Singer-songwriters ruled the 1970s.
Musicians who’d come up through the coffeehouses and clubs of the folk scene were coming of age. Writers who’d cut their teeth churning out hits in Tin Pan Alley were stepping into the spotlight. The bands who’d defined the ’60s were splintering and the talent was going it alone. Some bared their souls, others stuck it to the man, a bunch of them played characters – but all their reputations rested on the quality of their songs.
Here’s our pick of the best singer-songwriter albums of the 1970s. We’ve limited our choices to one per artist and have selected the album from their decade that best represents them as a solo singer-songwriter (so we’ve gone for Blue, not Hejira; Blood On The Tracks rather than Desire). How many have you heard?
The best 1970s singer-songwriter albums
17. Paul McCartney: McCartney (1970)
On 9 April 1970, advance copies of Paul McCartney’s debut solo album, McCartney, were sent out to the UK press. An enclosed Q&A provided journalists with recording information and the revelation that The Beatles had no further plans to work together. Predictably, the latter nugget inspired the headlines, effectively drawing a line under the 1960s, but the fact that McCartney created the album almost totally on his own, much of it at home, would prove increasingly influential as the years went on.
It’s the sound of freedom, of a superstar no longer playing the game, and now content to write charming odes to domesticity (‘The Lovely Linda’), loose jams (‘That Would Be Something’), and seemingly throwaway lo-fi gems revealing inner truths (‘Man We Was Lonely’). Meanwhile, songs of the calibre of ‘Junk’, ‘Every Night’ and ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ showed he could still turn it on when he needed.
16. Labi Siffre: Crying Laughing Loving Lying (1972)
'There are things you can say in a song that you would be too embarrassed to say in conversation,' Labi Siffre told BBC Two’s Sounding Out in February 1972. 'In a song you can say it and it sounds correct. It’s a cowardly way of saying things one would never say.' That statement sums up Siffre’s songs to a tee – witty, self-aware and often disarmingly open and sensitive.
Siffre’s third album, Crying Laughing Loving Lying is the sound of a young, gay, Black British man searching for a sense of place, identity and – most of all – love. Along with his lyrical brilliance, Siffre’s melodic gifts, delicate vocals and timeless arrangements are still winning fans today, not least thanks to appearances on the soundtracks to The Holdovers (‘Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying’) and Sentimental Value (‘Cannock Chase’).
15. Tom Waits: Closing Time (1973)
Even on his debut album, Tom Waits was blurring the lines between persona and autobiography. On Closing Time, Waits plays the part of a dishevelled night owl stalking the bars of Los Angeles with dreams of Sinatra, Kerouac and Bukowski whirring around his pickled brain.
At this point, Waits’ voice is a smoky croon, all the better to deliver these wee-small-hours tales of heartache and drunken misadventure. Closing Time captures Waits’ writing at his most conventional, from the country lament ‘Ol 55’ to the doomed romance of ‘I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You’ to the devastating piano ballad ‘Martha’.
14. Joan Armatrading: Joan Armatrading (1976)
'I think it is possible to be yourself and get on in pop music,' Joan Armatrading told The Guardian in 1976. 'I intend to go on trying.' With her self-titled third album, released that year, the British-born artist guaranteed her position in the pantheon of great songwriters. There is a frankness and vulnerability to its songs, as if she’s trusted her audience with hearing her diary entries.
The heart-tugging breakthrough hit ‘Love And Affection’ is a case in point – Armatrading sings about seeing love as an agent of freedom, but when she thinks she’s found it, feels confusion. Elsewhere, the damning ‘Help Yourself’ is a takedown of an emotionally withholding partner that emphasises her toughness.
13. John Martyn: Solid Air (1973)
Another classic best suited to the twilight hours, John Martyn’s fourth album Solid Air captures the point at which the mercurial singer-songwriter’s love of jazz and his folk roots entwine. The album’s more unconventional tracks – the moody funk of ‘Dreams By The Sea’, the sprawling Echoplex playground of ‘I’d Rather Be The Devil’ – pointed towards his experimental triumph Inside Out (also 1973), but the crux of its enduring appeal lies in a pair of classic songs about friendship.
The limber, folky ‘May You Never’ (working title ‘Close Brother’) is a secular hymn wishing love and security for a friend. And the drifting beauty of the title track found Martyn talking through song to his close pal and fellow musician Nick Drake, tenderly recognising the severity of Drake’s mental health problems ('You’ve been painting the blues, you’ve been looking through solid air') and offering support ('I know you, I love you, and I can be your friend, I can follow you anywhere, even through solid air').
12. Nick Drake: Pink Moon (1972)
Tragically, Nick Drake was found dead at his parents’ home in Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire, in November 1974 after taking an overdose of amitriptyline, an antidepressant. His swansong, Pink Moon, had been recorded two years before in just two days at Sound Techniques studio, London. The sound was intimate and unfiltered, a stark contrast to his previous two albums, the lushly orchestrated Five Leaves Left (1960) and the autumnal chamber pop of Bryter Layter (1971).
Drake ran through the material accompanied by the quiet magic of his guitar, the only embellishment coming when he picked out the simple descending piano line on the title track. Pink Moon’s songs speak of alienation (‘Parasite’), searching for one’s place in the world (‘Place To Be’) and ask big, helpless rhetorical questions (‘Which Will’). But it’s far from hopeless – see the exquisite communion with nature ‘From The Morning’ – a dimension to Drake’s story that is often overlooked.
11. Kate Bush: The Kick Inside (1978)
Kate Bush took music to such dazzling and unexpected places throughout the ’80s that she might not be immediately thought of as a straightforward singer-songwriter. But her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside, released when she was just 19, was the culmination of years of honing her writing and performing skills. In fact, one of the album’s centrepieces, the aching piano ballad ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes', was written roughly six years before the album was released.
Bush’s flair for storytelling informs everything on The Kick Inside, from the melodramatic wonder of ‘Wuthering Heights’ – which made Bush the first female artist to have an entirely self-written UK No 1 – through to the title track, in which she inhabits a tragic figure with an incredible sense of empathy for someone so young.
10. Leonard Cohen: Songs Of Love And Hate (1971)
Leonard Cohen’s third album was recorded during a tough spell for the poet and novelist, as he told Throat Culture magazine in 1991. 'Absolutely everything was beginning to fall apart around me: my spirit, my intentions, my will. So I went into a deep and long depression.' The result is a bleak, raw and often savagely funny album featuring some of Cohen’s greatest work.
Songs Of Love And Hate flits between acute introspection (‘Avalanche’, ‘Dress Rehearsal Rag’) to brusque takes on romance (‘Love Calls You By Your Name’) and bawdy salutations (‘Sing Another Song Boys’, ‘Diamonds In The Mind’), while ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ is an gorgeously gloomy piece of self-mythologising.
9. Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces Of A Man (1971)
Incredibly, Chicagoan poet and novelist Gil Scott-Heron had just turned 21 when he recorded his debut studio album, Pieces Of A Man. And yet there is a lifetime’s worth of pain, disillusionment and wisdom packed into its 11 tracks. Scott-Heron starts strong, revisiting ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’, a poem he’d included on his 1970 spoken word album, Small Talk At 125th And Lenox.
Here, it’s fleshed out and supremely funky, ushered along by Bernard Purdie’s shuffling drums and Hubert Laws’ agile jazz flute. But ‘Revolution’ truly comes alive thanks to Scott-Heron’s savagely satirical lyrics, a call for Black Americans to fight for meaningful change. Elsewhere, the title track is a powerful account of a man struggling after being left behind by society and ‘Lady Day And John Coltrane’ is a soulful tribute to Black American artists who’d gone before him.
8. Cat Stevens: Tea For The Tillerman (1970)
Cat Stevens first appeared on the UK music scene in 1967 as a dandy pop star, but after a near-death experience with tuberculosis, re-emerged with 1970’s Mona Bone Jakon. While that album represented rebirth, an artist redefining his approach to songwriting, his following LP, Tea For The Tillerman, saw Stevens truly seizing his moment.
On Tillerman, Stevens sang of environmental concerns, relationships, the search for spiritual fulfilment, society’s expectations – themes that resonated with a new generation. It didn’t hurt that his melodies were unforgettable, his music had a mellow warmth and that he was the devilishly handsome, bearded and tousle-haired archetype of a sensitive singer-songwriter. Helped along by classics such as ‘Where Do The Children Play?’, ‘Wild Wood’ and ‘Father And Son’, Tea For The Tillerman went three-times platinum in the US and made Stevens an international star.
7. Paul Simon: Paul Simon (1972)
What to do when you’ve broken up the most successful duo in music? If you’re Paul Simon, you teach summer classes in songwriting at New York University. This period of reflection on his craft helped Simon find inspiration for the material that would end up on his first solo album, a low-key and charming reaction to the more bombastic moments of Simon & Garfunkel’s mega-selling Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Pointing towards the curiosity and restlessness that would define Simon’s solo career, the album flirted with reggae (‘Mother And Child Reunion’), Latin music (‘Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard’), jazz (‘Everything Put Together Falls Apart’) and blues (‘Paranoia Blues’), but at the album’s core is its storytelling. All of Simon’s ’70s albums are classics, but Paul Simon is the purest expression of him as a singer-songwriter.
6. Neil Young: After The Gold Rush (1970)
As with Paul Simon, choosing a Neil Young album from the ’70s is a thankless task, but despite the guitar heroics of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, the mellow charm of Harvest and the wired brilliance of On The Beach and Tonight’s The Night, our vote for an album to represent him as a singer-songwriter is After The Gold Rush.
Highlights include the spellbinding title track, which finds Young turning ecological disaster into a bittersweet space-age fairy tale. Meanwhile, ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ cuts to the core of relationships and the delicate ‘Birds’ seeks empathy in the midst of heartbreak.
5. Bill Withers: Just As I Am (1971)
In the ’70s, singer-songwriters were valued for authenticity above all and they don’t come much more real than Bill Withers. The cover of his solo album features Withers standing outside the Los Angeles factory where he worked, laughing and with lunch box in hand.
At the end of the working day Withers would unwind in front of the TV with his guitar in hand. One evening he was watching Days Of Wine And Roses, the Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick-starring movie about a doomed relationship. Inspiration struck and before he knew it, Withers had written ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’, a first-person account of all-consuming longing.
His demo caught the attention of Booker T Jones, who got him into the studio, where Just As I Am was recorded with a crack backing band, including various members of the MG’s and Stephen Stills. ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ wasn’t the only thing up Withers’ sleeve: ‘Harlem’, ‘Grandma’s Hands’ and ‘In My Heart’ were all singer-songwriter classics that meant he’d soon be hanging up his lunchbox.
4. Carole King: Tapestry (1971)
If one artist represents the sea change from assembly-line songwriting teams to singer-songwriters, it’s Carole King. As part of the Brill Building partnership Goffin & King, she co-wrote timeless hits including ‘Up On The Roof, ‘The Loco-Motion’ and ‘Goin’ Back’. In 1968, she moved to the epicentre of the singer-songwriter scene (Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles) and, after a few false starts, struck gold with Tapestry.
New classics such as ‘I Feel The Earth Move’ and ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ rub shoulders with reclaimed Goffin & King hits (‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’, ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’), while the album’s organic sound and King’s deeply human vocals helped it become one of the best-selling albums of all time.
3. Randy Newman: Sail Away (1972)
Randy Newman is one of the greatest songwriters of our time. He started in the early 60s as a songsmith for hire before developing a unique voice of his own, writing whip-smart, fearless and hummable songs that cut to the core of society’s ills. His third solo album, Sail Away, was brimming with such moments.
‘Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear’ is typical Newman – on the surface, a jape-filled novelty song, but look deeper and it’s an examination of cruelty, privilege and the seductive nature of power. Meanwhile, ‘Dayton, Ohio – 1903’ seems to be rose-tinted nostalgia but under the surface, it ponders a watershed moment in civilisation (the Wright brothers were born in Dayton and 17 December 1903 was the date of their first test flight).
‘Political Science’ is an uncomfortably prescient savaging of US foreign policy’; ‘God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)’ skewers organised religion; and the unforgettable title track is a blunt and shocking account of slavery from the perspective of a smug and morally destitute slave trader, set to an uplifting and anthemic melody. Songwriting doesn’t get much better.
2. Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks (1975)
In the ’60s, Bob Dylan changed perceptions of what a song could do more often than he changed his socks (probably). His mid-’70s masterpiece, Blood On The Tracks, did it again, showing a new generation of introspective songwriters exactly how it’s done. Written as Dylan came to terms with the breakdown of his eight-year marriage, Blood On The Tracks explores lust, love, revenge and loss with some of the most focused performances of his career.
‘Tangled Up In Blue’ is a shaggy dog story (or maybe several?), its protagonist reflecting on a life on the road, as if hoping that perpetual motion will help him outrun his feelings; ‘Idiot Wind’ careens, shell-shocked, torn between vicious diatribes and burnt-out understanding; the lilting ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’ is all bruised regret.
But this being Dylan, the autobiographical blurs with the fantastical; lines are blurred, reality is skewed. No other songwriter could make a record like Blood On The Tracks: perhaps that includes Dylan himself?
1. Joni Mitchell: Blue (1971)
Of all of the exceptional albums Joni Mitchell released in the ’70s, Blue is the purest expression of her as a singer-songwriter. When Mitchell’s relationship with Graham Nash came to an end, she embarked upon an extended trip to Europe, her wanderlust taking her to Crete (where she met Carey Raditz, the subject of the lovestruck ‘Carey’), Paris, Spain and Ibiza, where she wrote the heavy-hearted ode to home ‘California’.
Mitchell moved on to Canada, where she began a relationship with another member of singer-songwriting royalty, James Taylor, spending Christmas with his family and writing the timeless piano ballad ‘River’. On her return home, Mitchell took the material she’d amassed on her travels and holed up in A&M Studios, Hollywood, where she recorded Blue. Mitchell also looked inward, in particular on ‘Little Green’, a song she’d started in the ’60s which explored her feelings around giving up her daughter for adoption and finding peace with the decision.
Blue saves its best till last with the stunning ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’ and ‘A Case Of You’, a pair of tender-to-the-touch piano ballads that reflect on tumultuous past loves with wit and grace. Mitchell would go on to make many more classic albums, but none wore their heart on their sleeve in quite the same way as Blue.
Pics Getty Images except Nick Drake pic: YouTube
