It’s wild for me to look at spectrums of music – like the year of 1973 in this case, and specifically albums that were selected for the best 1,000 albums ever – and look at the fantastic and eclectic artifacts it offers.
Subtract the music, and 1973 does not look like a good time: the last full year of the Nixon administration in the U.S. (which, granted, maybe we’d grab it and go had we the choice during this dark era of Trump 2.0), economic doldrums, the Vietnam War dragging on, and so forth.
But if music is savior – and I’d argue that it can be given the right circumstances – I can imagine many of the below albums coming in handy to get people over some of the roughest patches.
The full spectrum of rock music can be found here: hard, psychedelic, glam, art, and heavily pop-infused. And if that’s not enough for you, catch a fire with Bob Marley’s iconic reggae.
Here it is, the best eight albums ever from 1973, with fun pull quotes extracted from each to give you some flavor.
1) Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy (#22 of the best 1,000 albums ever)
At eight songs that check in at just over forty minutes, it’s all high points, including the classic English folk-inflected blues rock of “Over the Hills and Far Away,” the groovy funk jam of “The Crunge,” the reggae rock of “D’yer Mak’er,” the dreamy psychedelia of “The Rain Song,” and the sun shiny hard rock of “The Ocean.”
2) Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon (#354)
But more than anything, The Dark Side of the Moon just feels like one of those formative soundtrack albums from my high school years, a collection of songs so collectively revered by Long Island classic rock radio and most of my peers that it honestly feels quite strange to discuss it in any kind of coherent way.
3) New York Dolls – New York Dolls (#453)
I love New York Dolls more every time I listen to it, and it’s because glam rock has never sounded so gritty.
It also ties into what I know about 1970s New York City: dirty, dangerous, and yet bursting with personality and energy and emerging styles and possibilities.
4) Wings – Band on the Run (#543)
For most, “Mrs. Vandebilt” is a relatively deep cut, but to this day it remains my favorite Wings song and one of my most favorite McCartney post-Beatles efforts. It’s got a rolling, driving beat and catchy verses that slide wonderfully into a repeated section of vocals shouting, “oh, hey ho!” Overall, it has the feel of a great road song, with multiple interesting changes and jangling acoustic guitar chords throughout.
5) Bachman-Turner Overdrive – Bachman-Turner Overdrive II (#556)
One other thing that clicked for me during the research phase for the best 1k albums proj is that I was not aware that Bachman-Turner Overdrive was made up of former members of The Guess Who, another band that I’m a huge fan of. And then of course when you listen to “Let It Ride” it makes total sense.
6) David Bowie – Aladdin Sane (#574)
Very few things are more fascinating, music-wise (and maybe otherwise too), than what David Bowie was up to during the 1970s. Aladdin Sane comes at a time (1973) when music and the culture at large were shifting rapidly, and the album pushes things forward with a wide array of glam and proto-punk and art rock.
7) Roxy Music – For Your Pleasure (#836)
There’s a lot about For Your Pleasure that represents what was so exciting about music at its best in the early 1970s, with elements of hard rock, blues rock, and singer-songwriter stuff colliding with newer forms of music in proto-punk and glam rock and the early strands of sounds that would soon crossover to the mainstream such as disco, club music, punk rock, and hip hop.
8) Bob Marley & The Wailers – Catch A Fire (#844)
Bob Marley and his band are such cultural institutions today – almost synonymous with reggae itself – that it’s almost easy to overlook that they were the ones who brought the genre to the American mainstream in the first place.