33 STORIES · TAGGED
BILL WITHERS · 1971
— In 1971, a 32-year-old factory worker named Bill Withers, still assembling toilet seats for Boeing 747s, walked into a Los Angeles studio …
SEX PISTOLS · 1976
— In late 1976, four young men from London detonated a two-and-a-half-minute single that was less a song than a controlled demolition of Bri…
RAMONES · 1976
In the summer of 1976, four men in leather jackets and ripped jeans walked into a New York studio and recorded a song so violently simple it…
QUEEN · 1975
: A six-minute mock-opera that violated every rule of mid-1970s radio programming and somehow became one of the most beloved singles in popu…
ABBA · 1976
ABBA's "Dancing Queen" (1976) sounds like pure euphoria, but underneath the shimmer lies a quietly melancholic portrait of a young woman's f…
EAGLES · 1973
: "Desperado" is a piano ballad masquerading as a cowboy song — a meditation on emotional isolation written by two young Californians who ba…
QUEEN · 1978
: A breathless three-and-a-half-minute eruption of piano, falsetto, and cosmic metaphor, Queen's 1978 single was initially dismissed as fill…
ABBA · 1976
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
A song that began as a Swedish-language ballad about heartbreak in a Stockholm suburb somehow became a global meditation on revolution, regr…
LYNYRD SKYNYRD · 1973
Released in 1973 on Lynyrd Skynyrd's debut album, "Free Bird" began as a tender goodbye and ended as a nine-minute guitar inferno. It is par…
CHIC · 1979
NEW YORK, USA
A glittering disco anthem recorded in Manhattan at the peak of the genre's commercial reign, "Good Times" sounds like a celebration but read…
EAGLES · 1976
: "Hotel California" is the Eagles' six-and-a-half-minute parable about the seductive rot at the heart of the American Dream, dressed up as …
BEE GEES · 1977
MIAMI, USA
A ballad written in a French château but recorded in Miami, "How Deep Is Your Love" became the quiet heart of the Saturday Night Fever pheno…
JOHN LENNON · 1971
: "Imagine" is the song that turned a former Beatle into a secular saint — a piano hymn that proposes the dissolution of nations, religions,…
LED ZEPPELIN · 1975
: "Kashmir" is the eight-and-a-half-minute centerpiece of Led Zeppelin's 1975 double album Physical Graffiti, a song the band itself often c…
QUEEN · 1974
: "Killer Queen" was the song that turned Queen from a promising glam-rock curiosity into a band that could write hits on their own terms. F…
CHIC · 1978
NEW YORK, USA
A four-on-the-floor revenge fantasy disguised as a party anthem. Born from a humiliating night when Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were tu…
BILL WITHERS · 1972
: In 1972, a former Navy mechanic and aircraft-toilet assembler named Bill Withers sat at a Wurlitzer piano in Los Angeles and channeled the…
THE CLASH · 1979
— In December 1979, The Clash released a song that sounded less like a punk anthem and more like a transmission from a city on the edge of c…
ABBA · 1975
— Released in 1975 as the lead single from ABBA's self-titled third album, "Mamma Mia" is a glittering pop confection about the helpless gra…
BEE GEES · 1977
MIAMI, USA
Recorded in a converted French chateau and finished in a Miami beachside studio, "Night Fever" became the velvet-edged heartbeat of the disc…
SANTANA · 1970
SAN FRANCISCO, USA
A cha-cha-chá written by a Cuban bandleader in 1963 New York, reborn seven years later in a San Francisco recording studio as a psychedelic …
EARTH WIND & FIRE · 1978
LOS ANGELES, USA
A glittering disco-funk anthem cooked up in a Los Angeles studio in the autumn of 1978, "September" has quietly become one of the most-playe…
QUEEN · 1976
: Queen's "Somebody to Love" is a gospel-shaped rock prayer — a single voice multitracked into a choir of one hundred, asking the oldest que…
LED ZEPPELIN · 1971
: Released on Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album in November 1971, "Stairway to Heaven" became the defining rock epic of the 1970s — an ei…
STEVIE WONDER · 1972
In 1972, a 22-year-old Stevie Wonder wrestled control of his career from Motown, plugged a brand-new Hohner Clavinet into a fuzz pedal, and …
LYNYRD SKYNYRD · 1974
A three-chord Southern rock anthem written in 1974 as a pointed reply to Neil Young's "Southern Man" and "Alabama," Lynyrd Skynyrd's signatu…
EAGLES · 1972
: "Take It Easy," the Eagles' debut single from May 1972, is the song that essentially invented the country-rock sound of the American 1970s…
JOHN DENVER · 1971
— In 1971, a folk singer from Roswell, New Mexico named John Denver released a song about a place he had barely visited, written largely by …
ABBA · 1974
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
On April 6, 1974, four Swedes in glittering platform boots walked onto the stage of the Brighton Dome and rewrote the rules of European pop.…
QUEEN · 1977
: Released in October 1977 as a double A-side with "We Will Rock You," Queen's stadium anthem arrived at the precise moment punk was suppose…
QUEEN · 1977
: Queen's stomp-stomp-clap anthem was a deliberate experiment in audience participation, written by guitarist Brian May after a transformati…
MARVIN GAYE · 1971
— In 1971, Marvin Gaye walked into Hitsville U.S.A. and dismantled the Motown hit factory from the inside. "What's Going On" was never suppo…
VILLAGE PEOPLE · 1978
NEW YORK, USA
A glittering disco anthem born from the cruising culture of late-1970s Manhattan, "Y.M.C.A." smuggled queer code into the heart of mainstrea…