, a bird of paradise as well as paradox. At the end, Lennon slips into a Beatles swoon, turning the “Drive My Car” beep-beeps into the hook “Sweet-sweet, sweet-sweet love!” —R.S.
Ann Peebles, ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain’

Ann Peebles was the queen of the Memphis soul scene in the early 1970s, cranking out hits with Willie Mitchell and the Hi Records band. I Can’t Stand the Rain was her definitive album, especially the landmark title hit, which has inspired classic remakes by Tina Turner and Missy Elliott. Mitchell’s electric timbale provided the psychedelic raindrop rhythm. Peebles wrote most of the album with her collaborator Don Bryant, whom she married that year, turning their real-life romance into “Until You Came Into My Life.” “We wrote that song together,” Peebles said. “’74 was a great year.” But she got stormy in “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down,” declaring war on a sucker who tried playing with the wrong woman. —R.S.
Gram Parsons, ‘Grievous Angel’

The country-rock pioneer didn’t live to see the release of his second solo album, celebrating its completion by taking a trip out to Joshua Tree National Park (we know what happened next). Grievous Angel is the stunning farewell Parsons didn’t know he was giving, where the final track, “In My Hour of Darkness,” is an accidental epitaph: “In my hour of darkness/In my time of need/Oh, Lord, grant me vision/Oh, Lord, grant me speed.” The entire album (with the exception of the gorgeous “Brass Buttons,” a distant cousin of “Hot Burrito # 1,” by Parsons’ former band the Flying Burrito Brothers) is bolstered by Emmylou Harris’ harmonizing. The unusual circumstances surrounding Parsons’ death often overshadow his musical legacy. Grievous Angel is there to remind us. —A.M.
Rufus, ‘Rags to Rufus’

Rufus were on fire in 1974, with Chaka Khan striking the matches. As soon as the band polished off its definitive funk bombshell Rags to Rufus, it banged out another keeper that year, Rufusized, featuring Khan’s feminist anthem “I’m a Woman (I’m a Backbone).” Rags to Rufus is an evergreen R&B powerhouse, with jazzy grooves and the 21-year-old Khan strutting her stuff like a warrior queen. She wrote “You Got the Love” with the young guitar prodigy Ray Parker Jr. “Tell Me Something Good” is pure funk lust designed to stir-fry human pheromones, written by Stevie Wonder under Khan’s spell. Tony Maiden makes his guitar talk dirty — the sluttiest use anyone ever made of a talk box. —R.S.
Genesis, ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’

For Peter Gabriel’s final album with Genesis, he concocted a high-concept rock opera. The Lamb is about a Puerto Rican New Yorker named Rael, who comes across the farm animal on the famed Broadway and ventures into a fantastical world full of mythical creatures (normal subject content for Gabriel). Gabriel had already spent years pushing boundaries with his intricate prog storytelling, but these songs — the bonkers “Cuckoo Cocoon,” the three-part “The Colony of Slippermen” — confounded his own band members. But not for long: Decades later, The Lamb is now a cult favorite, and a highlight of Genesis’ 2021 farewell tour was hearing the band close each set with the magnificent Lamb highlight “The Carpet Crawlers.” —A.M.
The Meters, ‘Rejuvenation’

The Meters played hard funk with the second-line swing of their native New Orleans, first as the backing band for local stars like Ernie K-Doe and Lee Dorsey, and then on their own increasingly ambitious albums throughout the Seventies. After recording instrumental albums, they started singing and diversifying their sound. Rejuvenation is their best LP. With local soul visionary Allen Toussaint producing, they affix their signature wicked Crescent City grooves to rock and R&B, edging toward disco and pop on songs like the slinky hit “Just Kissed My Baby,” the hometown standard “Hey Pocky A-Way,” the biting commentary of “People Say,” and the mind-bending 12-minute monster jam “It Ain’t No Use.” —J.D.
Miles Davis, ‘Get Up With It’

“Miles’ longtime audience will without doubt find this a bizarre set,” Rolling Stone warned in its review of Get Up With It. Miles Davis was ears-deep into his fusion journey. The album is a grab bag of tracks he’d recorded over the previous few years, but it has its own emotional force and anti-logic. Playing organ as well as trumpet, he leads his band through the tranquil, Latin-tinged effluvia of “Maiysha,” the dervish noise-funk war dance “Rated X,” and the roadhouse riot “Red China Blues.” Each side opens with a 30-minute-plus jaw-dropper: “He Loved Him Madly,” a tribute to Duke Ellington (who passed away earlier in 1974) that feels like a funeral procession through the stars, and “Calypso Frelimo,” which goes from Caribbean skronk to molten meditation and back again. —J.D.
Jackson Browne, ‘Late for the Sky’

If you don’t know anything about this album, just know that Bruce Springsteen once called it a masterpiece. Late for the Sky cemented Jackson Browne’s legacy as a songwriting genius, capturing post-Sixties malaise, utter heartbreak, and apocalyptic wonder within eight songs, most of which — with the exception of two — clock in at more than five minutes. From the devastating breakup explored in the title track to the gospel magic of “Before the Deluge,” it’s impossible to pick a highlight here. They’re each a short film, essential to the Sky universe that’s presented on the front cover: A shameless take on René Magritte’s The Empire of Light, with a Chevy Bel-Air parked outside a Los Angeles home, next to a street lamp. Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light. —A.M.
Blue Öyster Cult, ‘Secret Treaties’

“You’re mine for the taking/I’m making a career in evil,” BOC informed the world, greeting the year of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with just the right sinister mix of heavy-metal menace and trash-culture irony. The droogie-boogie kings of Long Island, New York, sing about picking brains and harvesting eyes, dominance and submission, and cagey cretins — kind of like Alice Cooper or Black Sabbath with a sardonic sense of humor that was a bit like a suburban-stoner Steely Dan. They’d soon be creeping out all of America with their huge radio hit “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” but it’s albums like Secret Treaties that influenced a generation of misfit rockers, from hair-bands to horror-punks. —J.D.
Funkadelic, ‘Standing on the Verge of Getting It On’

This was the year George Clinton got his P-Funk empire sorted into two different bands: Parliament for dance-floor boogie, Funkadelic for acid-rock cosmic slop. Clinton was such a genius he had no problem pursuing both concepts at the same time. Standing on the Verge of Getting It On was Funkadelic’s sixth album, a showcase for the guitar freakery of Eddie Hazel in jams like “Red Hot Mama.” There’s even an empathetic — and prophetic — pro-queer statement with “Jimmy’s Got a Little Bit of Bitch in Him.” On the album cover, Clinton credits himself as “Supreme Maggot Minister of Funkadelia; Vocals; Maniac Froth and Spit; Behaviour Illegal in Several States.” —R.S.
Willie Nelson, ‘Phases and Stages’

Phases and Stages was Willie Nelson’s 17th album, but it feels like a debut — his first for the artist-friendly Atlantic Records, which let him use his own road band, and allowed him to have real control over the material he cut. The result is a pathfinding concept album about a divorce told from the inside, with emotional detail, good-natured ambivalence, and homespun sensitivity. The spare, tough, Texas outlaw-country feel gives the songs a rugged sense of lived-in realism. What’s the gospel of love according to Willie?: “Sometimes it’s heaven/Sometimes it’s hell/Sometimes I don’t even know.” —J.D.
Al Green, ‘Al Green Explores Your Mind’

Who else has broken as many hearts as Al Green did in the 1970s? The greatest soul singer not named Aretha Franklin could do no wrong after hooking up with Memphis producer Willie Mitchell. Al Green Explores Your Mind marked the end of his classic five-year, seven-album run, which peaked with the trilogy of I’m Still in Love With You, Call Me, and Livin’ for You. He shines on eccentric tunes like “The City,” “One Nite Stand,” and the soul baptism “Take Me to the River.” But within days of its October 1974 release, the story took a tragic turn when his girlfriend attacked him with a pot of boiling grits, then shot herself. After a severe spiritual crisis, Green has devoted himself mainly to gospel music ever since. —R.S.
The J. Geils Band, ‘Nightmares and Other Tales From the Vinyl Jungle’

The ultimate manifesto of Seventies dirtbag rock & roll glory: These were the days when high schools had smoking areas, and this music explains why. The J. Geils Band were Boston art bohos in greaser drag, palling around with Gram Parsons and Van Morrison, with a fierce parking-lot blues backbeat. Peter Wolf was the motormouth madman, the Woofa Goofa with the Green Teeth, leering, “Take out your false teeth, mama … I wanna suck on your gums!” Magic Dick was one whammer jammer of a harmonica hero, with hair to match. Nightmares was the Geils gang’s finest hour, with “Detroit Breakdown,” “Givin’ It All Up,” and a Top 20 hit, their love-stinks lament “Must of Got Lost.” But “Stoop Down #39” is their epic: It peels out with two minutes of Magic Dick doing donuts on his Hohner, then tumbles into the sleaziest of bar-band grooves. —R.S.
The Stylistics, ‘Let’s Put It All Together’

The Stylistics were the most angelic vocal group of the Philly-soul era. Highlighted by Russell Thompkins Jr.’s beautiful leads — one of the most striking sounds of the entire decade — they enjoyed hits like “Betcha by Golly, Wow” and “You Are Everything.” For their fourth album, they went to New York and worked with the veteran songwriting and production team Hugo & Luigi, creating a record that exudes a light-touch grandeur perfect for the anticipatory rapture of songs like “I Got a Letter” and “Keeping My Fingers Crossed.” The peak moment is the towering make-out masterpiece “You Make Me Feel Brand New.” —J.D.

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