Five songs from 1976 that should be deleted from history
1976 is widely considered one of the greatest years for music of all time, as genres like pop, disco and subsections of rock captured the public’s imagination.
The ‘60s were incredibly important when it came to setting the groundwork for different genres of music. The concept of the pop star and rock star had been proven; while they were initially established in the 1950s, the ‘60s showed that this adoration of music and those who made it wasn’t a phase. This was an art form that had legs, and it was time for artists to start seeing just how far they could run with it.
The result was that the ‘70s brought with it some of the greatest musical innovations that the world had ever seen. The beginning of the decade saw the rise in popularity of genres like psychedelic and prog rock, while the back end of the ‘70s gave rise to genres like disco and R&B. It was a great time for music, but in order to fully appreciate the good, we also need to be aware of the bad.
Artists were making truly great strides, but that came with the release of some shocking songs, as well as tracks that potentially ruined careers. While we look at such a decade as a great time in music, there is no doubt that there are some songs which came out during these prolific years which the world would have been better without.
Five songs from 1976 that should be deleted:
Hot Chocolate – ‘You Sexy Thing’
Just because something sticks in your head doesn’t mean that it’s good.
We were all humming the tune to ‘Baby Shark’ at one moment in time, and recently, no doubt you’ve found yourself tapping along to the beat of ‘APT’, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that these are good songs. Quite the opposite. The same applies to Hot Chocolate’s ‘You Sexy Thing’, a song that, realistically, we could have done without.
The song was officially released in 1975, the track peaked in 1976, and this was when the track was permanently ingrained into the minds of listeners around the world. That line “I believe in miracles” lodged into the minds of music fans everywhere, so much so that they’ve convinced themselves they actually like it. Well, no, out of all the songs that became big in 1976, ‘You Sexy Thing’ is one of the tracks we could ditch.
ABBA – ‘Dancing Queen’
Here’s the thing: I like this song, most people like this song, but the continued run of the musical hack that is ABBA Voyage has made the merit of everything the band put out into the world null and void.
People talk about a dwindling number of music venues, communities getting smaller and smaller, fewer bands playing live, but then won’t spend money on local shows and will instead part ways with hard-earned cash to watch a light show while someone puts an ABBA playlist on shuffle.
The band wouldn’t be as big as they are now without the song ‘Dancing Queen’, and if they weren’t as big, then something as blood-sucking as Voyage wouldn’t exist. As such, if we delete the release of one of their biggest songs from history, then maybe this musical monstrosity doesn’t become a thing. One can only dream.
The Beach Boys – ‘Rock & Roll Music’
No one is denying that The Beach Boys are one of the greatest bands in the world, as they put out some of the most beautiful music ever laid on wax. Brian Wilson was one of the best songwriters of all time, but he was very much the glue that held the Beach Boys’ creative output together. Throughout the ‘70s, when he stopped writing as many songs, it showed in the quality of what the band were putting out.
One of their worst offerings was a cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Rock & Roll Music’, which seemed to ditch the heart of soul of the band and instead made their connection to music appear completely surface-level. The output of bad songs like this doesn’t necessarily dampen The Beach Boys’ standing in musical history, but it’s still a track that people would be better off forgetting.
Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots – ‘Disco Duck’
The ‘70s were a decade which brought with it the rise of disco. This was an incredibly exciting time for a lot of people.
Music has always been an art form that can invoke joy in those who listen, and disco was one of the best examples of that. It was a sound that got people moving, that could be heard in clubs around the world and was a welcome addition to the music industry.
That being said, the popularity of the genre meant that it became commercialised very quickly. Soon, there were a lot of songs that basically parodied the genre, and one of those tracks was ‘Disco Duck’. This is one of the worst disco tracks ever written, and is a piece of music that the world could simply have done without. If we were to go back to 1976, it would be in our interest to stop this piece of music from ever getting released.
Boston – ‘More Than a Feeling’
This isn’t disparaging the Boston song ‘More Than a Feeling’, it was a great piece of music which still stands up as one of the greatest pieces of stadium rock ever made; however, it also acted as a real problem with Tom Scholz’s career. The musical innovator put together Boston’s debut album in the basement of his house, completely in isolation. While that might be common in modern music, it was incredibly rare in the ‘70s, and the fact that he was able to produce such a large sound on his own was a testament to his creative vision.
The popularity of his music meant that record labels signed him and wanted him to create new songs immediately, but that wasn’t how Scholz worked. He was meticulous and took his time, which bigwigs in the music industry don’t appreciate. If not for the hit song that was ‘More Than a Feeling’, Scholz would have likely had more time to take even more strides in music, but suddenly, he was on label time, which didn’t allow for such thinking.
‘More Than a Feeling’ shouldn’t be deleted from history because it’s bad; quite the opposite, it was too good, to the extent that it might have gotten in the way of the creation of other great pieces.
