From Fleetwood Mac to Harry Nilsson: Joanna Newsom’s favourite songs of the 1970s
All decades are rich in culture, but the 1970s were a treasure trove. In the wake of the hippie optimism of the ‘60s, the decade after was marked with experimentation, building on the pioneering works that had just been released to make newer and bigger things. It’s a decade that music fans look back at with awe, obsession or jealous nostalgia, wishing we could’ve been there. Joanna Newsom feels all three.
Born a decade late in 1982, Newsom then became an indie darling of the 2000s, gaining a cultish following that only grew and grew. Her harp playing and unique vocals made her a star, creating transgressive folk music merged with chamber pop to hypnotic effect. Newsom’s music feels rootless and timeless, taking inspiration from lots of places but never grounding itself too firmly in any one thing. It certainly doesn’t feel like noughties music though, as her influences have always come from the past.
The ’70s especially stand out to her. In her acting career, she’s best known for playing Sortilège in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, a film set in the same decade as previously mentioned. Then in her music, she takes inspiration from a range of the decade’s brightest stars and underappreciated legends. “It’s definitely my favourite decade of music,” she told Vogue, “It’s the heyday of analogue studio recordings before things got digital. You can still feel the hand of the creator because it doesn’t live on the computer.”
As she builds a playing of some of her favourite songs from the decade, the results are broad-ranging, encapsulating all the different sides of her own artistic identity. On one hand, Newsom’s love for grand, orchestrated musical pieces is clear as she picks Mickey Newbury’s ‘Let Me Sleep’, saying, “It starts with this gorgeous, symphonic string section, and that yields the space to this really intimate piano performance.” Similarly, she loves Jimmy Webb’s ‘Land’s End/Asleep on the Wind’ for the same reason, stating, “This is a great orchestral pop song. Sweeping, cinematic, and as unapologetically sentimental as only Jimmy Webb can be.”
Another choice comes in the form of Gentle Giant’s ‘I Lost My Head’ as she says, “It’s full of Baroque early music references, there’s a recorder, a synth harpsichord, amazing early music stuff that’s all played with the compulsory thrilling virtuosity of any self-respecting prog band.”
On the other side, she picks out some folk tracks to honour that element of her work. Richard and Linda Thompson’s ‘First Light’ stands out as she told the magazine, “Richard almost always pulls from this British and Celtic folk background and plays guitar like nobody else.” Roy Harper’s take on blues folk in ‘Me and My Woman’ also gets a mention as she says, “Harper is a very intricate guitar player, and he’s very influenced by British folk music—intricate fingerpicking stuff—and by the blues.”
The only huge name she picks out is a Fleetwood Mac track. To Newsom, ‘Beautiful Child’ perfectly captures the decade. “there isn’t a more beautiful or appropriate song to play us out of the seventies,” she says, “There’s a sense of loss and saying goodbye, but it’s a sparse and restrained culmination of the studio techniques honed throughout the decade.”
Joanna Newsom’s favourite songs from the 1970s:
- Harry Nilsson – ‘Living Without You’
- Roy Harper – ‘Me and My Woman’
- Terry Callier – ‘What Color Is Love’
- Judee Sill – ‘The Donor’
- Jimmy Webb – ‘Land’s End/Asleep on the Wind’
- Mickey Newbury – ‘Let Me Sleep’
- Gentle Giant – ‘I Lost My Head’
- Junior Murvin – ‘Roots Train’
- Richard and Linda Thompson – ‘First Light’
- Fleetwood Mac – ‘Beautiful Child’
