What was the worst number one of 1977?
As ever, the perusal of 1977’s music charts rarely reflects the critical canon of rock and pop’s lauded gems.
The electric year of the 1970s, when punk and new wave upended popular music, may have set the underground alight and knocked the ‘gunslingers’ at NME for six, but few were selling records by the shedload. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, and the first two Stranglers records hit number one on the UK Albums Chart, but otherwise, their punk peers never nabbed gold, and the US Billboard 200 is practically dominated by Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours with the Eagles’ Hotel California, leaving little room for much else.
The singles aren’t much different. There isn’t the faintest whiff of countercultural dissidence to be found among 1977’s top sellers, a rifle through the year’s number ones largely a smorgasbord of everything ghastly about the era’s pop curdle. Some mammoth exceptions are Donna Summer’s exquisitely futuristic disco classic ‘I Feel Love’, Fleetwood Mac’s sombre ‘Dream’ country stroll, and Stevie Wonder’s irresistible ‘I Wish’ from his Songs in the Key of Life double opus.
Elsewhere, 1977 counts plenty of dross to wade through. David Soul’s grab at pop, Rod Stewart’s shift to peroxide self-parody, and dodgy ABBA rip-off Brotherhood of Man are just some of the glittering heights on offer at the top of the UK’s pop charts. Over in the States, Debby Boone’s drippy ‘You Light Up My Life’ stood as the Hot 100’s longest held number one, and the gamut of cruise karaoke types like Leo Sayer and Barry Manilow are ten a penny in that year’s American big sellers.
So what was 1977’s worst song?
For whatever reason, the moment Paul McCartney called it quits with The Beatles in 1970, his sparkling gift for God-given pop craft and evocative lyrical transport seemed to vanish overnight. ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ is as good as anything from the Fab Four canon, but following the passable McCartney solo debut, execrable LPs from the new Wings venture left McCartney fans aghast at just what had happened to his creative vim.
Things would pick up a little with Band on the Run and the immortal ‘Live and Let Die’ theme, but a dearth of quality tunes dogged McCartney across the 1970s, in stark contrast to his hallowed 1960s output with The Beatles.
This didn’t mean he wasn’t selling records. Ready for Christmas 1977, Wings would drop the ‘Mull of Kintyre’ / ‘Girls’ School’ double A-side, the former a love letter to his beloved Scottish peninsula in Argyll and Bute, where his farmyard retreat was situated since the heydays of Beatlemania.
What could have stood as a tasteful and whimsical ode to the area’s natural beauty instead galumphs with po-faced bloat, the Campbeltown Pipe Band Highland bagpipes slathering an extra queasy slap of twee, shortbread tartan that takes no time to seriously rub the wrong way.
Still, McCartney got what he wanted, a no doubt sincere expression of his Scottish affections, and stayed at the UK number spot for a hefty nine consecutive weeks from December 3rd, 1977.
