I voted for “Hotel California,” but geez, this is the worst year ever. Even wore than 1962!!!
Wow, that surprises me. Nothing from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours made #1? That disc is gold, I tell ya – gold! And nothing from Billy Joel’s The Stranger, nor 52nd Street? The epitome of the 1978-79 zeitgeist! Or maybe it just was for us New Yorkers.
Oh, I see. Rumours WAS in 1977, and “Dreams” is on it. My bad. I thought it was on their previous, eponymous LP. Oh, well.
Yikes, awful year.
I was torn between “Sir Duke” and “Hotel California” and went with the Eagles since I still get constant requests to play that one live.
A much stronger list than the previous few years. I’ll weigh in with the rest of my opinions later today.
It was between “I Wish” and “Dancing Queen” for me, but since I already voted for Stevie a couple times, I gave ABBA some love. “Hotel California” can continue sucking its own dick along with the rest of the terrible classic rock of the era. Thank God for punk (which won’t make these lists, but will pave the way for the new wave acts I imagine are going to start showing up in a year or two).
Not the best song and certainly not even remotely iconic, but I chose “Car Wash” at this moment. I knew Marvin, Eagles, Stevie, Fleetwood would all get love.
Oh, what the hell. Rocky. It’s iconic, it’s self-parody, and it changed the introduction of sports teams before home games forever. And it’s not like there was anything else great to pick.
Not the best song, no, but Car Wash is iconic. Probably, more-so in my demo but the song and the movie both stand out.
Debby Boone, Barry Manilow, Shaun Cassidy, David Soul, and Mary McGregor all had #1 songs. Which means a lot of people spent a lot of money on their records. I’m going to go bang my head on the wall now. When I return I will vote for Car Wash because it is a great song from one of my all time favorite movies.
Don’t feel bad - if I wasn’t such a FM fanboy, DLMTW would have gotten my vote. And the groove at the end is iconic, easily in the top-5 of the era.
Hoo-boy! 1977’s bright, shiny day compared to the blackest of nights that was 1976.
For me, it came down to two most excellent songs, Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”. And ultimately, I went with the positively joyous “I Wish” over the just-a-coochie-hair-less-great, haunting “Dreams”.
Other also-rans were “Hotel California” (a good, but overplayed, song which is probably going to win this thing due to a mixture of rockism/fear of disco and a lack of imagination), “Rich Girl”, “Dancing Queen”, “Southern Nights”, Stevie’s great “Sir Duke”, “Blurred Lines”, and “Best of My Love”.
A terrific year full of number ones that my 44 year old self enjoys nearly as much as my seven year old self did.
Wthout reading anyone else responses, it’s a toss up between The Eagles - “Hotel California” and Fleetwood Mac - “Dreams.”
“Hotel California” was the better song, but I have this real soft spot for “Dreams.”
I used to hang out at the beach with some friends and a new girlfriend that summer. We had a boom box and “Dreams” got played all the time; it was the signature song from the summer I turned 15. Every time I hear it I still smell coconut suntan lotion and feel the hot sun and warm breeze of the beach.
So I have to pick “Dreams.”
I’m almost apologetic, to admit voting for *Dancing Queen. *
Stevie Wonder does, but yeah, Mac and Stevie and arguably the Eagles are the only ones that transcend their era.
This is definitely a more interesting list than the previous few years. I went with “Dancing Queen” by a hair over “Blinded by the Light” - I wasn’t bothered that the latter is a cover, the first Manfred Mann song I’d ever heard was his 1968 cover of Dylan’s “Mighty Quinn” so hearing him do a cover of one of Springsteen’s more Dylanesque songs fit right in, AFAIWC.
It’s hard for me to fairly judge either “Dreams” or “Hotel California” since they’ve both been played into the ground. (Rumours was #1 on the album charts for 29 weeks in 1977. That sound was everyfuckingwhere that year. Audio saturation bombing.) There’s a lot of other stuff on the list that I never liked much in the first place, but forget it, Jake, it’s the 1970s. That’s just the way it is.
Other songs on this list that I still like: “You Don’t Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show),” “New Kid in Town,” and the iconic “Gonna Fly Now.”
Another really hard one. I went with “Hotel California,” but it was a tough pick.
I have a particular “thing” about 1977 music, for whatever reason. A lot of stuff came out that year (I was 12-13) that just made me happy in ways I can’t explain. I think it was just a combination of that being a really good year for me–lots of lazy summer days lounging by our tiny pool and reading good books, school was good, etc.–and the fact that songs from this era just spoke to me in some special way. Yeah, I know most of them are still cheesy. I don’t care. To this day, I still get a little happy feeling when I hear one of my “1977 songs” (I almost said “when it comes on the radio,” but I almost never listen to the radio these days.)
For the second time in my life, I have to be the spoilsport who points out that those are not horns…they’re Stevie’s keyboard synthesizer.
(The first time was not long after the song came out. A girlfriend said how much she loved that opening “trumpet” lick. When I told her the truth, she was crushed. I don’t think she ever forgave me!)
Still more from the tiresome anal corrections department…
Manfred Mann was, through 1969, the name of a group, of which keyboardist Manfred Mann was the only constant member. That group broke up, and two of its members formed Manfred Mann Chapter Three, which was followed a couple of years later by The Manfred Mann Earth Band.
Other than Manfred himself, there is no connection between the 60s group Manfred Mann and The Manfred Man Earth Band.
Their case is similar to that of Alice Cooper. Many don’t realize that this was initially the name of a group whose lead singer assumed the name of Alice Cooper. When that group disbanded, “Alice” was so identified with it that he took on the group name as his own.
…and on the screen you see nothing
No song that won’t elicit tears
Votes for no one
Not for at least a dozen years