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There's a lot I could comment on about this countdown. It's a perfect snapshot of the very last gasp of the original British Invasion in one of my most fave years of Top 40 ever. A transitional one, to say the least. By late '69 there was already some really soft, quiet rock high up on the charts by acts like the Flying Machine, Peter, Paul & Mary, B.J. Thomas, and Elvis which made it seem like the Beatles era was fading away with a whimper. Also, Diana's swan song with the Supremes was #1 at the end of the year. But for some reason that I haven't quite figured out why, during 1970--at least the first half of it--groups like Zeppelin, 3 Dog Night, CCR, and singers like Joe Cocker defied the apparent soft rock trend and turned up the volume in an emphasis on what came to be called "heavy hits." The 6/27/70 survey features only one really mellow record in the entire Top 10--the Beatles' swan song. And there was a certain excitement about John and Paul coming into their own on their own (Instant Karma, Maybe I'm Amazed). It was as though in saying goodbye to the Fab Four and best of luck to each, the rock/pop world was giving one last hurrah, a final salute, one for the road, and then the party was over. It's interesting that the very week the Carpenters' "Close To You" hit #1 on Billboard, the Hot 100 began to be displayed in a new format, one more '70s. And that's when Bread, James Taylor, the Partridges, Gordon Lightfoot, Carly Simon, and John Denver also ushered in the Soft Rock era--which lasted from mid-July 1970 to around the middle of 1975. Jeff
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Posted By: Jeff on: 06/25/2007 19:19:54 EDT