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Welcome! This is The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we dive deep into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top 10 songs according to our exclusive recap of the weekly Pop charts published at the time in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. This week we’re turning the clock back to 1974, the year “Rock attained perfection” according to Homer Simpson. But also, quote, “the worst year, bar none, in the history of popular music” in Pulitzer-winning critic Tim Page’s widely-quoted opinion.

Confused? Well, by ’74, Rock had migrated to albums, and since most people don’t buy singles of songs they have on albums, the vacuum on the Hot100, a singles chart, was filled by, well, everything else, and whether or not you agree with him, it’s the “everything else” that Tim Page is talking about.

Rock even had its own radio band in the ’70s, FM, and a front page piece in Billboard in ’74 quoted experts predicting (accurately) that FM would overtake AM by 1981, which, not coincidentally, was when Billboard first recognized Rock as its own genre and launched a new chart tracking airplay on FM Rock stations. Until then, though, for a Rock Act to make any of Billboard‘s songs charts including the Hot100, it had to find an audience in the singles market beyond its fan base willing to shell out for the album.

A handful did achieve that, including all four former Beatles in ’73 and ’74, but because of that album factor, a lesser-known Rock Act without an existing fan base buying its album actually stood a better chance of making the top10 if AM radio played their song. That’s why, say, Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” was #1 in ’74, but nothing on The Rolling Stones It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll album cracked the top 10.

Now, Soul and R&B acts like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Temptations and others, also airing it out on albums, of course, but unlike Rock before ’81, Soul/R&B did have its own songs chart, along with Country and Easy Listening, so a lot more crossover between those genres and the Hot100.

But the larger point here: with the oldest Baby Boomers hitting their late 20s and albums overtaking singles not just in revenue but units, the Hot100 itself had become a genre chart, not based on a style, but on a format, the single, that had always been the default for Pop, but no longer. And in 1970 the genre got a name, borrowed from radio jargon, when Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 launched and people first started obsessing over charts.

And let’s face it: in the mid ’70s, people really needed things like that just to stay sane! Vietnam, not looking good after the U.S. combat role ended. Gas prices, up over 20% since ’73 and still rising even after OPEC ended its embargo. Bombings, hijackings and other mayhem by fringe activist groups peaking. Something called the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst in March, and then she shows up just weeks later robbing a bank with them!

Serial killers, on people’s minds as Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader started their killing sprees. In Florida, a newswoman, Christine Chubbuck, killed herself on live TV! And, of course, Watergate: President Nixon turning over his Oval Office tapes to Congress in July, and then resigning two weeks later.

With all that and a recession, entertainment boomed. All sectors—film, TV, sports and music: normal in tough times, but in the early ’70s, Hollywood was making bank stoking anxiety and paranoia, not soothing it. Exorcist, Deliverance, Death Wish and the peaking disaster movie genre supplying three of ’74’s top 10 films: The Towering Inferno, Earthquake and Airport 75. And on the tube Norman Lear’s All in the Family and its spinoffs The Jeffersons, Maude and Good Times magnified the day’s headlines.

So for an escape valve, that left Sports and Music, and Sports sure delivered! More on that later. But in Music, a record 36 #1 hits provided a diverse (and pretty escapist) soundtrack on still-dominant AM radio.

#10 Dionne Warwicke and The Spinners – Then Came You

And nine of those 36 #1 are in our top10 countdown for ’74, including our song at #10, which was #1 the on the Hot100 the week Billboard published its first Dance Club Songs charts, October 26, tracking sales at two New York Record stores, and a third compiled by Disco DJ Tom Moulton based on what he was hearing in clubs.

t wasn’t on any of those Dance charts, but it’s a prime slice of the Philly Soul style that led directly to Disco, by two acts who’d been making the charts since the early ’60s but had only recently landed at Atlantic Records. And Producer Thom Bell gave them both their first career #1. At #10 as we kick things off, it’s Dionne Warwicke and The Spinners’ “Then Came You.”

“Then Came You” at #10 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1974’s top 10 hits, later included on both Dionne Warwicke’s and The Spinners’ next albums, but only on a single when it came out: always a plus for ranking on the Hot100. The Spinners, already one of Atlantic’s top Groups since their breakthrough in ’72 but for Dionne, it was a comeback: her first top 10 in five years since before the Songwriter-Producers behind most of her ’60s hits split, Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

After signing with Warner Brothers (Atlantic’s parent company) in ’71 she tacked on an “e” to the end of “Warwick” for good luck. No kidding: she got the idea from an Astrologer friend, which won’t surprise anyone who saw Dionne’s ubiquitous Psychic Friends Network commercials in the ’90s! None of Dionne’s follow-ups to “Then Came You” charted, so in ’75 she went back to the original spelling without the “e.”

#9 MFSB featuring The Three Degrees – TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)

But that Philly Soul sound stayed hot! In ’75, Europeans Giorgio Moroder and Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay scored big hits for Donna Summer and The Silver Convention respectively with their minimalist, synthy take. Viola! Disco! But in ’74 it was all Thom Bell and the Producers of our #9 hit, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.

Bell’s signature style, melodicism and psychedelic flourishes like the flanged wah-wah guitar on “Then Came You” while Gamble/Huff’s sound was punchier and funkier. But the common denominator: strings. Lots of strings. And what better to highlight those than an instrumental! At #9, the first and only #1 hit in history with an abbreviated artist and title. MFSB, the artist, short for “Mother, Father, Sister, Brother” (or “Mother F-ing Son of a B’s” depending on who you ask). And the title, “TSOP:” “The Sound of Philadelphia.”

Soul Train launched on TV in Chicago in 1970: DJ-entrepreneur Don Cornelius’ American Bandstand-inspired showcase for Black music and youth, and in ’73 Cornelius turned to Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff for a new theme. “TSOP” by their Philadelphia International label’s house band MFSB featuring vocals by Girl Group The Three Degrees opened the show from ’73 to ’75 as it ramped up into a full-blown cultural phenomenon: #9 as we count down the top 10 hits of 1974 here on this week’s edition of Chartcrush.

Cornelius later regretted his decision to not have the name of the show in the words or title. Unclear what his thinking was exactly, but he corrected the mistake with every subsequent Soul Train theme. Unfortunately, none of those were hits, but plenty of other TV themes were: Rhythm Heritage’s “Theme from S.W.A.T.,” Mike Post’s “Rockford Files Theme,” John Sebastian’s “Welcome Back” from Welcome Back Kotter, Pratt & McLain’s “Happy Days:” all top 10s later in the ’70s.

#8 Al Wilson – Show and Tell

And speaking of Soul Train, at #8, a song and Singer featured on the show in ’74. The song, previously issued by Crooner Johnny Mathis in ’73, but his went nowhere so the Songwriter, Jerry Fuller, also a veteran Producer and label owner, paired it with the Singer, in his mid-30s and hitless since his minor splash in ’68 with his version of Civil Rights Activist Oscar Brown’s cautionary story song “The Snake,” whose lyrics candidate Donald Trump later revived in spoken form at campaign rallies.

It came out on Fuller’s indie Rocky Road label and checked enough Philly Soul boxes to make the cut on AM radio, and after climbing the chart all Fall through the Holidays it got its week at #1 in January ’74. At #8 it’s Al Wilson’s “Show and Tell.”

Al Wilson at #8 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1974. He made the Hot100 twice more in ’74 after “Show and Tell,” again in ’75, and even cracked the top 30 in ’76 with his debut release on Hugh Hefner’s short-lived Playboy label, but that was the end of the road for him on the charts, and he spent the next 20 years touring clubs and lounges.

#7 Love Unlimited Orchestra – Love’s Theme

So Sports! Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record in 1974, and in October, Charley O. Finley’s colorful, mustachio’d Oakland A’s won their third straight World Series. In basketball all eyes were on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius Erving. In football it was Bob Greise, Larry Csonka and the Miami Dolphins repeating as Superbowl champs. And hockey’s Philadelphia Flyers earned the nickname “Broad Street Bullies” with their aggressive playing personified by Center and Team Captain Bobby Clarke and his two missing front teeth. And of course, “The Rumble in the Jungle,” Muhammad Ali reclaiming his heavyweight title from George Forman in Zaire in October. “Black Superman,” a Top40 hit in early ’75 inspired by Ali.

In August, French Acrobat Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between New York’s Twin Towers and a month later, Evel Knievel attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho on a rocket bike. No, Hollywood wasn’t offering much in the way of escapism in the early ’70s, but Sports sure was. And all those names I mentioned and others were cultural icons in a way that only a handful of athletes had ever been before.

At #7, another Philly Soul instrumental. ’74, the first year since 1961 with more than one instrumental in the top 10 on the year by our Chartcrush rankings. And while “TSOP” we heard at #9 was the theme of Soul Train, this was the de facto theme for practically every Sports event on TV in ’74, and officially the TV theme of the aforementioned Philadelphia Flyers. Philly, looming large as the bicentennial approached! At #7, the biggest of ’74’s instrumental smashes: Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra with “Love’s Theme.”

Barry White had already scored his first hits in front of the mic with his sexy, deep Baritone when “Love’s Theme” hit #1 in February ’74. But he was also a successful Producer, and the 40-piece Orchestra he’d assembled to back the Girl Group he’d discovered, Love Unlimited, proved chart-worthy in its own right, as we just heard at #7 on our Chartcrush 1974 Top Ten Countdown.

Barry’s biggest hits as a Singer were right around the corner: “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” hit #1 in September and “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” was in the top 10 by year’s end. And in the early ’90s when Jodeci, Silk and R. Kelly were turning up the steam factor on the charts, he was back with “Practice What You Preach” and a recurring role as himself on The Simpsons, which cemented his legacy as R&B’s original Sultan of Smooth.

#6 Steve Miller Band – The Joker

But he wasn’t the Gangster of Love or Space Cowboy. No, those honorifics, already claimed by our act at #6, callbacks to two of his late ’60s songs. And other lyrics in the song, from obscure ’50s R&B records. Not “midnight toker,” though. That was a new one. And somehow it got past AM radio censors still cracking the whip about drug references despite letting the word “damn” slide on Isaac Hayes’ “Theme From Shaft” and Jim Croce’s “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” in ’71 and ’73, respectively, both #1 hits.

And speaking of steam, greenlighting Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” also in ’73 and also a #1 hit. They didn’t flag it on Brewer & Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line” either in ’71. But the single edit of our #6 song still had “midnight toker,” and it seemed only Hippies were any the wiser.

The song a complete overhaul of his sound for the ’70s and it connected, just like when he updated again for the ’80s with “Abracadabra.” At #6 it’s the title song from The Steve Miller Band’s 1973 album, “The Joker.”

Now you weren’t likely to hear much Who or Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or Yes on the AM airwaves, but Steve Miller, one of a handful of Rockers in the ’70s who managed to tear it up on both the Album chart and the Hot100 singles chart. “The Joker,” his first big hit single, topping the chart for a single week in January. And he made the top 10 three more times in ’76 and ’77, including another #1, “Rock’n Me.”

Another lyric in “The Joker” that had folks in ’74 scratching their heads: who or what is this “pompatus of love” Miller speaks of? Believe it or not there’s a whole movie dedicated to sleuthing that out, titled, you guessed it, The Pompatus of Love. Actor John Cryer spilled the beans to Straightdope’s Cecil Adams when the film was in theaters in 1996. The actual word is “puppetutes” and it’s from a 1954 record by an obscure L.A. Doo Wop Group: Singer Vernon Green’s word for the paper dolls that inspired his Teen fantasies.

#5 Jackson 5 – Dancing Machine

At #5, the only song in our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1974 that never got to #1. Which was quite a feat in a year with 36 chart toppers, but it had a good long chart run (for ’74) of 22 weeks, with nine in the top 10, as many as any record in ’74. And two at #2.

It’s a comeback to the top 10 by five Brothers whose first four singles all went to #1 in 1970, and whose next two in ’71 peaked at #2. But then, at the height of their fame as a Group, their label, Motown, started putting out solo records by two of the Brothers, which worked out great for the youngest, Michael, but not so much for his older Brother Jermaine, and not for the Group, who suddenly couldn’t even crack the top 10.

Until ’74, when this not only got to #2, but positioned them as a cutting-edge Funk-based Dance Act at the exact moment when that was a very smart thing to be. At #5 it’s The Jackson 5’s mid-’70s comeback, “Dancing Machine.”

“Dancing Machine,” The Jackson 5 at #5. Doing it on Soul Train, 15-year-old Michael famously busted out the first of his “wait, what did I just see?” signature dance moves. The moon walk? Well that would have to wait ’til “Billie Jean” in ’83, but in ’73 and ’74 it was the robot dance!

#4 Ray Stevens – The Streak

And at #4 we have the record that blocked “Dancing Machine” from getting to #1 the two weeks in May it was #2, considered a travesty by most critics, but rarely in pop culture do we find such a clear reflection of a defining fad getting all the way to #1. For all the hype about Muhammad Ali and the Rumble in the Jungle, Johnny Wakelin’s “Black Superman” only got as high as #21.

The Sexual Revolution, of course, fanned out from the counterculture in the ’70s, but before it found its main thoroughfare into the mainstream via Disco, one of the better-lit detours earlier in the decade? Streaking. It started in upstate New York: college students, exclusively male at first, stripping down to just sneakers and socks and running across campus.

News coverage and late-night-TV amplified the fad and at the Academy Awards in April, mustachio’d LGBT Editor/Photographer Robert Opel streaked across the stage on live TV as Actor David Niven introduced Elizabeth Taylor to present the Best Picture Oscar.

Only a few days before that, Pop’s longtime Prankster/Comedian had rushed out his unique take on the phenomenon, and as Opel enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame, it zoomed up the charts, #1 its sixth week, where it stayed three weeks in May. At #4 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1974’s top 10 hits, Ray Stevens’ “The Streak.”

With his early ’60s hits like “Ahab the Arab,” “Harry the Hairy Ape” and “Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills,” Ray Stevens pioneered a slapstick Country-Folk style that AM Pop DJs just couldn’t resist, that was imitated by Hippie acts like Arlo Guthrie in “Alice’s Restaurant” and Country Joe & The Fish’s anti-Vietnam “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” otherwise known as 1-2-3 What Are We Fighting For?”

In 1970 he played it straight and scored his first #1 with “Everything Is Beautiful,” but after that he couldn’t crack the top 40 with anything, Novelty or straight, until 1974 and “The Streak,” #4 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1974. The biggest Novelty hit since David Seville’s “Witch Doctor” in 1958, and until Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck” in ’76, and yes, that includes “Alley Oop,” “The Monster Mash” and “The Purple People Eater.”

Surprisingly, he followed up “The Streak” with an album of Pop standards, which, even more surprisingly, did well! His banjo take on “Misty” got all the way to #14 in ’75. And the phrase “boogity boogity?” Nearly as ubiquitous as “dy-no-MITE!” in the ’70s, and color commentator Daryl Waltrip resurrected it as his catchphrase for the green flag starting off NASCAR races on FOX TV throughout the 2000’s and ’10s. Yes, “The Streak” had cultural legs!

#3 Elton John – Bennie and the Jets

At #3, we have the second of two back-to-back songs with canned laughter sounds, how about that? In “The Streak” it was laughs fighting with the cartoonish instrumental backing; on this, it’s concert applause for the Glam Rock robot Group from the future that the song’s about.

Never conceived as a single, it even seemed out of place on the sprawling 1973 double concept album it was on, but after it started getting airplay on the biggest R&B station in America’s R&B capital, Detroit, the Artist was so delighted that he scuttled “Candle in the Wind” as his next single and went with this instead, and it became his second #1. At #3 it’s Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.”

The second of Elton John’s four consecutive appearances in our Chartcrush top 10’s from 1973 to ’76, “Bennie and the Jets” at #3 for ’74. “Crocodile Rock” was #7 for ’73; “Philadelphia Freedom” and “Island Girl,” numbers 3 and 8, respectively, for ’75, and his duet with Kiki Dee, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” #10 for 1976. No other artist matched that until Mariah Carey in the ’90s.

Besides the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road double LP, “Bennie and the Jets” was also on Elton’s Greatest Hits album released in late ’74, one of the five Greatest Hits packages to top the album chart in ’74, along with Carpenters, John Denver, Beach Boys and Crosby Still Nash & Young. Up to ’74 all the way back to 1958, only four Greatest Hits LPs had topped the chart, but they continued to be among the top sellers for decades.

#2 Terry Jacks – Seasons in the Sun

OK, we’re down to #2: a favorite target of 1974 naysayers and Worst Song Ever list compilers down through the decades. You know who you are. But it’s fascinating how those lists always skew so heavily toward earnest soul-searching tear-jerkers. Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel” from 1960, Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” from ’68, and then this. Maybe there are subjects that shouldn’t be addressed in two- or three-minute Pop songs, but the folks who made them massive hits would clearly disagree.

Our #2 song is a cover of a 1961 song originally in French by Belgian Jacques Brel, translated to English by American Poet Rod McKuen and recorded by The Kingston Trio in ’64, then stripped of all its cheating-wife sarcasm in the original, and loaded up with simple love declarations for the hit. At #2 it’s Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun.”

Terry Jacks had been on the charts before: #2 in 1970 with his wife Susan as The Poppy Family on “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” They split when the marriage ended in ’73 and Terry went to work with The Beach Boys on “Seasons in the Sun,” but Brian Wilson tinkered with it too long, as he was known to do. Jacks got frustrated and did his own, and it was one of the biggest hits of 1974.

He disappeared from the charts after two follow-ups in ’74 failed to connect, then retreated behind the glass as a Producer for a few years and re-emerged as an environmental activist in the ’80s. A common kids’ variation on the lyrics to “Seasons in the Sun” in the ’70s: “We had joy, we had fun, we had weiners in a bun.”

#1 Barbra Streisand – The Way We Were

And that gets us down to #1 here on our Chartcrush Countdown of the top 10 songs of 1974, by a Brooklyn girl whose singular focus coming up was Broadway, and her meteoric rise in the early ’60s is a great rags-to-riches show-biz story. Along the way, her singles and albums of mostly medleys and show-tunes did well on the charts, but it wasn’t ’til 1969 that she made her first Pop album, Stoney End, the title track of which became her first top 10 since her chart debut “People” from Funny Face in ’64.

In ’73 she passed on recording the Pop version of “Delta Dawn,” which Helen Reddy got instead and took to #1. And she also refused the song from The Poseidon Adventure, “The Morning After,” so Producers tapped unknown Singer Maureen McGovern and that also got to #1. Fortunately, though, she did sing the title song for the 1973 movie she starred in opposite Robert Redford, and it didn’t just get to #1, it was #1 on the year. 1974, that is, after debuting in late ’73 when the film hit theaters. At #1, it’s Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were.”

“The Way We Were,” Barbra Streisand’s first #1 and the #1 song here on our 1974 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Melody by Marvin Hamlisch, who scored a #3 hit himself a few months later with his arrangement of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” from The Sting, which won the Best Picture Oscar Elizabeth Taylor presented after Streaker Robert Opel cleared the stage.

Streisand had seven more top 10s on the Hot100 through 1981 including three #1s, and 21 top 10s including six #1s over on the Adult Contemporary chart through 1997.

Bonus

Well that’s our top 10 here on our 1974 edition of Chartcrush but we’re not quite done yet. Three songs that made the top 10 in our Chartcrush ranking were not among the top 10 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 published at the end of 1974.

Our #10 song, Dionne Warwicke & The Spinners “Then Came You” was too late in the year for all its weeks to be counted in Billboard‘s 1974 chart year. They have it at #46, but counting its full chart run as we do for every song at Chartcrush, it does much better.

Al Wilson’s “Show and Tell” on the other hand was too early, with its first weeks in Billboard‘s 1973 chart year. Our #8 song; they have that at #15.

And finally, “The Joker.” Steve Miller Band. Same deal: too early. Billboard has it at #40; it’s our #6 song of the year counting its full run. But three songs coming in to our top 10 displaces three from Billboard‘s, so to be thorough we’re gonna take a look at those.

#65 Mac Davis – One Hell of a Woman

Billboard‘s #10 song of ’74 had the longest chart run of any single in ’74, 28 weeks, but never made the top 10 and was only in the top 20 for six weeks. Our Chartcrush ranking method is less generous to songs with runs like that so we have it at #65. It’s Mac Davis’ “One Hell of a Woman.”

Mac Davis wrote several of Elvis Presley’s late ’60s comeback hits including “In the Ghetto,” then got to #1 on his own on both the Pop and Country charts in ’72 with “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me.” “One Hell of a Woman” was his second million-seller.

#15 Grand Funk – The Loco-Motion

Next as we look at the three songs that made Billboard‘s year-end top 10 for 1974 but not our Chartcrush Top Ten on the year we counted down earlier, their #6 song that notches in at #15 on our ranking: an unlikely cover of an early ’60s Girl Group classic by one of the early ’70s biggest Hard Rock groups: Grand Funk’s “The Loco-Motion.”

Produced by Todd Rundgren, Michigan’s Grand Funk, coming off their first #1 in ’73, “We’re an American Band,” also produced by Rundgren. Critics mostly hated them but Youngsters bought lots of their 45s so they were one of the few Rock Bands that did well both on the album and singles charts.

#14 Redbone – Come and Get Your Love

And finally in our Chartcrush bonus segment look at the songs in Billboard‘s year-end top ten nudged out of our 1974 countdown due to differences in ranking methods, the song Billboard had at #4 on the year despite it only peaking at #5 on the weekly chart; like Mac Davis, one of the longer chart runs in the year, 23 weeks, but songs with more weeks in the top 10 push it down to #14 in our Chartcrush ranking. It’s Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love.”

Native American brothers Pat and Lolly Vegas, fixtures on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip music scene since the mid-60s, who in ’69 started Redbone, their name borrowed from a Cajun word for mixed-race person. Four albums later in ’74 they had a hit, “Come and Get Your Love.”

Well that’s a wrap for our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show for 1974. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Hey, if you like what you heard, head over to our website, chartcrush.com for a full transcript of today’s show and a link to stream the podcast version, plus boffo extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the Billboard chart runs for the top 10 hits. We do that for every year, 1940s to now, and it’s all on the website. Again, that’s chartcrush.com. Thanks for listening and be sure and tune in again next week, same station, same time, for another year and another edition of Chartcrush.

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