What is the best-selling classic rock song of the 1970s?
It’s easy to glamorise decades of history. We can label the 1960s as nothing more than a hotbed for hippies or perhaps the 1990s as the last great decade of British liberalism. But really, we understand the conflicting reality of each decade. Art we hold dear from every era can only be as good as it was, by rising out of trouble and conflict, which in the 1970s, there was plenty of.
It’s widely regarded as music’s finest decade, a time when rock and roll still reigned supreme, but gave way to the emergence of new genres. Soul was in full bloom, disco had burst on the scene, and the foundations of contemporary hip-hop were being laid. Music was in as healthy a place as it could be for the simple fact that society wasn’t.
New York was a bleak, broken shadow of a city, while the UK was hurtling towards drastic economic decline. Meanwhile, civil wars were sparking across Eastern Europe, South America and Africa, fracturing a global society deeply unsure about what the future held. Music, therefore, was a hopeful beacon which shone through the darkness, lending understanding to its listeners.
While the burgeoning genres joined that discussion, no music captured that troubled zeitgeist better than rock and roll. But it wasn’t one homogeneous sound, built around four chords and an electric guitar. It was being pushed into new experimental realms. Be it prog rock and Pink Floyd, psychedelia and The Grateful Dead, or the softly delivered sounds of Americana, it was all individual and nuanced.
But it didn’t have to be esoteric to be innovative. Take Joni Mitchell, for example, whose sensibilities were rooted in what we would deem a traditional songwriting structure, but she approached it in such an innovative way.
“She was so new and fresh with how she approached it,” said David Crosby when discussing her guitar playing, “It’s these odd tunings that have tripped up thousands of artists trying to figure out how to get ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ to sound like her ‘Big Yellow Taxi’.”
It was a time of great collaboration between legacy-building artists, and fans were spoilt for choice when it came to records. If you wanted to be great, your music had to truly be great to find space in this crowded landscape, and so some of the best music history has ever heard was made.
But what is the best-selling rock song from this decade?
The greatest thing about this decade was the open-mindedness of the fans. This nonsense didn’t dominate conversations we hear now about radio-friendly run times; instead, experimental behemoths and lengthy guitar intros were welcome, making the charts a clear representation of authentic music. So, it’s no surprise that the decade’s biggest seller was a six-minute rock opera epic.
Yes, rather unsurprisingly, the 1970s best-selling rock song was ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen. Released right at the mid-point of the decade, it stormed the charts, sitting at the top spot for nine weeks and selling a total of 2.62 million copies.
