The 70s to me, is the best 10 year period of music I've ever heard. The artists, production, styles etc.
The tinny sound of 60s music isn't very nice to listen to. Take Sly's Fresh from 73 for example. The way that every instrument could be heard, the way the music filled the room. In the 60s, to me, everything sounded too spaced out and sloppy. Especially the drums.
In the 70s, Marvin Gaye became a true artist. Led Zeppelin. The blaxploitation soundtracks. The pimp music. Earth, Wind & Fire changed the game. Bowie got funky. Shit, even disco was somewhat hip. I'd take 72-79 over any time period.
How could you forget about Miles Davis' electric years? 75-77 still to me is the greatest period of R&B & soul. Joni Mitchell's and Stevie Wonder's string of classics. It's just crazy to me.
Outside of funk and a handful of prog rock bands, the 70's were shit.
Andrew Sullivan
It was the sweet spot of music production. The 1970s were amazing for music.
Ryder Morales
Nah dude, the 60s were definitely more interesting and experimental. A lot of 70s music feels lazy and cynical.
Kayden Clark
The 60s get the ink, but the 70s were pop's golden years—economically in that they were when sound recordings became, as the trades trumpeted in 1969, a "billion-dollar business," and artistically because the 60s had opened things up so much that for the entire decade possibilities seemed infinite whether they built on or rebelled against the 60s model. And Bowie was in the middle of so much of it.
It wasn't one of the high points in American culture. The fashions, the cars, everything looked tacky and tasteless. The mentality of the decade was very shallow and hedonistic. 70s music was not an improvement on the 60s creatively or artistically. It was definitely better sonically than either of the surrounding decades. So while the 70s may have been a high point for music production, the content of the music was lacking.
Lucas Lee
Once pop music began shifting to the album format, the quality of recordings made huge strides in a short amount of time. The gap between 67-69 and the early 60s is enormous and sounds like literal decades are separating them instead of 4-5 years. The 70s was the first decade where recording quality had just about reached modern standards of fidelity and it was the first decade where rock was really seen as a serious art form.
Lincoln Young
Yes there was a lot of great AOR but if you look at the chart hits, it's hard to forgive Captain & Tenneille, Debby Boone, Disco Duck, Kung Fu Fighting, and Olivia Newton-John.
Gabriel Sullivan
IDK but lots of 60s albums sound excellent with good stereo equipment. I do agree recording techniques really reached a high art in the 70s with carpeted rooms, multitracking, etc.
Jeremiah Powell
"Why Were The 70s So Perfect?" They weren't. The 70s was also the era of corporate arena rock.
Adam Allen
>The gap between 67-69 and the early 60s is enormous and sounds like literal decades are separating them instead of 4-5 years I agree but at the same time the 70s also changed a lot from beginning to end. Where were Led Zeppelin, Sabbath, The Who, Three Dog Night, singer-songwriters, Alice Cooper, etc in 78-79? The tail end of the decade was a completely different era entirely.
Oliver Wood
The thing that sucked about the 70s was that so many "rock critics" had absolutely ridiculous standards that in no way hold up today.
And i think it had an impact on the artists themselves-----self-doubt, increased drug intake, crappier records.
It is useful to have a thoughtful analysis of records but it's a mixed blessing. I think record-makers in the 60s had the benefit of less critical scrutiny by the anointed arbiters of what is cool----at least until the late 60s.
RAM being a prime example.
Nathaniel Hernandez
Kung Fu Fighting is a dope jam, faglord
Jace Cooper
You're thinking of the 80's.
Nolan Lee
John Lennon called the decade "a drag". Too bad he never really lived to see the 80s.
Michael Parker
I dunno what Americans' perception of the 70s are but for the UK the middle part of the decade was awful. A flood of terrible glam rockers making chinnychap pop ditties and overwrought stadium rock acts, and punk really was a breath of fresh air.
Anthony Ramirez
I’d say the 70’s were the last time the music industry was consistently healthy. Cassettes allowed for piracy and the weakening of the record label, which despite screeches of industry plant and sell out, the record label people really knew what they were doing. Terrestrial radio was expanding with AOR and FM and had a while to stagnate before it would become the zombie that drags down modern pop music.
It definitely was not perfect but when the number one hit was excessively lame, the lower levels of the charts still got decent airplay.
Mason Johnson
Fortunately the US was (mostly) spared glam rock. Sure, we got the Bay City Rollers but the bulk of it stayed on the other side of the Atlantic.
Nathaniel Lee
Record sales were at an all-time high just before video games blew up and took a big chunk of teens' time and money away from music.
Liam Brown
For UK audiences, 1977 was nearly as massive of a year as 1964 in that it marked a radical musical and cultural shift. Americans often overlook punk and New Wave, but it was the second coming of the Beatles from our POV.
Lucas Robinson
Punk and New Wave simply weren't that much of a thing in the US at that time. Even in NYC you didn't hear the stuff on the radio. Only a few elitist hipsters like Christgau knew about it and only certain hole-in-the-wall record stores carried it. It wasn't until 79 that New Wave started to break mainstream and be played on the radio.
Jason Lopez
There was a hell of a lot of lazy blues/buttrock even from some of the giants like the Stones and McCartney.
Ryan Thomas
As the other user said, the early and late 70s are two completely different eras. The early 70s was mostly a continuation of the late 60s. The late 70s, while some early decade carryover remained (the Bee Gees had a #1 hit in 1971), was mostly very different--it was ruled by disco, punk, New Wave, and corporate rock.
Carter Johnson
i dont listen to much 70s but can we agree is one of the shittiest albums to come out of the decade?
Point well taken about the good audio quality of 70s music. There was a lot of money in the record industry back then due to huge album sales up until the crash at decade's end. By the 70s I think most studios had access to decent equipment so you didn't have too many recordings that sounded like they were made with a portable cassette player.
Juan Harris
The 70s was also when 50s nostalgia became a thing and you had Grease and Happy Days. It's curious how they portrayed an era only 15-20 years in the past as a whimsical Paradise Lost. I can't imagine anyone doing the same with the early 2000s.
Aiden Sullivan
That was probably because people looked back to the 50s as a more innocent time before the chaos of the late 60s.
Chase Lee
The 70s is my favorite decade for music too, but for 10 year period, I'd argue 1973-1983.
Ryder Hughes
The 70s might have been ok for sheltered suburban white American kids who didn't have anything to worry about but playing Pong and listening to KISS. There's a big chunk of the world that would never ever want to relive that time.
Bentley Cox
Great, here comes the entire Third World to tell us about the war/famine/genocide/dictatorship they had back then.
Anthony Brooks
Seriously, for about 95% of Americans in 1977, music consisted of disco, Olivia-Newton John, KISS, Eagles, Boston, Foreigner, Fleetwood Mac.
Jeremiah Flores
>It wasn't until 79 that New Wave started to break mainstream and be played on the radio. Even then the whole new wave/post-punk/UK scene was only sporadically in the mainstream until MTV hit in '81 and '82 and broke the door wide open for these acts
Carson Martin
*sad violin music plays*
Benjamin Rogers
Yes the days of standing in breadlines and anyone who speaks up against the government or the Soviet tanks occupying one's country disappears.
Jacob Gutierrez
...
Austin Moore
Yep.
Henry Baker
I believe the 60s were better. The amount of masterpieces that came out between 65 and 69 is outstanding.
Jackson Carter
The early 70s was better especially in terms of the singles/radio hits, which were absolutely appalling in 75-79.
Asher Fisher
Rita Coolidge--Higher and Higher was what you heard on the radio in 1977 not Ramones or the Stranglers.
Sebastian Morales
It was the perfect convergence of a huge baby boomer population and the fact that video games and other such forms of entertainment hadn't really become a thing yet.
Dominic Clark
>The thing that sucked about the 70s was that so many "rock critics" had absolutely ridiculous standards that in no way hold up today. Like what?
Justin Murphy
Like you know, you can't just rock out and have a good time, you have to have a political message the critic agrees with.
Jose Parker
The rock was kind of...eh, not as good as the early 70s either.
Julian Parker
It was the time when all the wildness of the 60s had been contained, commercialized, processed, homogenized, and gotten down to a science. The 60s rock giants had all become fat, lazy, complacent, rich fucks surrounded by Quaaludes and bags of cocaine. Nostalgia for the 50s-early 60s was becoming widespread, maybe because a lot of that generation were reaching their 30s and pining for the more innocent days when they were wide-eyed teenagers instead of jaded, coked-out adults.
Punk happened because everyone was getting tired of all those California hippie triple albums with 60 bpm songs.
Nathaniel Harris
there is simply no other period in music with as many great albums as 1970-1974. classic rock, glam, proto-metal, funk, soul, disco, krautrock, blues rock, etc etc etc. you have annual releases by bowie, iggy, lou, dylan, stones, the who, stevie wonder, james brown, sly stone, funkadelic, van morrison, led zep, zz top, it goes on and on and on ever before you get to the obscure shit.
basically stereo hit, everyone started recording with 16 tracks, and suddenly records started sounding much much better. advances in guitar amp technology and pedals meant there was a much broader palette of guitar sounds available. The Beatles pushed everyone to add effects and varied backing instrumentation to tracks. The explosion of stadium-level concerts and FM radio made it so more bands could tour and sell records and therefore pay for studio time. And the record companies were still too unfamiliar with the music to homogenize it all.
music grabbed the center of culture by the throat and became so primary in everyone's identity and experience. it's strange to think how quickly it all got bloated and ossified enough for punk rock to seem essential just a few years later.
Bentley Harris
"Production of 16-track machines boomed and the number of studios worldwide using these machines exploded during 1970 and 1971. By the end of 1971 there were at least 21 studios in London using 16-track recorders in conjunction with Dolby noise reduction.[8] " "The first eight-track recorder in the UK was built by Scully and installed at London's Advision Studios in early 1968."
So basically you go from four tracks to sixteen tracks in three years. This is the actual answer right here.
