What were the first and last number one hits of the 1970s?
The 1970s were a fascinating time in culture. After the optimism of the 1960s came crashing to a dark and violent end, it was clear that times had changed, and the charts showed that.
Joan Didion writes about the end of the 1960s like a physics equation. What goes up must come down she reminded people with her essay The White Album, seeing things like the Manson family murders or the deaths at Altamont festival as the inevitable crash after a period of dizzying hedonism.
That decade was like a fever dream as rock and roll emerged and morphed into a million different things. Countercultural music rose to the mainstream and changed everything. But then, as the hippie age lost its optimistic faith, the 1970s saw a strange evolution from jiving rock and roll into heavier sounds and stronger statements.
It evolved into the worlds of punk, psychedelic rock, prog-rock, metal and beyond. It also seemed to become clearer than ever that music ran alongside, and interacted with, the social, political and economic happenings of the world, and even if the songs themselves said nothing outrightly political, heavier guitars or thrashing drums became inseparable from the prevailing sense of unrest they were made within.
For proof of that, you simply have to look at the two number-one songs that sandwiched the decade.
So, what was the first number one of the 1970s?
In the first week of the 1970s, it was as if nothing had changed. The energy of the 1960s prevailed as ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)’ by Edison Lighthouse hit the number-one spot in the UK.
It’s tough to think of a more happy-go-lucky tune, as the folk-infused pop song is little more than a catchy love song. It feels like a tune for the hippie crowd still, but also a track that parents wouldn’t have turned their nose up at, as the inoffensive tune captures the slogans of the 1960s without the edge.
In the US, too, the first number one of 1970 was ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’, also a hangover from the 1960s, as the track was written for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
…and what was the last number one of the 1970s?
By the end of the decade, though, the tune had totally changed. The final number one of the 1970s in the UK was Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’. The decade took the charts from easy-breezy ditties to anti-establishment anthems as a period of strikes and a struggling economy changed people’s tastes.
However, that doesn’t quite track in America, although perhaps listeners there fell into a different kind of mania and insanity as they let ‘The Pina Colada Song’ hit number one.
