The 75 Best Albums of 1975

With their self-titled third album, ABBA was just hitting a groove that would help define pop music for many decades to come. The quartet were fresh off a win at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest and starting to gain international traction with “Waterloo,” their first Number One single. This would set off a chain reaction of mega-hits for the Swedish band, further solidified by the sheer number of classics contained on their 1975 LP. Opener “Mamma Mia” and the breakup banger “SOS” would scale the charts all over the world, including the U.S., their big break in the market. The band was just getting started, with a string of hit singles and albums that would dominate airwaves until their breakup in the early Eighties but find new life over the years through tribute bands, a hit Broadway show, two hit movies, and a host of famous, multi-generational fans. —Brittany Spanos

Dayton, Ohio’s finest, the Ohio Players, were a rarity in the mid-Seventies — an R&B band huge among Black listenership that also regularly scored massive crossover hits without kowtowing to trends or making blatant crossover attempts. They were hard funk and hard rock, and their ballads’ crafty arrangements moved them beyond mere pillow talk. And 1975 was the Ohio Players’ year. As it began, the band scored its first Number One hit, the booming title track of the 1974 album, Fire; as 1975 ended, the lithe, swinging “Love Rollercoaster” was on its way to Number One too. ” Love Rollercoaster” is a highlight of Honey, the Players’ seventh and sweetest album; it’s one-stop shopping for of all the group’s strengths, from the bravura funk rock of “Fopp” to three of their sharpest slow ones. And as a statement of roots, we get the loose blues-garage jam “Ain’t Givin’ Up No Ground,” just right at two minutes. —Michaelanglo Matos

Left in the dust once again after another CSNY blowup, David Crosby and Graham Nash decided to toughen up — for them — and prove they weren’t just fading Laurel Canyon troubadours. On the sturdiest record they ever made together, Crosby and Nash confront that ’74 CSNY tour (“Take the Money and Run”), death (“Carry Me”), and the environment (“Wind on the Water”), and also salute Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Their pent-up feelings are bolstered by the Mighty Jitters, the A-team of L.A.’s orneriest session players who push the duo into their most robust music without the other guys. They should have been dumped by Stephen Stills and Young more often. —David Browne

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes were on a roll, with Teddy Pendergrass singing lead and the unbeatable Kenny Gamble/Leon Huff team producing state-of-the-art Philly soul. They never sounded like anyone else, because there was only one Teddy Pendergrass. The man had his own unique style of epic suffering, honed in hits like “I Miss You” and “The Love I Lost.” On To Be True, he testifies to the perils of love (the title tune) and money (“Where Are All My Friends”). “Bad Luck” is where Philly soul steps into proto-disco, with the MFSB band digging into a sleek dance groove. To Be True was the first Blue Notes album with “Featuring Theodore Pendergrass” on the cover, but after one more stellar 1975 album, Wake Up Everybody, he left to go solo. —D.B.

The first album ever to debut at Number One? Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, in May 1975. The second? Rock of the Westies, just five months later. (Nobody except Stevie Wonder managed to duplicate this chart feat until the 1990s.) It’s a high-spirited romp where Elton is rocking harder and shaving less, with one of his sluttiest hits, the Number One marimba-funk smash “Island Girl.” Too bad it didn’t also include his previous 1975 chart topper “Philadelphia Freedom,” one of the best tunes he and Bernie Taupin ever wrote. Rock of the Westies turned out to be the last great gasp of Elton’s Seventies run, right before his songwriting fell off a cliff with the coke-bloated bomb Blue Moves. There’s only one ballad on Westies, but what a ballad: “I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford),” a cowboy-themed breakup lament with the Bernier-than-Bernie hook, “You know I can’t think straight no more.” —Rob Sheffield

When Smokey Robinson quit to go solo, everyone figured the Miracles were finished. But not only did the Motown legends score a Number One hit with “Love Machine,” they made this wonderfully crazed ode to their new home in L.A. City of Angels might be the most obscure album on this list, but it’s definitely one of the weirdest, as the Miracles greet Southern California’s post-hippie culture with open arms. “Ain’t Nobody Straight in L.A.” celebrates the rising gay scene, with lines like “Homosexuality is a part of society/I guess that they need some variety.” “Free Press” is a love letter to the local underground newspaper, serenading “the hippest publication in the nation,” especially its classified ads for massage parlors. It’s a trip to hear the group that did “The Tracks of My Tears” sing “There are several head shops/That carry a variety of incense.” But they even make “Smog” sound romantic. —R.S.

Diamonds & Rust contains fantastic covers of Jackson Browne (the lovely “Fountain of Sorrow”), John Prine (“Hello in There”), Stevie Wonder (“Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer”), the Allman Brothers Band (“Blue Sky”), and more. But the highlight is the title track, a detailed account of folk icon Joan Baez’s relationship with Bob Dylan a decade prior. “Diamonds and Rust” begins with that dreaded phone call from your ex — dialing from a booth in the Midwest — and unravels in a mystical reflection of memories both fond and bitter. It reminds us that Baez has always been an accomplished songwriter in her own right, but even she called it “the best song of my life.” We have to agree. —Angie Martoccio

In 1975, Curtis Mayfield remained a Black music force. In addition to running Curtom Records, he helmed the Staple Singers’ hit soundtrack for the Sidney Poitier-Bill Cosby caper Let’s Do It Again. But as a solo performer, he struggled to replicate the crossover success of his last major hit, 1972’s Superfly soundtrack.  “[America] was an inauspicious start to Curtom’s [distribution] deal with Warner Bros.,” his son Todd Mayfield wrote in the biography Traveling Soul: The Life of Curtis Mayfield. Heard today, America soars with Mayfield’s unique blend of social commentary and spiritual uplift, whether it’s a brilliant rendition of “Hard Times” (originally made famous by psych-soul legend Baby Huey) or the sumptuously optimistic “So in Love,” all delivered in his warm yet crackly falsetto. The album has aged quite well, long after fan exhaustion over his conscious soul template has dissipated. —Mosi Reeves

The Irish rockers Thin Lizzy found their signature sound on Fighting, with twin guitars blazing away as Phil Lynott tells his outlaw tales. It’s the album that kicked off their classic five-album run. “Freedom Song” updates the tradition of the Irish rebel song, as in “Whiskey in the Jar,” but with an explicit Black Power twist, paying tribute to a martyred hero. Fighting expands the Dublin rhythm section with a new pair of guitar warriors, Brian Robertson from Glasgow and Scott Gorham from the San Fernando Valley, for the Les Paul Deluxe fireworks of “Wild One,” “King’s Vengeance,” and Bob Seger’s “Rosalie.” Awesome album title, too — Fighting is the ideal soundtrack for a brawl with the boys down at Dino’s Bar and Grill. —R.S.

Disco albums were still new in 1975, but Shirley and Company knew exactly how to throw one together. Shame Shame Shame had one of the year’s best album covers — Shirley wagging her finger at Richard Nixon. Shirley Goodman was a veteran who had a classic 1956 hit, the New Orleans anthem “Let the Good Times Roll,” as half of Shirley and Lee. (She also sang on the Stones’ Exile on Main Street.) Her dance-floor smash “Shame, Shame, Shame” was written and produced by another Fifties rock & roller —Sylvia Robinson, the Sylvia from “Love Is Strange,” who went on to found Sugar Hill Records. The album is nonstop kicks from “Disco Shirley” to “Love Is” to “Jim Doc Kay.” True disco poetry: “Got my sunroof down! Got my diamond in the back! Put on your shaggy wig, woman, or if you don’t, I ain’t coming baaaack!” —R.S.

All five members of the Peter Gabriel-led incarnation of Genesis were gifted songwriters, which meant guitarist Steve Hackett had trouble landing songs on their records. But in 1975, when the group was inactive following the exhausting Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour, he went into the studio with a pile of tunes he’d amassed over the years and cut his solo debut. Simply put, it’s the greatest record Genesis never recorded, even though drummer Phil Collins and guitarist Mike Rutherford helped out on several tracks. Songs like “Ace of Wands” and “Shadow of the Hierophant” are towering prog-rock masterpieces and would have easily fit on any Genesis record if only the group was more open to Hackett’s ideas. Just two years after Voyage of the Acolyte hit, Hackett quit the band to commit himself full time to solo work. Voyage of the Acolyte showed him the way. —Andy Greene

The phrase “Bay Area corporate rock” has never inspired much confidence, but leave it to San Francisco’s most audacious musical agitators to go there and make it work. Red Octopus was, on one hand, the sound of boomers realizing they might need to pay for a mortgage or two now that they were in their thirties. But they went pop with style: “Miracles,” Marty Balin’s nearly seven-minute seduction, is one the most celestial (and naughty) ballads of that decade; Grace Slick injects her unapologetic spikiness into love songs, and Paul Kantner still wants to make sci-fi rock in all its oddball glory. Punchier than any Airplane-connected album since Volunteers, Red Octopus argued that making mass-market rock could be an act of glorious rebellion in itself. —D.B.

Kenny Latimore didn’t need vocal fireworks or instruments ablaze to get his point across. He was a blues singer who played the stud with grace and ease, but every line was carefully considered — a real, and affecting, stylist. You can hear him at his peak on Latimore III, his band buoying him every step of the way, comfortably turning it on, as with the strutting “Are You Where You Wanna Be.” But even there, you can hear him leaning back, taking his foot off the pedal, making the words resound by themselves. And he can play for laughs, too, as with the eternal “There’s a Red-Neck in the Soul Band,” about a tall, skinny white dude who blows away a Black club playing the hell out of his guitar. —M.M.

The Eagles were never lacking in confidence, but they were really in full stride on One of the Nights, their first Number One record. The title track is butter white guy R&B with a groove influenced by Al Green; “Lyin’ Eyes” throws up a gilded palace of sin on the cheatin’ side of town; and “Take It to the Limit,” inspired in part by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ classic “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” might be their finest group vocal performance. There’s sad country beauty on “Hollywood Waltz,” while songs like the Satan-y soft-prog epic “Journey of the Sorcerer” and ecological warning “Too Many Hands” bring out an undercurrent of dread that makes this record feel an amuse-bouche before they really got down to feasting on the beast with their Cali-collapse masterpiece Hotel California in ‘76. —Jon Dolan

On the official launch of his own career after four albums with the country-rock band Grin, Nils Lofgren was already sounding as if he’d been through it, personally and professionally. Even though he was only in his mid-twenties, the sweet-sounding kid of Grin’s 1972 album 1+1 is now sounding a little more wounded and defensive. Yet he’s rarely seemed more at ease and confident in his skills, rolling out one taut song after another (“Back It Up,” “One More Saturday Night”), saluting Keith Richards with killer guitar sizzle, and playing (but not overplaying) throughout. His melancholy version of Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s “Goin’ Back,” the best cover of that song, speaks to his inner child, and ours. —D.B.

Moving with ease between R&B, rock, funk, and jazz, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, the unit’s fourth album, cemented the band as one of the era’s most adventurous. “We really are more versatile than we are one thing,” Khan told a reporter in 1974. A year later, founding keyboardist Kevin Murphy said, “Sure, we play funk, but we’re not a typical R&B group. That would imply a restriction, and we have no restrictions.” The album’s instant classic is a jazzy ballad, “Sweet Thing,” that Khan gives a light but still deeply emotional touch, but she also rocks out on a rough, guitar-driven cover of the Bee Gees’ “Jive Talkin’,” a complete 180 from their disco groove. —M.M.

Outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings cemented his rough and rowdy image with a string of early Seventies albums with titles like Lonesome, On’ry and Mean and Honky Tonk Heroes, but on his only studio album released in 1975, Hoss lets his guard down. Dreaming My Dreams finds Jennings embracing the role of crooner, laying bare his emotions in the title track “Dreaming My Dreams With You” and the rueful “Let’s All Help the Cowboys (Sing the Blues).” Still, you can’t fully keep an outlaw like Jennings at bay, and he flexes his brawny muscle on three songs that became part of the Outlaw country canon: “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way,” “Bob Wills Is Still the King,  and “Waymore’s Blues.” It’s Jennings paying tribute to those who came before, while also amping up his own legacy. —Joseph Hudak

Up until 1975, guitar great Jeff Beck had mostly worked in conventional rock-band contexts. But Blow by Blow was where he stepped out as a true autonomous force, presenting a finely honed instrumental sound (Beck’s tasteful talk box aside) that landed somewhere between funk, rock, and jazz fusion without watering down any of those elements. Taking the place of a lead singer on virtuosic tracks such as “You Know What I Mean” and “Scatterbrain,” Beck’s guitar soared, squealed, and sizzled over the locked-in rhythm section of keyboardist Max Middleton, bassist Phil Chen, and drummer Richard Bailey (with an uncredited Stevie Wonder pitching in elsewhere on clavinet). The album was a Top 10 platinum hit, but Beck later seemed skeptical of its fussy refinement. “It just reminds me of flared trousers and double-breasted jackets,” he said of the LP in 1990. —Hank Shteamer

Between the official rollout of songs from The Basement Tapes and their own first album of new material in four years, the Band had a banner year in 1975. By then, the group had been through something of its own wringer, and “Forbidden Fruit,” one of the most allegorical songs ever about hard-drug use, suggested why. From Rick Danko’s tender vocal on “It Makes No Difference” to the verse-trading voices on “Acadian Driftwood” (the least boring musical history lesson ever on record), the album includes some of the most tender and burnished music of their career. And as much as their distinctive singing or the spitfire Robbie Robertson still pulled out of his guitar, the real star of the album was Garth Hudson, whose funky clavinet yanked the Band fully into the new decade without sacrificing its personality. —D.B.

Jazz was at the height of its fusion era in 1975, with Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, and Herbie Hancock spearheading an amped-up, rock- and funk-adjacent sound that could hold its own in arenas. But unlike those other former Miles Davis sidemen, Keith Jarrett was scaling down, focusing on playing intimate solo-piano concerts in European halls, and improvising completely from scratch each night. When he took the stage in Cologne on Jan. 24, 1975, Jarrett was, as he later put it, “almost in hell” due to a lack of sleep, a subpar pre-show dinner, and frustration over a mixup over the piano he’d requested. But he rallied, conjuring a masterpiece out of thin air: an emotionally gripping suite that moves from poignant to playful and back across the span of an hour-plus. The album became an unlikely hit, finding an audience well outside the jazz niche and selling more than 4 million copies to date. —H.S.

The soundtrack to the granddaddy of cult films may not be able to re-create the audience participation that made midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show such an immersive blast, but it sure does rock. Credit that to the glam, rockabilly, and outsized Broadway songs performed by stars Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, a very sweaty Meat Loaf, and the show’s creator, Richard O’Brien — a.k.a. the Igor-like Riff Raff. From the opening salvo of “Science Fiction/Double Feature” and Curry’s campy (and titularly outdated) “Sweet Transvestite” to Meat Loaf’s “Hot Patootie — Bless My Soul,” the track list is as electrically charged as Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s lab. All these years later, playing this soundtrack album is, as its centerpiece anthem claims, its very own “Time Warp.” —J.H.

Why Can’t We Be Friends? is more than just a funk record — it’s a vibrant, multicultural statement. War, a diverse band of Black, white, and Latino musicians, blended funk, soul, Latin, and rock into a seamless sound that’s both joyful and socially charged. The title song “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” pairs a laid-back groove with a repeated, childlike question that calls out racism and social division in the simplest, most effective way; each band member takes a turn on vocals, underscoring the theme of unity. It’s protest music disguised as a clever sing-along. The song’s mix of humor, peace, and harmony remains timeless, proving that sometimes the most powerful messages come wrapped in the most easygoing sounds. Same goes with the fuel-efficiency anthem “Low Rider,” which packages an pro-environment message in a smooth groove. —Alison Weinflash

On their 1974 debut, Rush was one more promising post-Led Zeppelin hard-rock band. On their second album, they were Rush. It’s their first with drummer-lyricist Neil Peart, who authoritatively announces his presence with the relentless precision and Ayn Rand-referencing title and lyrics of album opener “Anthem.” The title track was their first classic-rock radio staple, driven by Alex Lifeson’s clean, clarion guitar; they get funky on “Beneath, Between & Behind,” kick some gallows-pole folk rock on “Making Memories,” and take a soft detour into the Tolkien-esque on “Rivendell.” The greatest leap forward is the eight-minute “By-Tor and the Snow Dog,” where power-trio rock ascends into the mythic multi-partite prog complexity that’d make Rush legends. —J.D.

You have to give it up to Paul McCartney for his liner notes to this album, where he sums up his message in one line: “Rock on lovers everywhere, because that’s basically it.” Venus and Mars is Paul settling into his Wings groove, with the shaggy arena swagger of “Rock Show” (“Long hair, at Madison Square!”) and “Letting Go.” The yacht-rock daiquiri “Listen to What the Man Said” is one of his frothiest Seventies hits, where he’s a love guru chanting, “The wonder of it all, baby!” He gets to play the Fred Astaire smoothie (“You Gave Me the Answer”) and Marvel Comics fanboy (“Magneto and Titanium Man”). But the finest moment is “Love in Song,” a rainy-day ballad full of bittersweet 12-string guitar, as Macca yearns for “happiness in the homeland.” —R.S.

After trying their hands at cosmic Americana (the Workingman’s Dead era) and song-oriented boogie (much of From the Mars Hotel), the Grateful Dead took another, less simple highway in ’75: becoming the world’s weirdest fusion band. Relaxed and supple, the first half of Blues for Allah may be the closest the Dead came to replicating the complex, extended jams of their stage shows, but with new material. Jerry Garcia’s shredding (check out “Help on the Way/Slipknot!”) and Keith Godchaux’s electric piano venture into jazz turf. The second half is even stranger, wandering from one of Bob Weir’s sturdiest Dead tunes to the Gregorian hippie chant of the 12-minute title song. Blues for Allah was much-needed proof that the Dead’s peak adventurous streak wasn’t limited to their concerts. —D.B.

Raw, eclectic, and kinetic, Lee “Scratch” Perry’s world-shifting album with his band the Upsetters bristles with brilliant punkish energy. Recorded shortly after the visionary dub reggae eccentric inhabited his now-legendary Black Ark Studios, Revolution Dub took musical exploration to dramatic new heights. The dub sound was comparatively unassuming before Perry tinkered with those consoles, punching up the frameworks of key riddims with spirited stereo pans and enigmatic proto-samples. “Dr. on the Go” is a rumbling low-fi masterwork spiced with random dialogue (and a laugh track) courtesy of the U.K. sitcom of the same name, which Perry captured (a decade before SP-12s) by placing the mic in front of his TV. Critically, “Woman’s Dub” is a freaked-out, spaghetti Western-style homily that feels like amorous rebel music. Revolt gave life on this boundary-burning LP. —Will Dukes

By 1975, Pete Townshend needed a change. The Who’s last four albums were a series of grandiose concept records — from The Who Sell Out to Quadrophenia — and he knew he couldn’t top himself. So he went in the opposite direction, creating the intimate, stripped-down Who By Numbers. With the exception of the lead single “Squeeze Box” (a wild misrepresentation of the record), Numbers is the most personal Townshend ever got, his singer-songwriter moment. The album contains devastating cuts like “How Many Friends” and “However Much I Booze” (the latter of which was so intense that Roger Daltrey refused to sing it) and the gorgeous highlight “Blue Red and Grey.” Plus, you can listen to the album while connecting the dots on John Entwistle’s cover drawing.–A.M.

By 1975, Minnie Riperton’s shattering whistle tone had been cemented into the pop culture firmament, largely due to the tenderness and staying power of her Number One hit “Lovin’ You.” For her third album, Riperton stepped back into the studio (this time, without collaborator Stevie Wonder, who was recording Songs In the Key of Life), and simply started to play. That touch of whimsy and lightheartedness is all over the bountiful Adventures in Paradise, a mellow-out showcase of Riperton’s versatility and stunning vocal elasticity. Opening with the dreamy soul of “Baby, This Love I Have,” the LP lets Riperton frolic from song to song: The steamy “Inside My Love”(which ended up on the U.S. R&B charts) and “Minnie’s Lament” are standouts that feel like keepsakes of Riperton’s power.–Julyssa Lopez

AC/DC recorded their 1976 debut LP, High Voltage, prior to T.N.T. and gigged all across their native Australia. But the band we know today was born in 1975 with T.N.T., creating one of the most durable sounds in rock history, one that’s barely changed one iota in 50 years despite the many lineup shifts they’ve gone through. That’s because songs like “T.N.T.,” “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll),” and “High Voltage” are flawless, stadium-ready anthems powered by Angus Young’s lead guitar and Bon Scott’s growl. These are the songs they’d rewrite over and over again throughout the decades, even after Scott died in 1980 and was replaced that same year with Brian Johnson. They’d make better albums like Highway to Hell and Back in Black, but T.N.T. remains a fascinating document of a young band just beginning to figure out their own greatness. —A.G.

As the Seventies wore on, singer-songwriters who specialized in homespun-charm music eventually had to give in to the demands of the marketplace — namely, records that could essentially introduce them to the masses. Few if any made that transition as effortlessly as Raitt did on her fifth album. Producer Paul Rothchild pumped up the studio-musician funk in “Sugar Mama” and “Good Enough,” evoking a distaff Little Feat, and ballads that would have been blowsy in someone else’s hands, like “My First Night Alone without You,” were elevated by Raitt’s ever-maturing delivery. Home Plate wasn’t the commercial breakthrough it should have been — that wouldn’t arrive until late the following decade—but few stepped up to the commercial challenge like Raitt did on this often-overlooked gem. –D.B.

The final entry in Al Green’s run of chart-topping Seventies albums is sprawling and conflicted, giving a sense of foreboding to the title’s equation of the soul singer and music’s most crucial emotion. Opener “L-O-V-E (Love)” rides propulsive brass, sighing strings, and Leroy Hodges’ steady bass line into cheery territory, but the message is a bit uneasy: “L-O-V-E is strange to me, lord,” Green admits. From there, he explores love’s many complexities with a mixture of hope and wariness; the dry riffs and horn blasts of “Rhymes” counterweigh Green’s lyrical frustration, while the sweep of “Oh Me, Oh My (Dreams in My Arms)” fuel his longing wails. Green and his supporting players — the Hi Rhythm Section, the Memphis Horns, and the Memphis Strings — fully dig in on two stretched-out tracks, the simmering precursor to his 1976 ordainment “The Love Sermon” and the slowly unfurling “I Didn’t Know.” —Maura Johnston 

Despite shout-outs by Midland and a tribute album by Silverada, Gary Stewart just doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. For those who have heard Out of Hand, however, it’s clear why the late Kentucky vocalist is regarded as the “king of honky-tonk.” Over a tidy but high-proof 10 tracks, Stewart, in his inimitable quaver, sings about painting the town and paying for it. “Drinkin’ Thing” and “Honky Tonkin” are boozy laments, while the title track rationalizes an affair that has far surpassed a one-night stand: “I don’t think I can get off/From where we are,” he sings of the cheating merry-go-round he’s found himself on. But it’s “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” — arguably the best country song title ever — that both defines the album and its tragic singer, with Stewart losing himself in shot after shot to numb the shame brought by his philandering partner. —J.H.

On the title track to her fifth studio album, Roberta Flack sings about watching winter turn to spring, the hushed return of warmth and color to gray days. On highlights like “Some Gospel According to Matthew,” her voice blossoms and flutters softly around glimmering guitars and smooth thrums of bass. Flack produced the album under the pseudonym Rubina Flake, an experience she later described as arduous. But the finished product is unburdened by stress. The 13-minute “I Can See the Sun in Late December,” written by Stevie Wonder, feels like a trip through the clouds. When she sings “Early every sunrise, you are gonna feel my loving touch” on “Early Ev’ry Midnite,” the percussive instrumental break that follows is like a kiss from the sun. There’s a defining lack of urgency on Feel Like Makin’ Love, which weaves in folk, jazz, and soul. Flack savored the slow and steady, as well as the sultry. —Larisha Paul

Elton John released 13 records in the 1970s. Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy was his most personal of them all. It’s a concept album where Elton and lyricist Bernie Taupin recall their early struggles before fame. Rather than pursuing hits, the duo crafted a story exploring themes of rejection, ambition, identity, and resilience. The most well-known song from the album is the haunting ballad “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” in which John reveals he contemplated suicide during his engagement to Linda Woodrow. Along with being a watershed personal statement, Captain Fantastic was also commercially groundbreaking, becoming the first album to debut at Number One on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart — a testament to John’s popularity and emotional resonance. —Alison Weinflash

Dreamboat Annie was our first official introduction to Ann and Nancy Wilson, two sisters from Seattle who were nicknamed “Little Led Zeppelin.” It’s obvious why: Ann brings the sizzling powerhouse vocals (“Magic Man,” about her falling in love with her soundman and first manager), while Nancy casually shreds the guitar (“Crazy on You”). The debut, first released on a tiny Canadian label, brought them to stardom, and proved that women were just as capable of fronting rock bands as men. “We were the original gangsters up there,” Nancy said. “And we’re still continuing the story of what women are capable of accomplishing.”–A.M.

Pick of the Litter was released near the end of the Spinners’ collaboration with producer Thom Bell, a pairing that yielded two gold albums, one platinum LP, four gold singles, and four Grammy nominations as well as Bell winning the first-ever Producer of the Year Grammy in March 1975. Arriving later that August, the album accentuated the Detroit combo’s strength for soft, easy-listening grooves (“Games People Play” and “Love Me or Leave Me”) as well as heart-rending balladry. Some critics wearied of the group: a contemporaneous Rolling Stone review called the Spinners-Bell formula “controlled and rather bland.” But soul fans found value in well-crafted deep cuts like “You Made a Promise to Me” that showcased lead Philippé Wynne’s fantastic vocal. For them, Pick of the Litter continued a winning streak that marked the Spinners as leading lights of the Philly soul sound. —M.R.

Few albums have spawned more standards than Guy Clark’s understated debut LP. Between “L.A. Freeway,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “Let Him Roll,” and “She Ain’t Going Nowhere,” it’s hard to imagine the past half century of country/folk-based storytelling without the template that Clark and the team of ace session players (Mickey Raphael, Reggie Young, Larrie Londin) created on this record. “His voice is no comfortable,” Ed Ward wrote in his original Rolling Stone review, “but it is extraordinarily expressive and the production showcases it well.” But it wasn’t Clark’s voice, nor the arrangements, ultimately, that makes Old No. 1 a time-tested classic, it’s Clark’s immaculately crafted originals, 10 tunes that “helped tell me what a should, what a song could be,” as Lyle Lovett later put it. —Jonathan Bernstein.

Parliament took a giant leap on Chocolate City — the album where George Clinton first perfected his funkentelepathic chemistry with bass man Bootsy Collins and synth wizard Bernie Worrell. “Big Footin’” drops the bomb, with the party chant, “Let us lay some funk on you!” But the centerpiece is the title track, where Clinton gives it up to Washington, D.C., a city that was 70 percent Black at the time, declaring, “We didn’t get our 40 acres and a mule, but we did get you, C.C.” Over jazzy piano, he looks forward to a future with Muhammed Ali in the White House, Aretha Franklin as first lady, Richard Pryor as minister of education, and Stevie Wonder as secretary of fine arts. Chocolate City shattered all expectations for how far Clinton and his P-Funk mob could go — but they had even bigger glories soon to come. —R.S.

The proper debut solo album from Emmylou Harris is the one that established her both as songwriter and world-class interpreter of others’ material. See what she does with “Bluebird Wine,” the first of many Rodney Crowell originals she’d sing over the years. “Boulder to Birmingham,” her tribute to her recently departed musical partner Gram Parsons, was the sole original, but it was Harris’ interpretations of songs like “Coat of Many Colors,” “For No One” and her hit rendition of the Louvin’ Brothers’ “If I Could Only Win Your Love” that have cemented the record as an Americana touchstone in the decades to come. “There are just too many tunes that I get off doing and want to turn people on to,” she told Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone at the time. “I feel very deeply and personally involved with each one.” —J. Bernstein

Starting with 1969’s “It’s Your Thing,” the Isley Brothers transitioned from soul crooners to Black rockers, a head-spinning makeover that reached its apex here. The Heat Is On is divided into two, equally credible parts. On the first, they seamlessly blend disco thump, Ernie’s post-Hendrix guitar laser and Ron’s come-hither serenades into relentless vamps like “Fight the Power” and “Hope You Feel Better Love.” The pillow-talk ballads on the second half are warm and not at all smarmy. The Isleys weren’t just anticipating disco, Eighties funk, Black rock and quiet storm; they were fusing them all together in a way few if any were doing at the time. —D.B.

Miles Davis concluded three revelatory decades of recording with Agharta and Pangaea, a pair of live double albums captured at two separate concerts in Osaka, Japan, on Feb. 1, 1975. Other than Dark Magus, recorded onstage in ’74, he wouldn’t release another note of new music until six years later. But these releases made for one hell of a send-off, especially Agharta, a snapshot of Davis’ psychedelic-funk era at its most menacing and all-consuming, like an unholy collision of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys, and Can. In the 50 years since, no band has managed to conjure such rich and uncompromising groovescapes, fueled as much by the contributions of the hard-charging sidemen — Sonny Fortune on saxophone, Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas on guitar, Michael Henderson on bass, Al Foster on drums, and James Mtume on percussion — as by the leader’s wah-wah trumpet and dissonant organ clusters. —H.S.

“You want to feel it, don’t you?” Betty Davis asks on the Nasty Gal deep cut “Feelins.” The certainty in her delivery lets you know that she’s already figured you out — not only what you want to feel, but how to make you feel it. She brings catharsis to the surface on “Dedicated to the Press,” pushing the bass in her voice to challenge the pluck of the bass line the track runs along. She cranks up the grit on “Nasty Gal,” taking all of the wicked names she’d been called and tossing them back like grenades. And yet, these records exist alongside the likes of “Talkin’ Trash” and “The Lone Ranger,” sensual cuts delivered with a wink and a growl. Davis did it all, felt it all, and relished the thrill that freedom gave her. Nasty Gal marked an effective end to the funk and soul musician’s career, aided by cultural backlash and suits in boardrooms. But it was always our loss, never hers. —L.P.

The juggernaut success of Saturday Night Fever tends to overshadow anything the Gibb brothers did prior to 1977. But without Main Course, the disco days may not have happened at all — a tragedy indeed. The album marks the first time the trio recorded in Miami (at the urging of their pal Eric Clapton, who made 1974‘s 461 Ocean Boulevard there). Recording at Criteria Studios, with the help of producer Arif Mardin, shaped the Gibbs’ new R&B sound, and paved the way for the dance floor. But more importantly, the album contains Barry Gibb’s first falsetto, heard on the euphoric highlight “Nights on Broadway,” an idea that came to him in a dream. We’re eternally grateful for his subconscious. —A.M.

So much of the magic of Ogum, Xangô is that it simply captured two friends and musicians improvising with no grand ambition or plan. The album caught the Brazilian Tropicalia titans at career peaks, each unafraid of experimentation or honesty: Jorge Ben had found landed a classic with his 1970 album A Tábua de Esmeralda, while Gilberto Gil continued speaking out in his music, weathering arrest and even a brief exile from Brazilian authorities. Yet despite the urgency of the era and the individual success they’d had, they’re relaxed across these nine songs, trading off the spotlight: Ben leads on a reworked version of “Taj Mahal,” from 1972 (the same song sparked a copyright lawsuit when Rod Stewart “unconsciously plagiarized” the melody for “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”), while Gil revisits 1973’s “Essa é pra Tocar no Rádio.” They come together on “”Sarro,” capturing the project’s freewheeling, un-self-conscious spirt.–J.L.

To experience the power of Kiss in the early days, you had to see them live. That’s why their first two records in 1974 failed to rise higher than Number 87 on the Billboard 200 even as their shows were drawing large crowds all across the country. That’s why the band decided to capture the power of their gigs on the 1975 concert LP Alive!, showcasing songs like “Black Diamond” and “Strutter” that felt comparatively flat on record. And though record buyers couldn’t see the show’s pyro or blood spitting when listening to Alive!, the raw energy still came through. It created lifelong Kiss fans and moved the band forever into arenas. Many sequels to Alive! were recorded over the years, but none stand up to the original. And yes, they heavily doctored the Alive! tapes in the studio. This was commonplace at the time, and done skillfully in this instance. —A.G.

One of the greatest disco albums ever made, dedicated to the principle that “do a little dance” plus “make a little love” is all you need. KC and the Sunshine Band were Miami funkateers led by Harry Wayne “KC” Casey and Richard Finch, the house band at the pioneering disco label TK Records. “Get Down Tonight” was the first of their five Number One hits, tantric repetition with guitar hero Jerome Smith and drummer Robert Johnson slamming it home. “It had that strange, mystical feeling,” Casey said, “a feeling I had never felt before.” They sped up the tape so the high-pitched guitar comes on like a swarm of bees. They keep the party going with “That’s the Way (I Like It),” “Boogie Shoes,” and “I Get Lifted.” That’s the way — uh huh, uh huh — the whole world liked it. —R.S.

Global audiences discovered Kraftwerk for the first time through “Autobahn,” a whirling electronic jaunt that became an unexpected novelty hit in early 1975. That left them unprepared for the austere and enigmatic Radio-Activity, a concept album centered on communication through sound waves. “Like most concept albums, it’s loaded with dead spots,” read a contemporaneous Rolling Stone review that also described several album cuts as “plain stupid.” Other listeners marveled at how Kraftwerk transformed its kosmiche musik into haunting melodies swathed in strange percussive noises as well Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter’s simple yet evocative vocals. Countless acts from U.K. synth-pop Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark to French house duo Daft Punk found inspiration in this minimalist gem, one that imagined synthesized transmissions, not rock & roll guitars, would be the sound of the future. —M.R.

George Clinton was on fire in 1975, as his P-Funk empire cranked out three masterworks by both of his bands. Let’s Take It to the Stage isn’t a live album, despite the title — just Funkadelic at their hardest, rocking out in “Good to Your Earhole” and “Better by the Pound.” It’s the tightest album either Funkadelic or Parliament ever made. The Funk Mob guitar crew — Eddie Hazel, Garry Shider, Michael Hampton — go nuts all over the album. Clinton — or as he calls himself in the credits, the “Maggot Overlord” — makes the title tune a diss track, taking shots at the rival bands he accuses of faking the funk, like “Fool and the Gang” or “Earth, Hot Air, and No Fire.” “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” (rhymes with “Shit! Goddamn!”) is only two minutes long, but it’s a mission statement for the whole Parliafunkadelicment Thang. —R.S.

The Bad Boys from Boston claimed their place in America’s high-school parking lots with Toys in the Attic, the Live at the Apollo of Seventies dirtbag rock. Every detail was perfect: the guitar attack of Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, the muscle-car funk of Joey Kramer and Tom Hamilton, the nonstop sleaze yabber of madman poet Steven Tyler. The album jumps right out with the Ramones-velocity whiplash of “Toys in the Attic,” then crashes into the Biblical blues goof “Adam’s Apple,” the proto-rap “Walk This Way,” the sex strut “Sweet Emotion.” But the peak is “No More No More,” the ultimate Aerosmith existential statement on the endless quest of playing in a rock & roll band. “Ain’t seen the daylight since I started this band,” Tyler laments, before Perry takes over at the end to tell his side of the story in a magnificently scuzzy elegy of a solo. —R.S.

“It doesn’t look good for America,” David Bowie said in 1975. “They let people like me trample all over their country.” Young Americans was the Thin White Duke’s valentine to Philly soul — but ironically, this was the album that made him a bona fide star in the U.S., even though he mocked his own record as “plastic soul.” He scored a Number One hit with “Fame,” while venting his tormented emotions in “Win” and the title song, where he drops to his knees to plead, “Ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cryyyyy?” One of the backup singers was a kid Bowie overheard humming in the hallway; Bowie recruited him on the spot and gave him his first job. The kid’s name? Luther Vandross. By the end of 1975, Bowie was on Soul Train with Don Cornelius, lip-synching “Fame.” Is it any wonder? —R.S.