Why the ‘70s Was The Worst Decade For Music

For most of my adult life I’ve worked restaurant or retail jobs where there’s been some sort of background music playing. Inevitably some “Light Jazz” or Disco will start playing, and a customer will have to point out that the ‘70s were the worst decade for music.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
The 2000s were the worst decade for music. But that’s a post for another day.

People who write off the entire ‘70s are dismissing many of the most important and influential musicians of recent memory.
Yes there was plenty of music that was terrible but even some of the artists that I enjoy the least were pretty amazing.

Let’s start with perhaps my least favorite group from the 70s, the Carpenters:

• WORST: They created the absolute worst kind of Soft Rock with absolutely nothing to interest or challenge your mind.
• BEST: Karen Carpenter’s voice may be the most incredible instrument in the history of Pop.  This is before Auto-Tune or any other kind of ‘sweetening’ of the vocal track. That this enormous voice came out of that tiny, tiny person just devastates me. She was quite the kick-ass drummer too.

Men in makeup!

I was never much of a fan of KISS either but enough people were that just by me typing KISS you know that I’m talking about grown men in Kabuki make-up singing pretty generic hard-rock.

Led Zeppelin

• Missed the Boat: Led Zeppelin was one of the worst critically reviewed bands of all time and yet they revolutionized music and the music industry.
• Laughing on the way to the bank: They took everything from blues, rockabilly, folk, country, reggae, funk and jazz and made music that resonated so deeply that they still sell over a million albums a month.

Frank Zappa

Maybe the worst thing about music in the 70s was that the most prolific, creative musical mind of the time never sold a lot of records.

He never won an arm-load of Grammys. His albums almost never charted and most kids today have never heard of him.

But Frank Zappa didn’t care about album sales or acceptance from the general public.

He pushed boundaries and pushed buttons. He combined jazz, rock and classical music and made it all his way. His music is inspirational and mind blowing.

I actually have a hard time listening to Zappa’s music casually. I feel that you really need to strap on the headphones and crank it up. Actively listen to the stuff.

So yes the ‘70s were full of overblown, over produced, over hyped schlock. But even the worst of it was still pretty good.

Alex