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Welcome to the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush we do a deep dive into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top 10 songs according to our exclusive recap of the weekly charts published at the time in the music industry’s top trade publication and chart authority, Billboard magazine. This week on Chartcrush, we’re counting down 1970, which of course was the first year of “the 70s” on the calendar.

But the sounds and styles that most defined the decade like Glam Rock, Disco and Punk: not even a figment of anyone’s imagination yet. And until James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” hit #1 in October of ’70, then Carole King’s Tapestry album a few months later, no one without a crystal ball could’ve predicted how humongous the whole Singer-Songwriter thing was gonna get.

Ditto Country-Rock, despite signals from Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Linda Ronstadt and even the Stones and Beatles, and crossover novelties like Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” and Jeanne C. Riley’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.” The Eagles’ first hit “Take It Easy” wasn’t ’til ’72.

But other styles that defined the ’70s were already pretty well-established: Funk with James Brown, Sly & The Family Stone and The Isley Brothers; definitely Album-Oriented Hard Rock with Cream, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Iron Butterfly, Steppenwolf, Blue Cheer, Vanilla Fudge, Led Zeppelin; Progressive Rock (“Prog” for short): The Moody Blues, Donovan and Procol Harum. All those acts I named made the Hot100 with hits in those ’70s-defining styles before the end of the ’60s.

AM Top40, another very well-established genre thanks to the shunning of Teen-targeted Pop by the emergent counterculture press in the late ’60s. By ’68 and definitely by ’69, anyone still making records that didn’t cater to evolving Hippie sensibilities as first wave Boomers hit their mid-20s: dismissed as “Bubblegum” by the likes of Rolling Stone.

Not that the makers of such records minded; “Sugar Sugar” by TV cartoon band The Archies, for example, was one of 1969’s biggest hits, #1 for four weeks. Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 debuted in 1970 and helped define Top 40 as a distinct genre, but it also gave Billboard a boost beyond just industry insiders as the general public got interested in charts for the first time.

And it’s good that they had their tunes because 1970 was an unmitigated bummer in the news. Literally the only positive national news story all year: the first Earth Day in April and a Look magazine feature unveiling the soon-to-be ubiquitous Ecology flag. But even that, it was easy to see and sarcastically mutter “oh great, just what we need, another angry protest movement telling me how to live and think!” with bombings by the far left Weather Underground just about every week, Black Panthers at peak membership ambushing cops in Oakland with grenades, and leaders visiting communist North Korea and China. And now Women, Gays, Chicanos, American Indians and even conservative hardhats getting their protest on.

’69 had had the successful Apollo 11 and 12 moon shots; ’70 had Apollo 13, the one where an oxygen fire two days in took out electrical and life-support and the crew had to loop around the moon and return to Earth without ever landing, subject of the Best Picture-nominated film starring Tom Hanks in ’95.

Other lowlights: a massive two week Postal strike in the Spring; an X-Rated film winning Best Picture at the Oscars (Midnight Cowboy), and Vietnam, of course, still raging with nearly 350,000 U.S. troops despite President Nixon’s promise to shift combat to the South Vietnamese.

And just as the shocking details of the 1968 My Lai massacre of villagers by U.S. troops were coming out, Nixon announces that the U.S. is gonna attack Viet Cong and NVA sanctuaries in neutral Cambodia just over the border with South Vietnam, which sent antiwar protesters into a frenzy. At Kent State in Ohio, the National Guard opened fire and killed four protesters, which inspired Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Ohio,” a top 20 hit.

#10 The Guess Who – American Woman

And that wasn’t the only or even the biggest protest hit on the year. At #10 as we kick off the countdown, one of the hardest rocking singles ever to hit #1, by a Canadian group up ’til then known for light Jazzy Pop (their ’69 hits “These Eyes,” “Laughing” and “Undun“). But in ’70 they took things in a more straightforward Rock direction, first on “No Time,” which got to #5, then this.

Writer Burton Cummings insists that it’s just a comment about the complicated, not-so-innocent girls he was meeting South of the Border (the Canadian border, that is). But with lyrics about “war machines” and “ghetto scenes,” people saw it as an indictment of America herself, and it hit #1 the week after Kent State and stayed on top three weeks. At #10 it’s The Guess Who’s “American Woman.”

The Guess Who, “American Woman,” #10 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1970’s top hits. Billboard had it at #3 on the year. It originated when Guess Who guitarist Randy Bachman started playing a riff tuning up at a gig. One by one the other guys joined in and Singer Burton Cummings spat out the first words that came into his head. Then after, they got wind that a kid taping the show for a bootleg had caught the whole thing, so they got him to hand over the tape and from that, they did the studio version we just heard, and it was the title track of their new album.

The Guess Who wasn’t the only late ’60s borderline MOR Pop group to achieve instant counterculture street-cred with a hit Rock single in 1970. Three Dog Night’s version of Randy Newman’s Novelty about a square at a stoner party, “Mama Told Me Not to Come,” also got to #1, for two weeks in the Summer. That one notches in at #14 on our Chartcrush 1970 ranking.

That those were bigger Hot100 hits than, say, Led Zeppelin’s #4 “Whole Lotta Love” (their biggest ever) highlights an issue with the charts in the early ’70s: acts that were selling tons of albums didn’t do very well on the Hot100, which charts singles. Billboard didn’t launch its Mainstream Rock Airplay-based chart ’til 1981, so before that, there’s no definitive ranking of Rock songs: quite the blind spot!

#9 Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – The Tears of a Clown

Motown had an amazing year in 1970. That’s mostly thanks to a spectacular debut that we’ll get into later in the show, but at #9, a surprise hit by a group that was on hold because Motown boss Berry Gordy, Jr. had promoted its leader to be an executive. The U.K. distributor wanted to release a new single though, so he asked the group’s U.K. fan club President to pick an old album cut, and the one she chose became their first U.K. #1, so naturally it got a U.S. release as well and the same thing happened here: their first U.S. #1.

Now an awful lot had changed in music between ’67 and ’70, but there were early signs of the massive Nostalgia wave that crested in the early-’70s. Campy ’50s cover band Sha Na Na killing it at Woodstock: that was one, and a long-buried Motown gem hitting #1 was another, albeit more subtle.

With not a whiff of the Norman Whitfield Psychedelic Soul sound Motown led with in the late-’60s, it’s a throwback to the label’s already fading mid-’60s vibe before the ’67 Detroit Riots got Gordy thinking about moving out to L.A. At #9 it’s Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ “The Tears of a Clown.”

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ “Tears of a Clown” at #9 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown of 1970s biggest hits. It wasn’t the only song with that classic mid-’60s Motown sound to top the charts in ’70. The legendary Songwriting and Production team Holland-Dozier-Holland largely responsible for that sound had split from Motown to start their own label, Invictus, and their #3 hit with Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold” in the Summer also had that throwback sound. That one was #10 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 for 1970.

But don’t go looking for “Tears of a Clown” on there because it hit too late in the year to be counted. #1 for two weeks in mid-December, past Billboard‘s November 28 cutoff for its 1970 ranking.

That made two years in a row that a major Motown hit got stiffed in Billboard‘s year-end rankings. In ’69, Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” #1 for seven straight weeks over the holidays ’68 to ’69: #86 on the ’69 year-end chart. But factor its full chart run in the calendar year it scored most of its chart action, which is our Chartcrush ranking method, “Grapevine” comes out the #1 song of ’69. And “Tears of a Clown” is #9 for 1970. Safe to assume that Motown was a little frosted at Billboard ’69 to ’70.

#8 Edwin Starr – War

At #8, a more modern-sounding Motown hit written and produced by the aforementioned Norman Whitfield; co-written by Barrett Strong, first recorded by The Temptations for their Psychedelic Shack album, which also came out in 1970. But Motown balked at putting out their version as a single despite antiwar activists begging them to, fearing a backlash of Temptations’ fans, Motown’s most popular Male group.

Enter the Singer with a tough style and James Brown-influenced Soul shout who’d gotten to #6 in early ’69 with “Twenty Five Miles,” but was starting to look like a one-hit wonder after almost a year and a half without a hit. “Hey, I’ll record that song,” he said, and with nothing to lose and everything to gain, Motown said “OK” and here’s the result. At #8 it’s Edwin Starr’s “War (What Is It Good For?).”

Speaking of James Brown, he had quite a year in ’70: six Hot100 hits including his top 20s “Sex Machine” and “Super Bad,” but it was Edwin Starr with his Funky, straight-to-the-point shouter “War” that wound up being the funkiest thing to top the Hot100 during the year, with the possible exception of Sly & The Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” #1 for two weeks in February. “War” held down the top spot for three weeks in August.

Edwin Starr followed up with the even blunter “Stop the War Now” at the end of the year, which got to #26, but Starr never cracked the top 40 again. His last Hot100 entry? A Disco record, “H.A.P.P.Y. Radio” in ’79.

#7 The Beatles – Let It Be

So as Winter turned to Spring in 1970 America was in a somber mood looking ahead to the new decade, and in case the headlines aren’t enough, just look at the top of the Hot100. For six weeks from the end of February to the beginning of April, a hymn-like song we’re gonna hear later was #1, immediately followed for the next two weeks by another hymn-like record that we’re gonna hear right now at #9: the lead single (and title single), from the last album by, to this day, the best-selling and top charting act in Hot100 history.

Just the day before it hit #1 in April, Paul McCartney had some more bad news for the world: The Beatles were breaking up. At #9 it’s “Let It Be.”

“Let It Be,” The Beatles at #9 as we count down the top 10 hits of 1970 here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Really a Paul McCartney solo effort: his Beatles bandmate John Lennon, who wasn’t very enthusiastic about much of anything Paul was doing in those years, introduces it on the Let It Be album with a snarky comment in falsetto that gently mocks the song’s hymnlike religious overtones.

Fans at the time assumed the Mary in “Let It Be” was the mother of Jesus, but actually, Paul had had a dream in ’69 as The Beatles were struggling to continue working together, in which his late mother whose name was Mary, had reassured him that everything is going to be OK, and to just let it be.

There was one more Beatles single after “Let It Be.” “The Long and Winding Road” got to #1 for two weeks in June: another somber McCartney song. And that was it for The Beatles’ run on the Hot100 from 1964 to 1970.

But as 1970 came to an end, the last #1 song of the year was… not the first solo single by a former Beatle, but the first #1 solo single by a former Beatle: George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.” And the same week it hit #1 on the Hot100, McCartney took The Beatles off life support when his lawyers filed suit to officially dissolve the group. McCartney had announced his split in April, just as “Let It Be” was hitting #1.

#6 The Jackson 5 – I Want You Back

OK, we’re down to #6, and remember that spectacular Motown chart debut I mentioned earlier? Well this was the one that started it all, first entering the charts November 15 of 1969, then working its way up to #1 January 31: their very first single. It only had one week on top, but that’s all it took to be the first of four consecutive #1s by the group. No other act had more consecutive #1s out of the gate like that until Mariah Carey’s fifth single, “Emotions,” topped the chart in 1991. At #6 it’s the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.”

Now The Beatles weren’t the only top-charting ’60s group that broke up in 1970, The Supremes also did. But Lead Singer Diana Ross’ solo career, still on Motown, was off to a shaky start. Her first solo single “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand” only got to #20 in June. DJs threw her a lifeline when they turned “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” off her album into a massive hit and Motown’s single edit went to #1 in September.

But it also didn’t hurt that Motown had titled the Jackson 5’s first album Diana Ross Presents… And they had her introduce them on several big TV appearances, so everyone thought that Diana Ross had personally discovered 1970’s hottest new group. “I Want You Back,” #6 here on our 1970 edition of Chartcrush: the first of two of the Jackson 5’s record-setting four consecutive #1s in our top10 countdown. The other, still to come.

#5 Carpenters – (They Long to Be) Close to You

But now, another first of two, this time a powerhouse Pop Songwriting Duo with two hits among the top 10 on the year, Burt Bacharach and Hal David. In ’68, Herb Alpert had taken their song “This Guy’s in Love with You” to #1 for four weeks even though he couldn’t really sing. The record just worked, and Alpert was a big enough name to pull it off, with dozens of instrumental hits and best-selling albums with his outfit The Tijuana Brass in the ’60s.

Well, Bacharach and David thought Alpert might be able to repeat that with a song they’d written in the early ’60s. He gave it a shot and wasn’t crazy about it, but he thought the song was perfect for a brother-sister Duo he’d just signed to his A&M label. Their first album and single had flopped so this was make or break, and obviously it was “make” because the record shot to #1 in just its seventh week and is our #5 song of 1970. Billboard has it at #2 on the year: siblings Richard and Karen, The Carpenters, “Close to You.”

Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” the first of twelve top 10s for Karen and Richard Carpenter over the next five years, but interestingly, no more Bacharach/David compositions.

The Carpenters’ success helped bridge an already narrowing gap between the rapidly-changing Easy Listening and Pop radio formats about to be inundated by Singer-Songwriters.

Karen’s reedy, intimate 3-octave contralto was a fresh new sound on all formats though in 1970, and was a major influence for, among many others, Agnetha Fältskog of ABBA and Madonna, whose debut album came out in 1983 which is the same year Karen died at just 32 of anorexia, which put a needed spotlight for really the first time on eating disorders.

#4 The Partridge Family – I Think I Love You

At #4 we have the early ’70s’ top charting made-for-TV act, with their first hit which, like The Monkees’, was a hit with Teens from the moment the TV show premiered as part of ABC’s Fall lineup. The single sold five million in record time and it was #1 in just seven weeks, same as “Close to You” and even faster than the nine weeks it took The Monkees debut “Last Train to Clarksville” in the Fall of ’66.

The half-hour sitcom on Friday nights was about a family act trying to make it in the music biz, inspired by actual family act The Cowsills from Rhode Island, who’d scored three top 10s in the ’60s. But they couldn’t act, so instead, producers assembled a cast centered around stage and screen veteran since the ’50s Shirley Jones and her real-life stepson David Cassidy, who sings lead on the show and on the record. At #4 it’s The Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You.”

The Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You” at #4 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1970, another one like “Tears of a Clown” that missed Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 altogether because only the first eight of its 19 weeks on the chart were counted. The rest, including one at #1 and seven in the top 10: after that November 28 cutoff date for the chart year.

The song first appeared in episode eight of the sitcom, in which a skunk stows away on the family’s colorful Piet Mondrian-inspired tour bus and leaves their stage clothes smelling, well, skunky.

David Cassidy, the biggest Teen heartthrob in an era of Male heartthrobs, his 16 and Tiger Beat pullout posters on countless Teen girls’ bedroom walls and school locker doors. He was never really down with that, though, so for Hippie cred he posed nude from the waist up for a cover of Rolling Stone in ’72 just as season two of The Partridge Family was about to start Summer reruns.

#3 Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water

So back at #7 when we heard “Let It Be,” I mentioned that it replaced another somber, reflective hymn-like song that’d been #1 the previous six weeks, and that one is up next at #3.

The world had been looking pretty scary since Woodstock and the moon landing. Nothing but bad headlines, escalating war and social tensions and apocalyptic songs like Creedence’s “Bad Moon Rising” and Zager & Evans’ “In the Year 2525” providing the soundtrack.

Things definitely hadn’t calmed down, but it was a new decade, so time to reflect and pray for words of wisdom from Mother Mary as in The Beatles’ “Let It Be” and, our #4 song, a “Bridge over Troubled Waters.” Billboard had it as the #1 song of 1970 but two records beat it in our Chartcrush ranking, Simon & Garfunkel.

“Bridge over Troubled Water,” #3 as we count down the top ten songs of 1970 here on this week’s Chartcrush, one of Simon & Garfunkel’s last hits before they too split up in 1970, maybe the best-realized example ever of producer Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound,” even though Spector himself had nothing to do with making the record.

It was the title track of their 1970 album, never intended as a single, but the label, Columbia, disagreed and Pop radio played it despite its mood and five minute length.

Simon had insisted that Garfunkel sing what turned out to be his most successful song, but later regretted that. “Now I’m going to reclaim my lost child,” he’d say before doing it on his 2018 farewell tour.

They both had successful solo careers, Simon and Garfunkel did, especially Simon, and they did several one-off reunions over the years, notably their free concert in New York’s Central Park in 1981, which drew half a million and became a double-Platinum album, an HBO special and a bestselling home video.

#2 The Jackson 5 – I’ll Be There

OK, our #2 song is the second of the two hits in our countdown by 1970’s top chart debut, the group from Gary, Indiana with the 11-year-old kid singing lead, whose first four singles on Motown all hit #1. “I Want You Back,” which we heard at #6: that was first on the calendar, their breakout hit in January; then “ABC” in the Spring, “The Love You Save” in mid-Summer and our #2 song in the Fall, the biggest hit of their career.

Here again, brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and 11-year-old Michael Jackson: the Jackson 5, a record produced by one guy, Hal Davis, Motown’s West coast boss out in L.A. and the group’s mentor since they signed with Motown, not the four guys including Berry Gordy, Jr. that comprised “The Corporation,” credited with writing and producing their other 1970 hits. At #2 it’s the Jackson 5, “I’ll Be There.”

The Jackson 5 were a brothers act under the tutelage of their strict, demanding father, Joe Jackson. Sisters Rebbie, LaToya and Janet, who turned 9 in 1970, had to wait ’til the mid-’70s to make their debuts on their TV variety show The Jacksons.

Ten Jackson siblings in all, and too many chart hits to count between all of them. But Michael, the most successful, and Janet a surprisingly close second on total chart points through the years. “I’ll Be There,” #2 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1970. It was #3 on Billboard‘s last chart for their 1970 chart year, with five weeks left to go in its run, and adding those back in makes it the #2 song of the year, not #7 where Billboard had it.

#1 B.J. Thomas – Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head

Well, we’re down to #1, and it’s yet another hit whose ranking on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 suffered from part of its chart run being outside their 1970 chart year. Its first nine weeks were in late 1969, which in later years would’ve counted, but not in 1970. Billboard has it at #4, but adding those weeks back in and factoring its full chart run makes it 1970’s #1 hit.

It’s the second of the two Bacharach/David songs in the countdown. The Carpenters’ “Close to You” at #5, the other. And I’m highlighting that because Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David defined a unique style of breezy, jazzy melodic Pop that was everywhere at the turn of the decade: TV, radio, movies, clubs, lounges, parties, even restaurants: like the default music.

Producers in ’68 tapped them to score the neo-Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, which ended up being a pop culture phenomenon, and the song they wrote for a playful, romantic interlude panned by critics as totally out of place in the movie was memorable for that exact reason.

At first they had Ray Stevens in mind to sing it, but he was about to unleash his Summer replacement variety show on NBC and its theme song, “Everything Is Beautiful,” so at longtime hitmaking collaborator Dionne Warwick’s suggestion, they went with the Singer whose “Hooked on a Feeling” had just hit. At #1 it’s B.J. Thomas doing Bacharach and David’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.”

“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” B.J. Thomas, Chartcrush’s #1 song on our countdown of 1970’s top hits. Dozens of cover versions from a who’s who of Pop Singers new and old appeared once Butch Cassidy blew up in theaters and it was a hit, but only B.J. Thomas’ charted.

An innocent, happy song but also “an exhortation to keep going in the face of tragedy,” as Financial Times Arts writer Peter Aspden put it, summing up its appeal to harried, paranoid Americans at the start of the ’70s.

Bonus

And that’s our top ten for 1970 according to our Chartcrush Countdown Show ranking. To review, three songs that didn’t make Billboard‘s year-end top ten make ours when counting full chart runs instead of just weeks within a discrete “chart year.” Those again are Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ “Tears of a Clown” at #10, The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” at #6 and The Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You” at #4. But those coming in to our top ten bumps three out from Billboard‘s, so to be thorough, let’s look at those.

#18 Freda Payne – Band of Gold

At #10, Billboard had the Holland-Dozier-Holland production for their new Invictus label after splitting from Motown, the trio’s most successful post-Motown song about a woman sleeping alone on her wedding night: Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold.”

“Band of Gold” peaked at #3 and shakes out as our #18 song of 1970. Freda Payne went way back with Lamont Dozier to childhood in Detroit. She was a successful Jazz singer in New York with two albums out and getting work on Broadway, but Dozier persuaded her to come to Invictus and try R&B.

#21 Rare Earth – Get Ready

And speaking of the Motor City, it also had a thriving Rock scene in the ’60s, and the hometown R&B label, Motown, even signed one band and scored a hit. Billboard‘s #8 song of 1970, #21 on our Chartcrush ranking, was Rare Earth’s “Get Ready.”

Rare Earth’s album version of “Get Ready” is 22 minutes, but editing out the extended solos gets it down to a Pop-friendly three minutes. The Temptations had done “Get Ready” in 1966, but it only got to #29.

#11 Diana Ross – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

And finally, at #6 Billboard had the record I mentioned earlier that calmed nerves about Diana Ross making it as a solo act after her first post-Supremes record stalled on the charts. It’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

Another song previously charted by a Motown act, “Ain’t No Mountain” had gotten to #19 as a Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell duet in ’67, but the totally re-imagined version on Diana Ross’ first solo album in 1970, once radio got a hold of it, unexpectedly became her first #1 after leaving The Supremes. It just misses our Chartcrush Top Ten at #11.

And with that, we’re gonna have to wrap up our 1970 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. If you like what you heard and want more, be sure and visit our website, chartcrush.com for a written transcript of the show and link to stream the podcast version on Spotify, plus outta sight extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the actual chart runs of the top 10 songs. We do that for every year, ’40s to now, and it’s all on the website, again, chartcrush.com.

I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Thanks for listening, and don’t forget to tune in again next week, same station and time, for another year, and another edition of Chartcrush.

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