Headline : The 74 Best Albums of 1974

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Welcome to 1974: the most Seventies year of the Seventies. The music world was changing fast, and so was the rest of the culture. America was dazed and confused from its Sixties hangover. Two years after winning one of U.S. history’s biggest landslide elections, Richard Nixon resigned when his Watergate tapes exposed years of criminal corruption. “Our long national nightmare is over,” Gerald Ford said. The kids were into streaking, 8-track tapes, Scooby-Doo lunch boxes, and saying “Dy-no-miiite!” Muhammad Ali won the Rumble in the Jungle. Everybody was kung-fu fighting.

You could hit the movies to see Blazing Saddles and The Godfather Part II, or stay home to watch Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man, Columbo, and Kojak. Sonny and Cher got divorced. The rec-room carpet was burnt sienna. Evel Knievel made the cover of the Rolling Stone. Steve Miller had feelings about the pompatus of love.

But music was exploding. The Sixties were finally over, which meant everything was up for grabs. A new breed of superstars was inventing the future: Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Neil Young, David Bowie. Experimental weirdos ran wild on the margins, from George Clinton to Brian Eno to Betty Davis. The radio was a love roller coaster full of disco, glam-rock, prog, country, pop trash, Philly soul, mellow California gold. Veterans like James Brown, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon hung tough; rookies like Kiss, Queen, and ABBA rose up. The 1974 Rolling Stone Music Awards gave the best-album honors to Steely Dan, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, and the Stones, while the Single of the Year was George McCrae’s disco banger “Rock Your Baby.” (“Drug of the Year: Cocaine. Yes, again.”)

So let’s break it down: the 74 best albums of 1974. Some of these albums are timeless classics revered around the world. Others are buried treasures, cult favorites, rarities, one-shots. Some were blockbuster hits; others got slept on. There’s rock, funk, reggae, salsa, even a comedy record. But one thing these 1974 albums share: They all sound fantastic in 2024. As Lynyrd Skynyrd would say, turn it up.

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