Singers and Songwriters: Late '70s [2000] (2000)

Time-Life Music's Singers & Songwriters series of 24-track, two-disc sets uses as its jumping-off place the transition that took place in the 1960s from a two-tier system of popular music in which non-singing songwriters contributed material that was then performed by non-writing singers to one in which the two jobs were often combined. By the early '70s, a generation of "singer/songwriters" had taken over the music business, and the result was some highly personal songwriting often sung by vocalists who wouldn't have been ... Read More

Time-Life Music's Singers & Songwriters series of 24-track, two-disc sets uses as its jumping-off place the transition that took place in the 1960s from a two-tier system of popular music in which non-singing songwriters contributed material that was then performed by non-writing singers to one in which the two jobs were often combined. By the early '70s, a generation of "singer/songwriters" had taken over the music business, and the result was some highly personal songwriting often sung by vocalists who wouldn't have been able to escape from their own showers a decade earlier. But the series isn't called Singer/Songwriters; it's called Singers & Songwriters, and that's an important difference. While some volumes have been heavy on the work of definitive singer/songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, that's simply because the time periods being covered found those people high in the charts. Basically, the Singers & Songwriters compilations gather together ballad hits, whether those songs can be defined properly as singer/songwriter music or not. After issuing five volumes each devoted to a two-year period in the '70s, Time-Life returned for three more volumes, making a second pass at the early, middle, and late years of the decade. This one, devoted to the late '70s (that's 1976-1979), collects a bunch of soft rock/adult contemporary hits (all of which reached the Top Ten on at least one of the national charts, with the exception of Peter Frampton's "Baby, I Love Your Way," which made the Top 20). Acoustic guitar or piano are the dominant instruments in the arrangements, which also tend to feature an electric guitar/electric bass/drums rhythm section, with the occasional keyboard and/or saxophone added for color. Two-thirds of the selections were written by the recording artists themselves, and the other third were written by people who were performers as well as writers, though in some cases, especially the Nashville-based composers like Charles "Randy" Goodrum (who wrote "Bluer Than Blue" for Michael Johnson and "You Needed Me" for Anne Murray) and Richard Leigh (who wrote "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" for Crystal Gayle), they are not people who ever achieved a national profile as recording artists themselves. But the distinction between the traditional Tin Pan Alley style and the new trend of self-writing performers was nearly lost as far as the Top 40 was concerned by the late '70s. The hallmark of singer/songwriter music may be a unique perspective often expressed in subject matter other than romantic love, but this album consists almost entirely of love songs, ranging from the self-pitying ("Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word," "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again") to the cheerily erotic ("Afternoon Delight"). Songs like "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" and "Torn Between Two Lovers" approach romance from unusual angles reflecting the changing mores of the time, but they're still love songs. The only real exception, which turns up as the final track, is Randy Newman's satiric "Short People." Given the compilers' focus on the top of the charts, one could hardly expect anything different. There isn't much singer/songwriter music on Singers & Songwriters: Late '70s, at least in the sense that the term was defined in the early '70s, but there is a lot of popular soft rock music from the late '70s. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi Read Less

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  	Edition: 2000, Time/Life Music CD, Very Good	Details: UPC: 610583032925 Discs: 2 Release: Soundtrack, Import, Enhanced Label: Time/Life Music Released: 10/22/2002 Alibris ID: 17933874925	Shipping Options: Standard Shipping: $3.47 Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
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2000, Time/Life Music UPC: 610583032925 CD See All from $9.39