Fifty UK pop hits of the seventies
Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 07/15/2005
(4 out of 5 stars)
"The seventies were a decade of contrasts when it came to pop music. There is plenty of variety here with soul, disco, reggae, easy listening, country and hard rock together with plenty of lightweight pop music. Now, I have very eclectic tastes in music but even I won't pretend to like everything here. However I've seen plenty of compilations of seventies pop music and I've yet to see one that I like all the way through. I suspect that you feel the same, though your pet hates may be different from mine.
Of the fifty tracks here, about thirty made number one in the UK charts and most of the others made the UK top ten, so on that basis alone each track justifies is selection except Daydream believer. The compiler made a mistake by including a Monkees track - they didn't have a UK hit in the seventies at all. Daydream believer was a UK hit for them in 1967 (and for Anne Murray in 1980) but doesn't belong here. Other than that, the biggest surprise to me (and very nice to see it) is the inclusion of Annie's song, because it is rare for a John Denver track to appear on a various artists compilation.
Many big names are here including Abba, Elton John, Dawn, Cliff Richard, Hot Chocolate, 10cc, Mud, ELO, Dr Hook, Barry Manilow, Leo Sayer, Showaddywaddy, Tammy Wynette, Art Garfunkel, the Bay City Rollers, Chicago, Sweet, David Essex, the New Seekers, Bread, Carly Simon, the Osmonds, the Three Degrees and Elvis Presley, but their greatest hits are available individually and they aren't all represented by the most obvious hit here. This is good - it means that if you already have other various artists compilations, there will be less duplication.
A compilation like this allows you to get big hits by artists that only had a few hits (perhaps only one), some of which are hard to find or unavailable outside compilations of this type. Among these songs, my favorites are January (Pilot), Barbados (Typically Tropical), Seasons in the sun (Terry Jacks), Rock the boat (Hues Corporation), Love grows (Edison Lighthouse), In the summertime (Mungo Jerry), Band of gold (Freda Payne) and Yellow River (Christie).
If you are looking for a representative collection of big UK hits of the seventies, this is certainly one of the strongest I've seen. It's not perfect but it's as near perfect as I expect of such a compilation."
Track Listings (50) - Disc #1