{"id":310,"date":"2017-12-24T21:33:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-24T21:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/2017\/12\/24\/1977-the-year-of-the-single-sounds-magazine\/"},"modified":"2017-12-24T21:33:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-24T21:33:00","slug":"1977-the-year-of-the-single-sounds-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/2017\/12\/24\/1977-the-year-of-the-single-sounds-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"1977 The Year of the Single \u2013 Sounds Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n1977 The Year of the Single \u2013 Sounds Magazine.<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
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\nby Pete Clemons<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n

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What a coincidence. As 2017 draws to an end I had been rooting through a box and came across a fascinating article produced by Sounds music magazine from December 1977. <\/p>\n

The article\u2019s title was called 1977 the year of the single. And it attempted to document just what had happened during that year in terms of seven inch (or 12 inch) record sales. <\/p>\n

As far as the music scene went it was quite a year. We had lost both Elvis Presley, Marc Bolan along with the heart of US rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was also the year David Bowie dueted with Bing Crosby with the song Peace on Earth. <\/p>\n

Top selling singles from 1977 included Wings with \u2018Mull of Kintyre\u2019, David Soul and \u2018Don\u2019t Give Up on Us\u2019, \u2018Hotel California\u2019 by The Eagles, Boney M, \u2018Ma Baker\u2019 and \u2018Knowing Me Knowing You\u2019 by Abba. While top albums included \u2018Rumours\u2019 by Fleetwood Mac, \u2018Bat out of Hell\u2019 by Meatloaf, Steely Dan \u2018Aja\u2019, \u2018Animals\u2019 Pink Floyd and \u2018Exodus\u2019 by Bob Marley. And well over one hundred million vinyl sales were recorded that year in the UK alone. <\/p>\n

Other key events in UK music that year saw The Clash, The Jam, The Stranglers, The Damned all release their debut albums. The Sex Pistols, who also released their one and only album during 1977, were twice released from record contracts as both the EMI and A+M record labels both sacked the band. <\/p>\n

But away for the headlines, underneath all that, something seemed to explode and it was as though everyone wanted to put a band together and create music or even go as far as to produce it all for themselves. Classic records just tumbled out week after week. It truly was exciting times. <\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t just the quality of the song. It was the depth and breadth of the music being played. You had disco, rock, reggae, electronic and of course you had punk rock. <\/p>\n

In case they are not clear I have reproduced some of the words from the Sounds article below. With the singles in their list, I felt that they certainly captured the mood well: <\/p>\n

The year of the single? You\u2019re not kidding. Last year, when the idea of a top twenty singles was broached, only a couple of the Sounds staff were remotely interested. Now they\u2019re so hot on the idea of seven (or twelve \u2013 this year also being the year of overstatement) inches of black, purple, sky blue pink or whatever vinyl, that they\u2019ve come up with a list of a hundred of the little bleeders. <\/p>\n

And the article concluded:\u2026\u2026\u2026. <\/p>\n

And of course, the article continued, there must be another two or three hundred that probably deserved to have had their picture in here too. <\/p>\n

Hopefully the pictures and the scans I have taken of the article reproduce ok and tell the story. It did seem as though Sounds magazine, at that time, was all about the album. <\/p>\n

But 40 years on!. It all seems so long ago, and it is. But then sometimes, when you hear some of these songs \u2013 it isn\u2019t. As, still today, a lot of these great tunes are still greatly revered.<\/span><\/p>\n

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1977 The Year of the Single \u2013 Sounds Magazine. by Pete Clemons What a coincidence. As 2017 draws to an end I had been rooting through a box and came across a fascinating article produced by Sounds music magazine from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsrainbow.com\/coventrygigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}