1978, The Year in Review

The year 1978 feels rather uneventful in terms of world events.

There is some good news: Israel and Egypt sign Camp David accords alongside U.S. President Jimmy Carter, setting into motion the end of the 30-year war that begun with the creation of Israel.  And three years after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, democracy is restored in Spain, with a new constitution ratified by the Spanish people, and signed by the king, who willingly transitions into a symbolic role. Rarely have transitions from dictatorship to democracy been as smooth.

But the economy, as they say, is in the shitter. The U.S. dollar plunges and worldwide unemployment rises.

Surely the most fascinating tidbit of news from 1978 comes from Jonestown, Guyana. The Peoples Temple cult led by preacher Jim Jones, having relocated in 1974 from the U.S. due to controversy in the media, faces further scrutiny with a visit from U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, investigating claims of human rights abuses. An attempt is made on Ryan’s life; he and his delegation flee, only to be gunned down later at an airstrip as they try to leave the area. Back at the commune, Jones has prepared barrels of grape Flavor-Aid (not Kool-Aid, as is often assumed) laced with sedatives, antipsychotics, and cyanide, and asks his followers to commit revolutionary suicide. Over 900 of them do, in what will be known as the Jonestown Massacre.  Lesson learned: Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

Elsewhere, there are plenty of firsts: the first test tube baby, the first NASA hiring of female astronauts (including Sally Ride), the first solo North pole expedition (Japanese explorer Naomi Uemura), and the first Garfield comic strip. I had a collection of the early Garfield strips when I was kid. Trust me when I say he was not the cute, cuddly Garfield we know today—he was ugly and grotesquely overweight. Like many a punk rocker, it didn’t take long for him to sell out and become more appealing.

In film, two Vietnam war movies—The Deer Hunter and Coming Home—hit the big screen to much acclaim. Other critics’ faves include Midnight Express and Heaven Can Wait. Audiences also lined up in droves for Grease, Superman, National Lampoon’s Animal House, Every Which Way but Loose, and Halloween. And just when you thought it was safe to go back in the movie theater, Jaws 2 arrives.

In music, the folks who liked punk rock and those who liked classic rock and those who liked disco all hated each other. That about sums it up.

My Top 6 Albums of 1978

As always, you can jump to the playlist at the bottom of each post to listen while you read.

Within each tier (Top 6, Next 6, etc.), all albums are listed roughly chronologically (all release dates from Wikipedia, unless otherwise noted).

Elvis Costello
This Year’s Model

Released 1978/03/17 (UK), two months later (US)

After the success of his debut album My Aim is True, Elvis Costello defied the curse of the sophomore slump, hitting back with a new backing band, the Attractions, and an album of songs that easily rivaled those on his debut. Indeed, many critics rank This Year’s Model as Costello’s best album, and for good reason. The Attractions add a spritely new wave buoyancy that his debut album lacked, taking Costello’s caustic bile and sweetening it with catchy pop hooks.

There are touches of musical grace everywhere. A tingly jangle of rhythm guitar elevates “Lip Service” to new wave perfection. The organ accents in “You Belong to Me” strike just the right shrill note, and the merry-go-round organ of “The Beat” offers a naive counterpoint to Costello’s derisive snarl. Cascading drums and rumbling bass lines propel “Lipstick Vogue” into a frenzy.

As is to be expected with Costello, bitterness over failed relationships abounds. “Pump It Up” surges and throbs with sexual frustration, while the unreliable narrator of album opener “No Action” pretends not to care that he’s been dumped. The narrator of “Little Triggers” feels every word and action of the woman he desires with the force of a gunshot; he can’t help but wait by the phone for her call, even when he knows she’ll probably just hang up on him in the end. “Lipstick Vogue” makes Costello’s angst plain: “Sometimes I think that love is just a tumor,” he professes; “You’ve got to cut it out.” It’s so bad for Elvis that only occasionally, in between rejections, does he “almost feel just like a human being.”

Costello’s ire is so pointed, his words so visceral, that he has been accused of misogyny. It’s quite understandable—he’s got a lot of hate in him. But I see Costello as an equal opportunity hater. His hatred fuels him, no matter its target—the woman who dumped him, her new boyfriend, or the folks who decide what everyone else can listen to on the radio. The enemy in “This Year’s Girl” must surely be the cult of celebrity and fashion that objectifies and commodifies women, much more so than the models themselves.

And Costello uses his resentment and rage and guilt and dashed hopes to craft rich, complex, emotionally charged songs. I’d love to see some female artists (Taylor Swift, maybe?) cover some of his songs to see how well the spite flows in the other direction. I have a feeling the effect would be just as great.

The American version of the album wisely removes “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea” (a good song that probably has less resonance with an American audience more likely to associate Chelsea with New York than punk-era London) and “Night Rally” (a relatively weaker track). In their place is the later single “Radio Radio,” a glorious diatribe about the Puritanical blandness of radio (in direct reaction to the BBC’s banning of the Sex Pistols), which had gained Costello some notoriety when he played it without permission on Saturday Night Live.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’70s, No. 28
• Pitchfork: The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s, No. 52
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No. 98
• Rolling Stone: 100 Best Albums of the Past 20 Years (1987), No. 11
• NME Writers All-Time 100 Albums (1985), No. 40
• MOJO: The 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made (1995), No. 69
• Paste: The 70 Best Albums of the 1970s, No. 35
• Paste: The 50 Best New Wave Albums, No. 19

The Only Ones
The Only Ones

Released 1978/04 [UK]

More than a decade before it was alt-rock cool to wallow in your own self-inflicted misery, the Only Ones were doing it full-time, in relative obscurity.  They elevated a woe-is-me angst to never-before-seen levels of languorous beauty. Peter Perret’s vocals are laced with a lazy ennui, and his lyric sheets are peppered with witty turns of phrases and hidden daggers.

“Another Girl Another Planet” joins a long list of songs that seem to be about love on the surface but could very well be about drugs—in this case, heroin.  Regardless of your interpretation, the songs is just brilliant. Combining punk energy, rock hooks, and pop craftsmanship, the band cranks out a charming whirlwind of a song, alongside Perrett’s self-deprecating wit and hazy charm.  It’s an absolute classic, even if you’ve never even heard it.

Elsewhere, in “No Peace for the Wicked,” the angels tell Perrett that he’s doomed to a life of tumult.  In “Breaking Down” Perrett warns his listener to stay away from him, that he’s no good—knowing full well that those words act like a magnet.  “The Beast” cautions of the dangers of addiction and curses the dealers who enable it; the song builds inexorably into an epic alt-rock swell.

The band can play it fast or slow, “City of Fun” rocking with vigor and “It’s the Truth” slowly wallowing in its own mire. “The Whole of the Law,” begins with an alluring saxophone wail, with Perrett pledging an uneasy declaration of love. Throughout, Perrett sings with a nasally whine that he drags out in a woozy daze, and John Perry plays his guitar licks to perfection.

Essentially unknown in the U.S., the Only Ones are nevertheless one of the highlights of the new wave era.  Don’t miss them.

Listen to more Only Ones.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’70s, No. 352
• Uncut: 200 Greatest Albums of All Time (2016), No. 109

The Rolling Stones
Some Girls

Released 1978/06/09

I suppose one could argue for 1981’s Tattoo You, but I’d say Some Girls is the last gasp of greatness and genuine significance from one of the greatest bands ever. (Those somewhat less forgiving might even suggest that their last gasp came in 1972 with the brilliant Exile on Main Street.)  Not that the Stones wouldn’t ever make good music in the future—but their music would never again feel urgently of the moment. That said, even Some Girls feels a little out of place here on my list, a lone classic rock entry surrounded by punk and new wave acts.

Regardless of its place in the rock canon, Some Girls contains the Stones’ finest set of tunes since Exile. On “Miss You,” Mick Jagger pines for his girl so bad he won’t even go party with a bunch of Puerto Rican groupies; the song kicks with a killer disco groove and more simmering sizzle than a fryolator. “Shatttered” boasts yet another absolutely sick, gurgling groove; Jagger sing-speaks and pleads and rants about his experiences in the Big Apple like his life depends on it. Elsewhere, Keith Richards shows off his parrot-squawk vocal magic in “Before They Make Me Run.”  Even relative filler like “Lies” and “Respectable” might be the best songs on any other likeminded band’s album.

A shallow, critical reading of “Beast of Burden” might make the claim that Jagger just wants to get laid here, without the burden of making a commitment. But it feels to me that the commitment has been made some time ago, and that Jagger has grown weary of the imbalance the arrangement has brought him. He’s still in love, and will most likely go on being the beast of burden, but he’s exasperated over it. What’s more, at the song’s end, he says he doesn’t want her to be his beast of burden, either. He just wants things relatively equal. (Some have suggested that the song isn’t about a romance at all, seeing it as an allegorical reference to Mick and Keith’s relationship, with Mick shouldering Keith’s heroin addiction for years.  Could be, I suppose.)

And is the title track sexist and racist? Yep. Offensive as all get-out? Sure. Is it the witty parody of machismo that the Stones claim they intend it to be? I’m not sure I buy that reasoning, although the brilliant album art certainly gives the feeling that it’s all al joke. But it’s a song that captivates and charms, even as it repulses. And it just might work as a mockery of macho bravado, even if it is a crass one.

More spot-on humor can be found on the country number “Far Away Eyes,” in which Jagger hears a preacher on late-night radio and, inspired by words of God’s love, runs twenty red lights in his honor—“Thank you Jesus, thank you Lord,” he drawls when he survives unscathed. And the song’s also about a girl; as to why her eyes are so far-away, maybe she’s a dreamer, maybe she’s a druggie, maybe she’s just not all that emotionally into him. Regardless, it’s a soothing song to put on when your life feels like it’s not worth a damn, or a dime.

Listen to more Rolling Stones.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’70s, No. 117
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No. 269
• Rolling Stone 200: The Essential Rock Collection
• Paste: The 70 Best Albums of the 1970s, No. 45

Blondie
Parallel Lines

Released 1978/09

Surely the greatest financially successful album of the new wave era, Parallel Lines was Blondie’s commercial and artistic breakthrough. After two promising punk-pop albums and years working up their chops in the burgeoning New York punk and new wave scene, the band took a few steps toward the mainstream and struck gold.

But just because the album is pop doesn’t mean it’s lightweight. An undercurrent of issues relating to gender, violence, and power flows beneath much of the album, rising to the surface at times to intriguing effect. Deborah Harry had lived through some heavy shit through the years: avoiding an ex-boyfriend-turned-nutso-stalker, being raped at knifepoint by an intruder in her apartment, and finding herself momentarily trapped in a car with a man she later identified as Ted Bundy. She had plenty of reason to think of herself as a victim of sexual violence. But throughout the album, as a way of coping, perhaps, she uses role reversals to take the part of the aggressor.

For “One Way or Another,” Harry plays the female stalker pursuing her male victim. “One way or another, I’m gonna find ya / I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya,” she sings, collected and cool to start the song and growing progressively unhinged as the song goes on. The charged, punkish cover of the Nerves’ “Hanging on the Telephone” that opens the album may feel more innocuous, but it has the same gender and role reversal at its core. The Nerves sang the song—about a dumped lover who won’t go away and keeps calling, expecting their ex to run back into to their arms—from a male point of view; Harry flips the script and has the female unwilling to leave the ex-boyfriend in peace. Even the dreamy “Picture This” has lines that give one pause: the voyeuristic “I will give you my finest hour / The one I spent watching you shower,” for example. And my research tells me that “Pretty Baby” was inspired by the 1978 Louis Malle film of the same name about child prostitution, featuring a 12-year-old Brooke Shields.

It’s as if Harry has channeled the worry and fear and trauma she’s experienced into her performance, switching roles as a means of understanding and taking control of her experience. (One might even consider her a female response to Elvis Costello—whose protagonists, at their worst, can be more than a touch stalker-esque.)

Something in the band name “Blondie” seems to carry with it the same contradictions—and encapsulate much of the band’s appeal. The use of the somewhat mocking diminutive “-ie” ending shows an ironic self-awareness of Debbie Harry as a blonde, female lead singer—with all the cultural associations that come with that—but also a rebelliousness, as if taking ownership of the blonde label gives the band control over it. Indeed, the band apparently took the name in response to catcalls Harry had received on stage. It’s self-mockery as a defense mechanism, and it works.

There’s plenty of opportunity to breeze through the album without considering such weighty concerns, however. All the songs mentioned above are brilliant pop-punk, new wave performances, thoroughly enchanting without a deep dive into the lyrics. There’s a reason this album was popular. The entire album is chock full of terrific songs that most new wave bands would kill for.

“Sunday Girl” playfully dismisses a goody-two-shoes, “11:59” is a coolly desperate cry for the night to never end, and the electro-Euro-disco-influenced breakthrough single “Heart of Glass” tells an amusing tale of a love that promised more than it delivered. Even such textural filler as “I Know but I Don’t Know” sounds great.

Debbie Harry remains the picture of new wave cool, glamorous yet aloof, as ironic as she is earnest, exuding both toughness and vulnerability, strikingly beautiful yet seemingly unattainable. And the musicianship backing her is stellar, fluent in a wealth of rock and pop styles and not afraid to show it. If you only know Blondie from the hits, this is the place to get to know them better. It’s brilliant.

Listen to more Blondie.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’70s, No. 36
• SPIN: The Top 100 Alternative Albums (SPIN Alternative Record Guide, 1995), No. 20
• Pitchfork: The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s, No. 76
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No. 140
• Rolling Stone 200: The Essential Rock Collection
• The NME Greatest Albums of the 70’s, No. 16
• NME Writers Top 100 Albums (1993), No. 52
• Paste: The 70 Best Albums of the 1970s, No. 69
• Paste: The 50 Best New Wave Albums, No. 4
• Uncut: 200 Greatest Albums of All Time (2016), No. 58

The Police
Outlandos D’Amour

Released 1978/11/02

For people of my generation, the Police were one of the main entryways into the world of punk, new wave, and what back then was called college radio but later was labeled alternative rock.

Not that the Police were alternative—they were immensely popular. Likewise, while they combined punk’s speed with reggae beats, they never really sounded like ska, either. And although they emerged from among a burgeoning wave of UK punk and new wave bands, they were hardly punks.

Indeed, long before they became the Police, bassist and vocalist Gordon Sumner, a.k.a. Sting, drummer Stewart Copeland, and guitarist Andy Summers were all accomplished musicians in a variety of styles, including prog rock, jazz fusion, blues rock, and classical music.

Yet they were inspired by punk’s energy and counterculture stance, and they were able to seamlessly incorporate reggae and jazz influences into records which sounded legitimately like punk rock, even though the band was effectively only slumming it. Call them the Prince Harry to punk rock’s Falstaff.

And the best place to experience the band’s reggae-infused, punk-inspired sound is on their terrific debut album, Outlandos D’Amour. Album opener “Next to You” rips and hops with punkish adrenaline. “So Lonely” alternates between a cool reggae groove and punk fire. The crisp reggae-rocker “Can’t Stand Losing You” tells a tongue-in-cheek, I-can’t-live-without-you tale. (At least, it seems to me it’s a parody of a dumped loser’s sob story—I suppose some might take it more seriously. The single’s cover apparently caused quite a stir.) And then there’s the hit, “Roxanne,” a love song to a hooker who perhaps has a heart of gold—we can’t know for sure, since we don’t hear from her.

The entire album is a catchy, high-energy treat.  Even decades later, I still like the ridiculous blow-up-doll novelty song, “Be My Girl—Sally,” which should be an embarrassment but still manages to amuse. Good stuff.

Listen to more Police.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’70s, No. 133
• Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2003), No. 434
• Paste: The 50 Best New Wave Albums, No. 35

X-Ray Spex
Germfree Adolescents

Released 1978/11/10

I wish I’d known of X-Ray Spex back in my early punk-appreciation days. Nowadays, I think they’re fairly well-known by music nerds round the world—the internet and streaming services have made a well-researched appreciation of music history available at one’s fingertips. But I’d never heard of X-Ray Spex at all until I read about them mid-‘90s in the SPIN Alternative Record Guide.

Germfree Adolescents, the only album of X-Ray Spex released during their brief heyday, is a key piece of punk rock angst, delivered with wit and surprisingly addictive tunefulness. Throughout, singer Poly Styrene wails and bleats her incisive, insightful lyrics backed by a punk saxophone cry and churning punk guitar.

“I Live Off You” must be the most catchy, hummable—and amusing—song about exploitation ever recorded. “The Day the World Turned Day-Glo” laments the prevalence of synthetic materials in world driven by advanced capitalism. Likewise, album opener “Art-I-Ficial” comments on the inherent superficiality of consumer society.

“Warrior in Woolworths” offers a tongue-in-cheek look at rebellious London punks: “His roots are in today / Doesn’t know no history / He threw the past away.” The title track uses a young couple to describe a cultural obsession with cleanliness and hygiene (partly driven by corporate profit margins, of course); musically, the song anticipates the synths that would soon take over the UK scene.

CD and streaming versions of the album also include the classic feminist single “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” which may have single-handedly given birth to the entire Riot Grrrl movement. In “Bondage,” Styrene teases with S&M-laced language—but her real intent is to protest the oppression of women. B-side “I am a Cliché” features the immortal lines, “Yama yama yama / Boredom boredom.”  Hah.

Notable Critical Mentions:

• Acclaimed Music top albums of the ’70s, No. 198
• SPIN: The Top 100 Alternative Albums (SPIN Alternative Record Guide, 1995), No. 19
• Paste: The 50 Best New Wave Albums, No. 44
• Paste: The 50 Best Post-Punk Albums, No. 46

Here’s the 1978: The Year in Review playlist for you—three tracks per album.

I’ll be building the playlist as I go, adding to it as I complete different tiers of commentary.  By the time I finish all Year in Review posts for 1978, the playlist will be complete!

Enjoy!

More 1978, The Year in Review

More Years in Review of the 1970s…

Art Citations:

• This Year’s Model: By The cover art can be obtained from Radar., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13080697
• The Only Ones: By Spotify, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1769097
• Some Girls: By Scan, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34501206
• Parallel Lines: By May be found at the following website: uDiscover, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64681517
• Outlandos D’Amour: By The cover art can be obtained from A&M -., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=982873
• Germfree Adolescents: By [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34391607