\u201cLife On Mars?\u201d<\/a> within the first four songs is something special, right? Hunky Dory is the closest Bowie got to a singer-songwriter album, and it\u2019s pretty spectacular.<\/p>\n\u2018Band On The Run\u2019 by Paul McCartney And Wings (1973)<\/p>\n
Paul McCartney had suffered mostly barbs and putdowns from the music press about the first few years of his post-Beatles output. To make matters worse, 40 percent of his band quit right before the sessions were to begin on Band On The Run. Working with only wife Linda and Denny Laine, he rose to the occasion with the best set of rockers in his career. These tracks were mostly uptempo, but in no way simple. The sprawl, ambition, and melodic brilliance of songs like the title track, \u201cJet\u201d, and \u201cNineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five\u201d still amaze.<\/p>\n
\u2018Hotel California\u2019 by The Eagles (1976)<\/p>\n
The Eagles had slowly progressed from a country-oriented outfit at the start of their career to one of the slickest West Coast rock bands of all. For Hotel California, they added Joe Walsh to join Don Felder and give them a fierce guitar-based attack. Meanwhile, Don Henley and Glenn Frey had emerged as the chief songwriters in the group. Combine all those developments, and you end up with a massive album. From the mesmerizing title track in the beginning to the elegiac \u201cThe Last Resort\u201d at the end, you get nothing but peaks from this record.<\/p>\n
\u2018Running On Empty\u2019 by Jackson Browne (1977)<\/p>\n
Like The Eagles, Jackson Browne saw the commercial wisdom of putting his piercing singer-songwriter narratives into more of a rock setting. How he managed that maneuver on Running Empty was the ingenious part. Browne took advantage of a killer backing band at his disposal to record a bunch of new songs at various live venues and informal backstage settings. It gave the album the perfect balance of live rock energy and Browne\u2019s unassailable songwriting. And it led to classics like the title track, \u201cShaky Town\u201d, and \u201cThe Load-Out\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018London Calling\u2019 by The Clash (1979)<\/p>\n
United States listeners didn\u2019t get a hold of London Calling until January 1980. But it arrived in Great Britain right before Christmas. What a gift it proved to be for discerning music fans. The Clash brought their musical variety to the fore by delivering a double album, giving them much more room for genre-hopping. They also concentrated on the songwriting aspect of their music more than ever. Whether getting political (the title track, \u201cThe Guns Of Brixton\u201d) or personal (\u201cLost In The Supermarket\u201d, \u201cTrain In Vain\u201d), they didn\u2019t miss.<\/p>\n
Photo by Chris Walter\/WireImage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the most part, the month of December tends to be a relatively quiet one when it comes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[2616,2617,88,216,2156],"class_list":{"0":"post-367582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-1970s","9":"tag-classic-rock","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-rock-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}