70s Superlatives: Crap Music Edition

Insipid crap, virtuostic crap, literate singer-songwriter crap, safety-pin-through-the-nose crap, mellow crap, glam crap, booty-shaking crap: If nothing else, the 1970s represented a revolution in crap music.

Never before had crap music been taken so seriously before, with the predictable result that pop music experienced an unprecedented explosion of creativity— while "Einstein on the Beach," the decade's watershed opera, was nothing more than five hours of music seemingly designed to make people go insane.

(Stick with the video to the six minute mark, when the composer, Philip Glass, thrillingly breaks from single chord he had been playing over and over. The change has the cathartic effect you might experience when a leaky faucet that had been keeping you up gets fixed.)

The following songs are neither the best, nor worst, nor even remotely representive of anything in particular. They're just the lucky songs that happened to pop into my head tonight:

Song that Puts Me In the Most Enchanting Clinical Depression

I have this feeling that at some especially evocative but forgotten moment during my early childhood—perhaps when some ineffably delicate fading sunset pitched just right through a late summer sky—Gilbert O'Sullivan's schlock-rock masterpiece was playing on an old transistor radio in the background. For a song I supposedly first heard in 1991, it seems to hold a lot of power over me.

Alternatively, it's also possible I'm just a big sap.

Either way, pass me the whisky and tissues.

Song that Convinces me that I am Loaded with Rhythm—In my Mind

When the dude in this video comes out and starts pop locking, doing some crazy, slightly spasmodic I'm-drinking-a-soda mime routine— what the hell does that have to do with a rollercoaster?— I know I could do that! I am sitting here at my computer, visualizing every movement, beads of sweat forming on my brow from the sheer mental exertion. Never mind that I have to get loaded at wedding receptions before I'm willing to dance (i.e. stumble) to "Love Shack."

What I remember about the Ohio Players is that my cousin Charise owned one of their albums (their album covers were noted for their stupidly sleazy artwork), my brother upbraiding her for her bad taste. The Ohio Players, after all, lacked the nuance and richness of the KISS albums he adored.

Most Confrontational Song by the 70s' Smartest Songwriter

Say what you will about 70s culture, but find me a popular songwriter working today with the intellectual firepower to explore the philosophical question of theodicy: Why is God such a jerk? Call this song morose and gloomy—and it is—but it's a far cry more sophisticated than today's crap music that tends to explore such questions as: "How did I end up naked again?"

Bonus Crap: Three Songs I Realized Were Filthy Only in Retrospect