Tunes Du Jour Presents 1976

by with No Comment Uncategorized

By 1976, disco had moved from underground clubs to the top of the charts, and rock music found itself facing challenges from multiple fronts. Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” and Diana Ross’ “Love Hangover” showcased the genre’s hypnotic groove and sensuality, while Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” blurred the lines between rock and funk, proving that even guitar-driven bands weren’t immune to disco’s influence. Hits like Andrea True Connection’s “More, More, More” and Candi Staton’s “Young Hearts Run Free” reinforced that this was no passing trend—it was a movement reshaping popular music.

Mainstream rock, meanwhile, leaned into grandeur and melody. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” became a landmark in songcraft, a multi-part epic that defied conventional structure and solidified the band’s place in rock history. Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” offered a soaring, polished take on arena rock, while Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” balanced an ethereal mood with a sinister undercurrent. Even David Bowie, ever the shape-shifter, leaned into a sleeker sound with “Golden Years.”

Yet, outside of the glossy productions and layered harmonies, a different kind of energy was brewing. The Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” was a shot across the bow, rejecting the excesses of rock in favor of raw urgency. While not a punk act, Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” carried a swagger and directness that resonated with rock fans who would soon embrace punk’s stripped-down ethos. Punk’s full-blown arrival was just around the corner, but 1976 gave the first clear signs that the dominant sounds of the decade were about to face a reckoning.

Beyond disco and rock, R&B and soul continued to thrive, offering both lush ballads and infectious grooves. The Manhattans’ “Kiss and Say Goodbye” and Lou Rawls’ “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine” showcased rich, emotive vocal performances, while Spinners’ “The Rubberband Man” and Boz Scaggs’ “Lowdown” leaned into rhythmic sophistication. Daryl Hall & John Oates’ “She’s Gone” marked a breakthrough for the duo, setting the stage for their string of hits in the late 1970s and early 1980s, where they refined their blend of blue-eyed soul and pop.

In a year that saw both nostalgia and forward momentum, songs like the Four Seasons’ “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” reminded listeners of storytelling’s power in song. Meanwhile, ABBA’s “Mamma Mia” and Elton John and Kiki Dee’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” offered sheer pop exuberance. The music of 1976 reflected an industry in transition—disco was ascendant, rock was splintering, and a new wave of rebellion was beginning to make itself heard.

Follow Tunes Du Jour on Facebook

Follow me on Bluesky

Follow me on Instagram

Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 6-4-23

by with No Comment Uncategorized

In seventh grade Spanish class I did an oral presentation about Freddy Fender. During it I played his number one hit “Before the Next Teardrop Falls.” I wanted to play his follow-up hit, “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” but Señora Gluck stopped me. “Don’t play that song. I hate that song.” What’s her problema? It’s a perfectly fine single.

If you were at my presentation you’d know that the late Freddy Fender was born Baldemar G. Huerta on this date in 1937. That won’t be on the test. His two biggest hits are included on today’s playlist. That will be.

Follow Tunes du Jour on Facebook

Follow Tunes du Jour on Twitter

Follow me on Instagram

Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 11-16-22

by with No Comment Uncategorized

Today’s playlist celebrates the November 16 birthdays The Count Five’s John Byrne, Color Me Badd’s Bryan Abrams, Odyssey’s Lillian Lopez, Chi Coltrane, Arrow, and Dan Black; the November 17 birthdays of Jeff Buckley, The Byrds’ Gene Clark, Gordon Lightfoot, Girls Aloud’s Sarah Harding, Bell Biv DeVoe’s Ronnie DeVoe, Foxygen’s Sam France, The Moldy Peaches’ Kimya Dawson, RuPaul, and Martin Scorsese; and the November 18 birthdays of Graham Parker, Hank Ballard, Fabolous, Kim Wilde, John Parr, and The Polyphonic Spree’s Tim DeLaughter.

Follow Tunes du Jour on Facebook

Follow Tunes du Jour on Twitter

Follow me on Instagram

Winston & queen

Throwback Thursday – 1976 (Part II)

by with No Comment playlists

In October of 1975, the band Queen played for their manager, John Reid, a song they recently finished recording that they wanted to release as their next single. Reid told them the track would not get any airplay. He played it for another artist he managed, Elton John, who reportedly said “Are you mad? You’ll never get that on the radio!”

Queen stayed firm, not relenting when their record company begged them to at least edit the song down from its nearly six-minute duration.

To promote the song, the band was invited to play on England’s hugely successful Top of the Pops television program. They were unable to appear due to tour commitments, so they did something that wasn’t very common in 1975 – they filmed a videoclip. Top of the Pops aired the clip. As the song rose up the charts, the video was shown repeatedly. Soon other artists in the UK made videos for their records, which is why when MTV launched in the United States in 1981, many of the clips they aired were of UK acts.

The single, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” went to #1 in England in December of that year, where it stayed for nine weeks. It got knocked from the top spot by a song whose title consisted of a phrase used in “Bohemian Rhapsody” – ABBA’s “Mamma Mia.” “Bohemian Rhapsody” hit #1 again there in December of 1991, a few weeks after the death of the band’s lead singer and the song’s composer, Freddie Mercury.

Winston & queen

In the United States, the song didn’t go to #1, but it did hit the top ten in 1976 and 1992.

For this week’s Throwback Thursday playlist, Tunes du Jour revisits 1976 (part I can be found here), kicking off with the Queen classic “Bohemian Rhapsody.”


Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour
Follow me on Instagram: @GlennSchwartz

Save

Ringo + Elvis C 2014-08-25 13.48

Elvis Costello Helps Me With Geography

by with One Comment playlists

History was not my strongest subject at school. Nor was Geography. I’ve always been good with things that incorporate logic. Memorizing facts? Not so much.

Music was the exception. Because music was my primary passion, stories and trivia about my favorite artists and songs tended to get lodged in my brain, never to escape.

Sometimes I came across songs that taught me facts and concepts more effectively than any teacher. Thanks to Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s “NaCl,” I got an A in Chemistry. The song explains the ionization process, wherein atoms gain or lose electrons to become positively or negatively charged, by detailing a budding romance between Sodium (Na) and Chlorine (Cl). I can tell you when Louis XVI assumed the monarchy in France, thanks to Allan Sherman’s “You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louis.” Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” educated me on the sinking of that ship and, more importantly, gave me a way to recall the names of the five Great Lakes, thanks to a gratuitous verse that names all of them.

Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army” helped me with crossword puzzle clues such as “River in England.” The song’s reference to “the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne” gives me three options for that answer. The Oliver of the song’s title is Oliver Cromwell, an English military and parliamentary leader in the 17th century. I don’t remember learning about him in school but maybe I did.

Ringo + Elvis C 2014-08-25 13.48
Today is Elvis Costello’s 60th birthday. Kicking off our playlist is “Oliver’s Army,” a song that wasn’t destined to make Costello’s Armed Forces album until Steve Nieve, Elvis’ keyboard player, suggested adding a piano riff based on Abba’s “Dancing Queen” to the track. That brought the track to life, giving Costello his first UK top ten single, reaching #2 in 1979.

Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook.

Winston + Barry 2014-06-17

Bad Songs I Love – “I Write The Songs”

by with No Comment playlists

The earliest known song in recorded history was performed by Eve. Not the rapper-actress whose hits include “Let Me Blow Your Mind” and “Gotta Man,” but a different Eve with no last name, the one who called the Garden of Eden home. Her song was “The Only Girl in the World,” later a hit for Rihanna. The song was written by Barry Manilow, as were “Let Me Blow Your Mind” and “Gotta Man.”

In 1976 the scientific community was rocked when Barry Manilow, in his #1 hit “I Write the Songs,” sang “I’ve been alive forever and I wrote the very first song.” A glance at his album cover photos allays any doubt as to the first part of that claim. “But how did you write that first song?,” the skeptics asked. Manilow replied “I put the words and the melodies together,” which was enough evidence to silence any doubters. He then proclaims “I am music.” He presents his case that he, Barry Manilow, wrote every song that has ever been written. Songs that make the whole world sing. Songs of love and special things. Things like a duck that loves disco and a heart that’s both achy and breaky.

In the song’s bridge Manilow sings how his “music makes you dance,” and really, who doesn’t get down to “Mandy?” He also says he “wrote some rock-and-roll,” referring to his hit “Can’t Smile Without You,” which rocks harder than anything by The Carpenters or Air Supply.

Then we get the one-two punch of “Music fills the heart / Well, that’s a real fine place to start” followed by “It’s from me, it’s for you / It’s from you, it’s for me / It’s a worldwide symphony.” Granted, those aren’t the greatest lyrics, but the man wrote 623,524,325 songs, so cut him some slack!

Now is a good time to mention that Barry Manilow did not write “I Write the Songs.” As a matter of fact, Barry Manilow did not write any of his three number one singles, the other two being “Mandy” and “Looks Like We Made It.” Manilow did write a acne medication jingle, a toilet cleaner jingle, and “Copacabana.”

“I Write the Songs” was written by Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys. He recorded the tune into a cassette and submitted it to a Japanese music festival, who rejected it as being unsuitable.
Undeterred, Johnston played the tune for a couple of friends who worked with The Beach Boys, Daryl “The Captain” Dragon and Toni Tennille. The Captain & Tennille included the song on their 1975 debut album Love Will Keep Us Together.

That same year Johnston produced an album for David Cassidy entitled The Higher They Climb, on which Cassidy took a stab at the song. (I know – Barry Manilow, The Captain & Tennille and David Cassidy! This is a glorious Bad Music I Love trifecta!) Cassidy’s version hit #11 on the UK singles chart in August of ’75.

That summer, Clive Davis, the chief of Arista Records, Manilow’s label, was in London and heard the Cassidy record on the radio. He suggested the song to Manilow. Manilow liked the song but was reluctant to record it. As he wrote in his autobiography Sweet Life, “The problem with the song was that if you didn’t listen carefully to the lyric, you would think that the singer was singing about himself. It could be misinterpreted as a monumental ego trip.”

I listened to the lyrics very carefully and can tell you that based on my multiple listens (and an interview with Bruce Johnston I read), the “I” in “I Write the Songs” is God. See that? The song is someone claiming to speak for God. Nothing egotistical about that! God wrote all the songs that make the whole world sing. This leads to the profoundly earth-shattering realization that God wrote “My Humps.” Praise be Him!

“I Write the Songs” won Johnston the 1976 Grammy Award for Song of the Year over such worthwhile nominees as “Afternoon Delight,” “Breaking is Hard to Do” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The Beach Boys never won a Grammy. The man who wrote most of the songs for The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, won his first Grammy in 2005 – Best Rock Instrumental Performance for “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow.” Was that his most award-worthy contribution to popular music? The “I” of “I Write the Songs” has the answer to that question, but He’s not telling. I guess God only knows.

Winston + Barry 2014-06-17

Today the man(ilow) who claims to have been alive forever turns 71. Here are some of my favorites from his oeuvre.