What was the best-selling song of the 1970s?
Was the 1970s the best decade of music? I would certainly argue its case. The very best of all burgeoning genres existed in this era, from punk, soul, disco and psychedelia. There was quite simply a feast of riches from all different musicians, which kept hungry music fans satiated at all times.
Sure, it’s not like they were starved in the 1960s. The Beatles were serving up fresh ideas after fresh ideas, ensuring music fans were being pushed into new experimental realms. And that’s not to mention the groundbreaking work of Bob Dylan, The Kinks and The Beach Boys, who supported The Fab Four in moving music forward culturally.
They were throwing ingredients into this simmering pot of creativity that come the 1970s, was ready to explode. And explode it did, to the sound of Black Sabbath’s groundbreaking sophomore album Paranoid, Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel and Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush which all came in the very first year of this fruitful new decade.
1971 brought with it Marvin Gaye’s imperious album What’s Going On, while the following year gave way to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, before Pink Floyd’s psychedelic masterpiece Dark Side Of The Moon descended on the world in 1973. All of this greatness flourished on this breeding ground of artistic open mindedness, and it didn’t let up until the very end of the decade.
Even throughout continued geo-political tensions, be it economic crises in the world’s major cities, or on going bloody worlds in Asia’ south-eastern regions, art bobbed and weaved through the times to give people all over the world escapism and understanding, in one.
But despite all of this change and innovation, when it came to the best selling song of the entire decade, well we simply couldn’t allow ourselves to escape the clutches of this one familiar name.
Who was it?
Despite no longer being in the world’s biggest band, and despite the fact that music had moved onto a more diverse and shared landscape, it was, of course, a Beatle who topped the list. While George Harrison and John Lennon released brilliant solo efforts themselves, in the form of All Things Must Pass and The Plastic Ono Band, it was McCartney who came out on top in the 1970s.
With his new band Wings, McCartney released several albums throughout the decade, but it was their 1978 effort London Town, which hosted the decade’s best-selling song. It was ‘Mull of Kintyre’ which was the first song of the decade to sell two million copies.
“When we finished it, all the pipers said, ‘Aye, it’s got to be a single, that.’ It was up to them, really, to do it. I thought it was a little too specialised to bring out as a single, you would have to bring out something that has something with more mass appeal,” McCartney revealed of the song, that was unashamed in its celebration of Scottish heritage.
“But they kept saying, ‘Oh, the exiled Scots all over the world. It’ll be a big single for them.’ Yet I still thought, ‘Yeah, well, but there’s maybe not enough exiled Scots,’ but they kept telling me, after a few drinks,” he added. Turns out, they may just have been right.
