This feels impossible to pull off. You can't truly pin down rock music, with all of its dizzying sub-genres and the different reasons why it was so great. Not to mention, the 70's were a beacon of incredible music. To narrow it down to a concrete four songs for the Mount Rushmore exists as one of the most arduous tasks I've ever taken on personally.
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As a fruitless attempt to try and cobble together every song that makes 70's rock so alluring, the following is just some of the records that narrowly missed the cut and would make a top 20 version of this list.
Honorable Mentions: Jefferson Starship- "Jane" (1979), Eagles- "One of These Nights" (1975), Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band- "Night Moves" (1976), AC/DC- "Highway to Hell" (1979), Heart- "Barracuda" (1977), Pat Benatar- "Heartbreaker" (1979), Kansas- "Carry On Wayward Son" (1976), Pink Floyd- "Time" (1973), Led Zeppelin- "When The Levee Breaks" (1971), Black Sabbath- "Paranoid" (1970), Steely Dan- "Dirty Work" (1972)
The Four Best Rock Songs of the 1970's
Bruce Springsteen- "Born to Run" (1975)
Some of the most life affirming music that will ever be made, let alone in rock. The kind of rush and liberty you can only feel scratching your way through your early twenties. At 24 years old, there's so much road ahead for Bruce Springsteen at the time. And yet, the burning anxieties and stresses of this world remain omnipresent, the American Dream we were sold doesn't come with a refund. War is a constant, the bills won't stop, prices skyrocket and the future can seem murkier than ever. Sound familiar?
Springsteen's answer seems so idealist in nature. Life still must be lived regardless of our justified worries. Remain in the present. It's easy to say that like it's easy to get up everyday. But what's the alternative? What's a life that persists in misery? Make those mistakes, go on that date, splurge a little bit. As far as we know, there's only one of these lives available to us. The best rock music awakens the will to go on, even in a little delusion. Bruce Springsteen distills this essence over four minutes, that the romance of life is worth buying. We were born to run after all.
America- "Ventura Highway" (1972)
Truthfully, America has at least 2 other folk rock songs worth considering for this list. "Sister Golden Hair" is a dour, yearning cry atop reverberated guitars and sunrise harmonies. Similarly, "A Horse With No Name" is particularly heavy, a full encapsulation of life in all of its starkness and euphoria alike. But it's "Ventura Highway" that prospers, a rosy record romantically portraying the vast beauty of driving through southern California.
As a southerner who was plenty skeptical of the whims of Los Angeles and the greater soCal area, this really distills the allure. The wind blowing through your hair, the salt water smell, the sun shines harder than any other state I've ever driven through in my life. It might strike as hippie nonsense until you really feel it. The world feels like it's at your fingertips on America's folk rock affair.
Lynyrd Skynyrd- "Free Bird" (1973)
The best compliment I could give "Free Bird" is that despite it's nine minute runtime, it breezes past you. It soars in the same way a caged bird finally takes to the sky coasts through the clouds. I think an underrated aspect of the song is how funny it is when diving into the text of it. It's essentially a breakup song, how he can't navigate their relationship any longer and Ronnie Van Zant needs to stretch his arms out and experience the world. It's not that he doesn't love her anymore, he just senses that if he doesn't take this chance, they'll grow to resent each other.
"Free Bird" plays very dramatic and maybe even a little half baked emotionally, depending on how you listen to it. But it all pays off when Ronnie belts out how he can't change and proceeds to rock out to one of the most killer guitar solos ever. It's hysterical, as if he was lying through his teeth the whole time and couldn't wait to cut loose. Changing seems overrated when you can't live as freely as Ronnie and the rest of Lynyrd Skynyrd describes.
Fleetwood Mac- "Dreams" (1977)
When conjuring this list together, Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" was the only non-negotiable pick. Lynyrd Skynyrd was the last cut for this illustrious Mount Rushmore. You could argue America is more formal folk music rather than mixing it with rock music. Even Bruce Springsteen made me pause for a brief moment before firmly penciling him in for the list. But it would be willful contrarianism to look at Stevie Nicks' opus as anything but the best rock of the decade.
It's the brutal honesty that Stevie Nicks writes with haunts "Dreams." Where Go Your Own Way is an exorcism of a dead relationship in the band, Nicks saunters in grief and exasperation. "Now, here you go again, you say you want your freedom. Well, who am I to keep you down?" she sizzles. At what point do you finally say enough is enough and finally call it quits? Eventually, the thunder will come and the rain will wash away all the turbulence.
The best rock songs have a sense of liberation to them. Like America, Bruce Springsteen, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, these moments tend to explode after holding so much tension. The freedom lends a rush to the core of our spirits. "Dreams" offers an alternate reality: true tranquility.
