What album held the number one spot for the longest in 1975?
It’s no random occurrence that the Sex Pistols played their debut show at the end of 1975.
The decade’s midway point was equal parts the last hurrah as well as the oblivious death knell to the rock world, and popular music more broadly, for the legacy of artists that were still burnished by the 1960s’ peace and love idyll, in all its glittering achievements and failed promise.
Much of the day’s arena-filling monsters like The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin were peacocking away from former glories toward a soundtrack that just didn’t quite match the malaise felt by the kids stuck down on Earth.
The 1970s’ fifth year was still a magic chapter of the decade’s dazzling musical mosaic, however. Whatever was in the air, every genre seemed to be enjoying a golden age or nascent new arrival across those 12 months, a packed year full of sonic eclecticism enjoying an age when the still holy album could command as much commercial attention as any of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters.
Bruce Springsteen was making grown men weep with Born to Run’s stirring blue-collar heartland, electronic music was pioneered on Kraftwerk’s Radio-Activity, The Wailers’ live version of ‘No Woman, No Cry’ would send Bob Marley to reggae immortality, Parliament was flying their Mothership Connection toward funk alien planets, outlaw country was hitting the dusty trail on Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger, and Brian Eno was immersing himself in his contemplative ambient pool for Another Green World.
That’s just an arbitrary sample of what 1975 had to offer. Yes, rock was beginning to ossify, but the charts’ otherwise teeming vitality was still firing away with bursting innovation underneath an ever-corporatising industry drowning their artists with money and cocaine.
While the UK and US album rankings were peppered by a myriad of styles and flavours, the mammoth LPs that refused to budge from the top spot perhaps offer little in the way of surprises.
So what album held number one the longest that year?
The monster of 1975, if counting non-consecutively, is The Carpenters’ The Singles: 1969–1973 compilation, which remained number one at the top of the UK albums chart for a combined 17 weeks. Discounting the best of packages, Rod Stewart sat comfortably at the premier position with an impressive five consecutive weeks for his Atlantic LP, Stewart’s pivot toward the pop direction that would rub the old Faces fans the wrong way.
Over on the US Billboard 200, two giants of the British Isles share the gold medal for a joint six weeks at the album top spot. First was Led Zeppelin’s double LP Physical Graffiti, released in February but peaking in late March, arguably the final classic LP of the hard rock pioneers, as well as somewhat totemic of the broader rock’s halcyon bubble before punk’s burst.
It was a solid year for Elton John. 1975 kicked off with Elton John’s Greatest Hits spending five weeks on the 200 top, before scoring a number one again in June, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy the first album to ever hit number one within its first release week. Holding out for six consecutive weeks, John would eke out an extra week in August when the LP sailed to the top position again, just beating Led Zeppelin as the year’s most stubborn seller.
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