(Credits: Far Out / Ben Collins / Steven Aguilar)
Sat 29 November 2025 20:00, UK
The 1970s were one of the most defining eras in the history of music.
Across the decade, several major releases occurred. Elton John reinvented the rock landscape with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; Black Sabbath started the decade off strong with their masterful metal debut; Fleetwood Mac tore out the rulebook with their magnum opus, Rumours; John Lennon unveiled one of the most revealing solo albums in history, and the list goes on.
Beyond releases, it was also one of the most eventful decades for rock. Many major genres and subgenres took flight and were consistently being innovated by legendary pioneers, including prog rock, glam rock, new wave, gothic rock and, of course, heavy metal. The era also began with an overarching sense of malaise, one captured masterfully by artists like Joni Mitchell and Blue, much of which owed to the demise of one of the best and most important rock acts of all time.
The Beatles’ split quite literally sparked the end of an era, but other major players quickly proved that when one industry-defining group comes to an end, the world does, in fact, keep turning. Elton John, for one, became the decade’s biggest solo musician, while several across new wave proved that innovation is the biggest driving force of modern rock, no matter the countless loyalists who would argue the opposite.
The ‘70s were a jam-packed decade for music, so much so that it’s almost impossible to condense into a few short paragraphs. Nonetheless, the proof of that statement exists in the many rock songs that occupied the top charting position for several consecutive weeks, showing that, while a lot was going on at the time, the pool was the most competitive it’s ever been.
Which rock songs held the top spot for the longest in the 1970s?
Leading the charge were both Simon & Garfunkel and The Knack, with both ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and ‘My Sharona’ managing six weeks at number one, bumping Paul McCartney’s ‘Silly Love Songs’, which stayed in position for five weeks. Harry Nilsson scored four weeks with his ill-fated ‘Without You’, a song he wasn’t sure of at first but which became his most career-defining.
McCartney also proved to be the most fruitful Beatle at the start of the decade with another charting gem, ‘My Love’, which spent four weeks at number one. After which, it’s an embarrassment of riches for singles that occupied the spot for three weeks, including a range of one-hit wonders and songs we still heavily cite to this day, like Elton John’s ‘Crocodile Rock’ and ‘Island Girl’, America’s ‘A Horse With No Name’, and The Partridge Family’s ‘I Think I Love You’.
Across albums, however, there’s much to be said about some of the leading releases, including the Eagles’ major country rock masterpiece, Hotel California, which topped the charts for eight non-consecutive weeks, though lost to another of the era’s major records for Album of the Year at the Grammys, which went to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
Still, there were many successes across the board and beyond charting success, especially when you look at the burgeoning youth culture and the other genres that began to take flight, like disco, with players like the Bee Gees and Donna Summer proving that movements can still be just as unifying, energetic, and explosive in an era broadly deemed “the hangover of the 1960s”.
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