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Befitting its very name, popular music has always been a reflection of the culture from which it has emerged--expressing in song the hopes, fears, dreams and desires of society. In the process, of course, the music has also often served as an important influence, both foreshadowing and shaping significant changes in the collective attitudes and habits of various generations of listeners.
The 1960s and '70s were particularly noteworthy decades in modern cultural history and, not surprisingly, in popular music as well. Driven by the spirit and energy of the teens and young adults who were ultimately dubbed the "Baby Boomers," the '60s and '70s saw near-seismic shifts in lifestyles and mores, and the music of the era fairly exploded with fast-paced evolutions. From the socially conscious, acoustic guitar-driven sounds of the folk movement of the early '60s, through the electric, electrifying strains of British rock and psychedelia of the mid- to-late '60s, to the comforting chords of country-rock in the 1970s, the music of this era proved to be a powerfully accurate barometer of the pulse of the culture. It was a period characterized by a seemingly endless stream of new voices and new viewpoints--of singers and songwriters whose well-crafted words and distinctive music truly defined their times. The musical roads taken by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel during the 1960s and '70s certainly underscore the notion of reflections and influences. The two Queens, NY natives began their professional careers as Tom and Jerry, an Everly Brothers-styled teen rockabilly duo whose single, Hey Schoolgirl, was a minor hit in 1957. In 1964, they joined the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene under their own name as an acoustic duo, and by 1966 they'd become hitmaking folk-rockers à la Bob Dylan and the Byrds.
While they spent the remainder of the '60s as commercial superstars, both artists became increasingly interested in separate pursuits, and by the early '70s they'd embarked on solo careers. 1973 saw Simon and Garfunkel each registering their own idiosyncratic hits--angel-voiced Garfunkel with the lushly orchestrated pop ballad, All I Know, and songwriter Simon with the nostalgically rocking, metaphoric Kodachrome. Philadelphia-bred Jim Croce performed at many of the same coffeehouses as Simon and Garfunkel during his teeth-cutting days as a musician in the early '60s, but the easygoing singer songwriter's journey to success was a far slower one. His first album, a 1969 duet recording with his wife, Ingrid, went virtually unnoticed, and it wasn't until 1972, when acoustic flavored music began to come back in vogue, that Croce finally garnered recognition for his work. Tragically, he had barely begun to reap the rewards of stardom when he perished in a plane crash in the summer of '73. He left behind a clutch of recordings that became hits later that year, including the poignant Time in a Bottle and the bittersweet I Got a Name. Speaking of names, Carole King's could be found under the title of an impressive number of memorable recordings throughout the 1960s--from girl groups such as the Shirelles (Will You Love Me Tomorrow) and the Cookies (Chains) to British Invasion outfits like Herman's Hermits (I'm into Something Good) and the Animals (Don't Bring Me Down) to soul diva Aretha Franklin ([You Make Me Feel Like a] Natural Woman). Still, few listeners really knew who she was until her 1971 solo album, Tapestry, soared to the top of the charts. 1972's infectious Sweet Seasons stems from Tapestry's followup--the humbly (and characteristically so) titled collection, Music.
One of those who encouraged Carole King during the making of Tapestry was a young singer-songwriter from North Carolina named James Taylor, whom King got to know through her guitarist, Danny Kortchmar, Taylor's friend and bandmate in the short-lived mid'60s group, the Flying Machine. King returned the favor by playing on Taylor's breakthrough 1970 album, Sweet Baby James--as did Kortchmar, who can also be heard on the gentle 1972 Taylor folk tinged classic, Don't Let Me Lonely Tonight.
That same year, Taylor married another piano-playing singer-songwriter: Carly Simon. The daughter of the co-founder of the Simon and Schuster publishing house, this Simon--like the aforementioned (and unrelated) Paul--had been through incarnations as both a folksinger and a folk-rocker in the 1960s before finally emerging at the dawn of the 1970s as a literate, sophisticated pop songstress. Just months after she and Taylor wed, Simon scored a Number One hit with You're So Vain, featuring unmistakable background vocals by the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger.
During the early '70s, England's Rod Stewart often found himself compared to both Mick Jagger (in terms of his onstage antics as lead singer of the Stones-ish rock band, the Faces) as well as American soul legend Sam Cooke, whom Stewart was greatly influenced by as a vocalist. Rowdy Roddy was still a member of the Faces when his solo albums began to overshadow his group's recordings; such was the case with 1972's aptly titled Never a Dull Moment, which yielded the strutting hit, You Wear It Well.
Like Stewart, who over the years proved himself highly adept as both a songwriter and an interpreter of other people's material, Harry Nilsson's career was marked by hits penned by both himself and other composers. In 1972, for example, the Los Angeles-bred vocalist enjoyed Top Ten entries with his own loopy tune, Coconut and with the emotionally charged Without You, a tour de force performance of a song originally recorded by its authors, the Beatle-esque rock group, Badfinger.
The term "adult contemporary" had barely come into use when another Los Angeles-based act, Bread, began cooking up their memorable succession of tasty goods, starting with their soft-rock 1970 debut, Make It With You. Anchored by veteran singer songwriter David Gates (whose credits ranged back to the Murmaids 60's girl group hit, Popsicles and Icicles), Bread's slice of country-rock was exemplified by '72's bittersweet treat, Guitar Man.
If the early '70s saw a retrenchment from the high-amped, high-powered sounds of late '60s rock, it also saw a welling up of nostalgia for the fast fading days gone by. So it was that Nights in White Satin, a song recorded by England's Moody Blues all the way back in 1967, and a staple of FM radio for years, suddenly reappeared and became an AM hit single five years after its original release. For those still reeling in the years from the cultural turbulence of the '60s, Nights in White Satin was a breath of calm, familiar air.
Familiarity also played a huge role in the success of American Pie, the eight-plus-minute musical history lesson that topped the charts in early 1972. Fittingly, it was created by a prototypical baby boomer--Don McLean, a suburban New Yorker who grew up on '50s rock, strummed the banjo as a folk troubadour in the mid-'60s, and found stardom in the guise of singer-songwriter in the early '70s. Chronicling the saga of the entire rock era in one kaleidoscopic package, McLean masterfully (to paraphrase the godfather of singer-songwriters, Mr. Dylan) brought it all back home--reflections and influences alike--for an entire generation.