What was the first number one single of 1971?
Conservative parents of the 1960s, who grew desperately concerned with the developing counterculture era, would have quietly hoped that the breakup of The Beatles at the end of the decade would have quietened the resistance and brought peace back to the ordered world.
But instead, the 1970s arrived and took music into even more experimental realms, making it undoubtedly the greatest decade for music. The pathway built by the Fab Four, as well as the likes of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Motown heroes Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, had led to a wildly diverse and innovative era that platformed the emergence of multiple subgenres.
Rock was no longer rock; it was punk rock, psych rock, prog rock and even heavy metal, under the welcome stewardship of Black Sabbath, who in the very first year of the decade delivered the masterful record Paranoid, which set out a chaotic stall for rock to follow in the decade.
But in 1971, the opportunity of this newfound creative liberation really hit its stride and delivered what many people rightly regard as the greatest musical year of all time. Led Zeppelin continued their rock domination with Led Zeppelin IV, Marvin Gaye completely redefined the goalposts for soul with his philanthropic masterpiece What’s Going On, while Joni Mitchell raised the standard of songwriting with her seminal album Blue.
All of the very best artists were firing on all cylinders in this bright new year, and the cultural resistance, powered by music, showed no real signs of stopping. Not even the individual members of The Beatles, who saw no benefit in taking a much-earned rest in the ‘70s, doubled down on their creativity by starting their solo careers. In ‘70, both Paul McCartney and John Lennon squashed any fears that their brilliance depended on one another, as they both released stellar solo albums in RAM and Plastic Ono Band, but while much of the anticipation around solo records swirled around those two leaders, George Harrison was quietly working in the background, on an album that would rightly showcase him as one of the world’s very best songwriters.
Harrison’s album All Things Must Pass, released at the tail end of 1970, was an ambitious double record that led with a truly game-changing single in ‘My Sweet Lord’. Harrison’s signature slide guitar sound married with the highly popular ‘Wall of Sound’ production technique, created a pop-gospel masterpiece that simultaneously celebrated Harrison’s growing spiritualism while marking him as one of the most compelling solo artists of the era.
Did ‘My Sweet Lord’ go to number one?
After its US release on November 15th, 1970, ‘My Sweet Lord’ began its ascension to the top of the charts, where it finally reached number one on Boxing Day of that year. It continued to hold its place there into the new year, where it would stay at number one for another three weeks, eventually being knocked off by Dawn’s ‘Knock Three Times’.
Despite McCartney and Lennon’s own efforts in this bright new decade, Harrison’s track made him the first Beatle to gain a number-one hit after the band’s breakup, and so did away with any ridiculous notions that his songwriting was inferior to his former bandmates.
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