By the time the album was released in late 1978, the Sex Pistols’ singer had already established his reputation as one of rock’s most snarling frontmen. John Lydon’s scream is different on Public Image Ltd’s First Issue. Smith paying respects to a band of his own generation) is powerful, but Eternally Yours reveals a band audibly challenging itself, and in turn challenging its colleagues and listeners to keep up. It certainly has songs built around both, and singer Chris Bailey’s condescension on the insistently tense minor masterpiece “This Perfect Day” (later covered by The Fall in the late ’90s, in a rare case of Mark E. Eternally Yours was one of the first major statements that “punk,” whatever that meant, could be much more than two or three chords and a sneer. The brass is a crucial addition to “Know Your Product” and “Orstralia,” two of the album’s best songs, and proof that bands should have been more ready to break through the already-congealed punk orthodoxy of the day.
Josh JacksonĪustralia’s best punk band added a horn section for a few songs on their second album, bringing some R&B power to Ed Kuepper’s roaring guitar cyclones. and an album made for lazy days somewhere the sun is shining. The result was his highest-charting album in the U.K. But a more contented Marley could still churn out classics like “Is This Love” and “Satisfy My Soul.” Recorded in London just before he returned to Jamaica after an exile in the wake of an attempted assassination, the reggae legend may have been a little burned out on politics as two competing factions back home threatened to throw his island nation in chaos. These 10 tracks are mellow odes to love and pot, a smoked-out chill session after the revolution has wound down. Album opener “Easy Skanking” is, well, easy. The Bob Marley on Kaya is not the holy justice warrior of the early 1970s. We have exclusive live footage of several of these acts performing around 1978, including the Talking Heads, Bruce Springsteen and Parliament-Funkadelic.
We’ve been taking a look back at music history in decade increments, beginning with the Best Albums of 1968 and continuing with each decade (19 are coming soon). And a handful of punk stalwarts would look to the looming ‘80s with a sense of pop adventure that came to define the radio hits of the next 10 years. Kraftwerk would quietly continue laying the ground work for an electronic revolution.
Eddie Van Halen would inspire a generation of would-be guitar gods. Funk fans got their first annual festival in Chicago, “One Nation Under a Groove,” just a month after the death of Parliament-Funkadelic singer Glenn Goins at the age of 24. Blue-collar roots rock sold millions of records thanks to Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen. In 1978, Keith Moon played his last show with The Who, while The Rolling Stones returned to form with Some Girls. Several of our favorite albums from 1978 appeared on our lists of the Best Post-Punk and Best Best New Wave albums. The rest of the Billboard chart was filled with lite-pop ballads like Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” and Exile’s “Kiss You All Over.” But music was also in the midst of a post-punk revolution. Andy Gibb and the Bee Gees had five of the eight biggest singles of the year.
Forty years ago, popular music was dominated by disco.