brief note on 1970’s pop music

For some reason, numerous pop songs of the 1970’s have been coming back into my mind in recent months. In many cases I haven’t heard these songs since they were originally on the air, but of course music can stick in your head for years after hearing it in many cases.

In each case, I’m going to iTunes to listen to these songs as I remember them. Understandably, many of them have not aged well at all. They are miniature period pieces that provoke a chuckle more than anything else.

Someone gave me the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack as a gift 10 or so years ago, so that hasn’t been part of the current process. And I think that’s actually good popular music, that Bee Gees stuff.

Of what I’ve been recently re-listening to, to my great surprise, KC and the Sunshine Band is aging better than pretty much anything else from that era. Sure, you’d know it’s 1970’s immediately upon hearing it, so it doesn’t totally transcend the conditions under which it was born. Nonetheless, there is a certain stylistic integrity to their music, and a certain delightful weirdness– even though they really can’t sing at all. Probably most of my blog readers have better singing voices than KC himself. But somehow it still works.

They also have great horn arrangements, by the standards of that Latin/disco genre.