Bradley's Buzz

The Top 100 Of The 70's - THE TOP FIVE

THE TOP FIVE
After what seems likes months and months, we have finally made it into the top 5 singles of the entire decade in the 1970's and as I know you're just itching to find out what my warped little ears picked up on, here they are the top 5 Singles Of The 70's - According To Bradley:


#5 – Video Killed The Radio Star – The Buggles
(Downes/Horn/Wooley)
Island single #49114 US /
Chart Debut: US Pop 11/10/1979 #40 / UK 09/29/1979 #1
A song about the future, where the future was really only a few months away. Most people know this jumpy little synth track from the early days of MTV, but the song was actually released and a hit two summers before MTV ever even debuted, it’s just that some genius thought of “Video Killed The Radio Star” as the perfect first video to be played on a new medium they hoped would take over radio programming. The boys at MTV got their wish but there was a time when no one thought it would ever work. The song itself is a cool ditty full of metallic synths and overdubs telling the tale of radio star who just can’t get the praise in the video age she used to get in the days of radio. It’s almost creepy how in touch the Buggles seemed to be in determining how music would be shaped. But I’m sure it was just coincidence and they were just trying to make a catchy new wave song. They succeeded for sure because “Video Killed The Radio Star” has to be one of the most clever and memorable songs to come out of the new wave era. With the bee bop girls singing along behind the lead vocals and the different instrumentations and melodies coming in, it really ushered in the age of plastic, just as the title of the album it came from, had announced.

#4 – You’re The One That I Want – Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta
(John Farrar)
RSO single #891 US / #6 UK
Chart Debut: US Pop 04/01/1978 #1 / UK 05/20/1978 #1
When I was but a wee tyke, my mommy took me out to the bar with her and it ended up being the very first time I ever took to the stage. Yes, I was a child protégé, can you even believe it? That night, there was a band playing and they asked the audience if anyone would like to come up and join them in a song, well of course this kid shouted and screamed to get up on stage. When they asked me what I wanted to sing all I could think of was “You’re The One That I Want” from the movie Grease. Actually it wasn’t that hard of a choice since I had already seen the movie about 8 times, having convinced every single relative that came within hearing distance, that I had yet to see the movie, so one by one they all took me to see the film. I instantly fell in love with Olivia and John and Stockard and well, the whole gang. I also ran out and had my mother buy me the soundtrack, on 8 track of course so I could hear it in the car. Anyhoos, the highlight of the film is of course Livvie coming out as “Sandy II” in her tight leather pants and red Candie heels, and as she snubs out her cigarette and kicks Travolta’s chest, the whole world goes wild, and they break into “You’re The One That I Want.” The song is interesting as it wasn’t part of the original Grease play, the song was once again written by John Farrar, Olivia’s main producer and writer, but to show how good and how loved the song is, it’s become synonymous with Grease and I’m sure anyone who put on the play post-film would be a fool not to include the song. I mean even the new reality show where they are trying to find a new Danny and Sandy to play on Broadway is called You’re The One That I Want. As for the reasons the song struck such a chord, I really believe it has a ton to do with the sweet lovable but push over that Olivia was at the time prior to her transformation into Sandy. She goes from sissy to sassy in two minutes and turns the tables on her man defending her actions as a way to make sure he can handle her for all that she is. The fact that John Travolta was huge at the time didn’t hurt either. “You’re The One That I Want” begins with that great John high pitched “I’ve got chills/ they’re multiplyin’/ and I’m looosin’ control…” and the combination of the piano and that jazzy bass beat pump the song through plus the speedy chorus is so catchy everyone sings along with it yet no one can sing it like those two, try it, and you end up sounding like you’re talking and not singing at all. I guess that’s just the talent of Miss O, as for my debut all those years ago, you can bet that little white haired boy nailed it. I mean I didn’t even sing it with someone else, I took a duet and made it all my own. I’m sure I seemed rather schyzo but still I was able to blow them away. I was great and even if I wasn’t, in my memory I remember it being a magical time and I’ll keep it that way forever .


and for a special treat to imagine what I may have looked like at the time I made my big debut here's a little pic to put it into perspective:

#3 – Heart Of Glass – Blondie
(Deborah Harry/Chris Stein)
Chrysalis single #2295 US / #2275 UK
Chart Debut: US Pop 02/17/1979 #1 / UK 01/27/1979 #1


Like so many other people, “Heart Of Glass” was my first taste of Blondie music. I remember being up with my mom one late New Year’s Eve night and seeing Blondie perform the song. I fell in love instantly with Deborah Harry and when my mother informed me that my father liked her I was even more stoked. I thought maybe we’d finally bond over something. As it turns out, we didn’t bond but boy did I bond with Blondie. My aunt had the Parallel Lines album and informed me she had done some cheerleading routine to the song so I stole the album. Psst, don’t tell her. Later, some relatives of our neighbors had the album and were more than impressed to know that I knew every single song back and forth. As for the single itself, “Heart Of Glass” is so often miscast as the band’s disco single it used to drive me nuts. For the record even early renditions of the song was called “The Disco Song” by the band so I suppose it was what they were going for, but if you listen to the music itself, “Heart Of Glass” is so much more than a run of the mill disco song, in fact there’s more of a smooth new wave feel to it than something KC & The Sunshine Band would do. There are the winding synths, the tic tic of the keyboard and the drums, the guitar, and Debbie’s oh so cool passivity in her vocals. The song is one of their most famous and still plays in clubs from here to England. Of course it doesn’t hurt that there are about 100 different versions of the song available. The original single faded out right after Debbie’s fab line, “Once I had a love/ it was a gas/ soon turned out to be a pain in the ass…” but when some radio felt uncomfortable playing it, a second version was released with it fading out before the line, then of course there was the 5:50 ‘disco version’ that showed up on 12” and on most of the pressings of Parallel Lines; and from there it just got remixed and remixed. But it’s the original that stands up the best, I get a thrill from the intro and when Debbie’s bridge comes in you can’t help but sing along, “Lost inside adorable illusion/ and I can’t hide/ I’m the one you’re using/ please don’t push me aside/ we could’ve made a cruisin’ yeah” and the boys “na, na, na, na”’s are an excellent touch until we get to the part that everyone loves, the breakdown and the “oooh wahoh”. “Heart Of Glass” is so full of little things to make it awesome, it’s almost amazing there could be a group of people so talented they could put all of this together. “Heart Of Glass” is a classic single that has definitely stood the test of time.

#2 – Heartbreaker – Pat Benatar
(Gill/Wade)
Chrysalis single #2395
Chart Debut: US Pop 12/22/1979 #23
If all Pat Benatar had ever offered to us was “Heartbreaker” I would still be a die Benatar fan. From the moment the intense drumbeat begins you are taken into a whole new level of high-energy new wave rock. Then the voice comes in and there’s no turning back, “Your love is like a tidal wave/spinning over my head/ drowning me in your promises/ better left unsaid…” in that now familiar Benatar growl but then she goes up three octaves to give us a bridge, “You’re the right kind of sinner/ to release my inner fantasy/ the invincible winner/ and you know that you were born to be” before growling the chorus, “You’re a heartbreaker/ dream maker/ love taker/ don’t you mess around with me/ no, no, no!” and if you’re smart you wouldn’t mess with the little petite firecracker. After listening to song after song from the 70’s I knew Benatar’s first big single would hit high and to be perfectly honest it was just a hair from being our #1 single of the 70’s, that’s how much I love this song and how much I believe you should love it too. There wasn’t another rocker like Miss Benatar when she hit the scene – there were the hard rocking boys in endless bands, and there were women hitting the scene like my Debs, Chrissie Hynde, Heart and Patti Smith but Pat had more of a gleam to her, she used a boy’s use of sexiness to get her gut wrenched messages across. Not as centerfold in looks in Debbie and not as lyrical as the Blondies, nor as political as Patti or Chrissie or even as hard rock as the Wilson sisters, Pat blended pop and rock with banging guitars on this single being meshed together by a new wave production done by Mike Chapman’s right hand band Peter Coleman. “Heartbreaker” bashes through the supposed prejudice that women can’t rock like men, Pat reestablishes the first verse with the second and then there’s a guitar solo and the drums come pounding back with Pat’s intense bridge only for all the music to fall away and an accapella rendering of the chorus which sounds amazing turned up to almost full volume. The music comes back and as Pat winds up the chorus, her soon to be husband Neil Geraldo creates one of the best guitar solos (almost 30 more seconds of the song) of the entire decade. Of course, the most thrilling part of it all is that voice, you never heard a woman sing like that behind those incredibly hard rock sounds. In fact the radio stations didn’t want to play the song at first as they felt it was too hard of a sound. It would take over 3 months to even move into the top 40 in March of 1980 but would eventually reach the lower 20’s and help put Pat Benatar on the map. Of all of her wonderfully crafted and exciting singles nothing punches like “Heartbreaker”, and the song and its album In The Heat Of The Night made a life time fan out of this little blonde, and that’s why it made it all the way to our number 2 spot. I couldn’t live without this song in my life.

On a side note I don’t think it hurt any that Pat looks smokin’ hot on the record jacket, in the UK, where the song didn’t chart or sell I blame completely on the record jacket issued, I mean it’s just downright goofy.

and just to keep things a little on the edge, before we get to the very best single of the 1970's let me give you a little trivia about our list... I love this stuff, even if you don't...

1. Completely coincidentally but so wonderful is the fact that every single year of the 70's has been represented in our list of the top 100. Being a child of the 80's it's probably not terribly surprising that the year with the most entries is 1979, with a total of 25 singles, including 5 of our top 10; 1979 is followed by 1978 (23), a tie between 1977 & 1976 (11), 1970 has 8 singles, 5 singles are a tie between 1971 and 1974 and there are 4 singles from 1972x1973 and 1975, so it looks like a fairly good representation.

2. Blondie (of course) has the most singles entries in our list with 7, followed by Fleetwood Mac with 4 singles, and then third place finds a tie between Donna Summer & Olivia Newton-John each with 3 hits, and the total number of artists with double entries is 11 - Linda Ronstadt, Barry Manilow, Melanie, Billy Joel, Patti Smith Group, Aerosmith, Queen, ABBA, Bee Gees, Carly Simon and our #2 entry winner Pat Benatar, but should you feel that's a lot of songs by repeated artists there are still 61 songs that are by artists with only one entry.

3. Producer Mike Chapman produced the most singles on our countdown with 6 but since he did produce 4 of Blondie's 7 that's not a big surprise but he also produced Benatar's "If You Think You Know How To Love Me" (#34), The Knack's "My Sharona" (#13), Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" (#9) and Nick Gilder's "Hot Child In The City".

4. It's not surprising considering the size and period of time they were in business but Columbia Records has the most chart entries with 11 including Elvis Costello, Billy Joel & Boomtown Rats on their roster. And because of Blondie's prominence on the chart the record label with the second most entries goes to Chrysalis Records but they also had Pat Benatar, Nick Gilder, and Claudja Barry; and the third is another big sized company Capitol Records with 7 entries including Anne Murray, The Knack and Sweet.

now stay tuned for the #1 Single Of The 1970's According To Bradley

Labels: 70s, Blondie, Grease, In The Heat Of The Night, John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Pat Benatar, Retro songs, The Buggles

posted by swivek @ 8:48 AM