Billboard Hot 100™ https://share.google/Fh1fHfO6hfDHb1YvK

That’s the top 40 (weekly) format, played by Opus and Casey Kasem. The top 100 hits of the year were compiled and played on New Year’s Eve.

What you need to know is that every month of this year was a rollercoaster. There weren’t many that stayed in the top ten for long, and most of those didn’t deserve to. Rock was dying, heavy metal was burning rubber, country spilled into the pop charts without remorse, and it was a mess.

Most of these songs I can’t remember. Radio has changed: automated stations with no live DJs, nothing but recorded chat and ads. Back then it didn’t matter if a song wasn’t worthy of sales, whether in single or LP format, and 8tracks had become notorious for getting eaten during play.

The radio was always on at the weekend hangout, in the warehouse where I worked, in the car going to school. My older sister didn’t mind feeding us Top 40, and when school started, this was a quirky but cool hit:

It’s catchy, melancholy, and it sold. I enjoyed it. Still do.

Now the Spinners, I didn’t expect a tune like this from them, but it’s my favorite. I first heard it while I was sick, laid up with the flu, so miserable that music was my only distraction. Secretly, I didn’t mind missing school. I was in a prep school that I hated, and, being an asshole, tried to singlehandedly cause enough destruction and chaos to put it out of business. The school, which had been there since very early in that century, shut down 3 years after I left. I was an extraordinary asshole.

Helen Reddy: people still laugh at me for loving her music, her example, her passion for equal rights. Her voice was incredibly distinct, leaving no doubt who was singing. I loved her. Women like Merilee Rush, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Helen Reddy and many more used art to gain what resembled equal rights. I’m not so sure things ever got to the equal level. I find that tragic.

Then there was Earth, Wind and Fire!

Justice came as the Captain and Tenille dropped in the chart, but they would return with a dreadful song, “Muskrat Love” complete with sickening keyboard effects, I guess to imitate Suzy’s orgasms. Disgusting. Not because I don’t find muskrat orgasms uninteresting; I’m really rather ambivalent. But if I have to hear Suzy’s expressions of sexual satisfaction, can’t I get it from an MP-3 byte and not a perv on a keyboard? Fuck.

Jefferson Starship hit with a single that would still be played every day in 1978.

In September, the thriller film Three Days of the Condor with Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, and Max Von Sydow debuted. It was the only movie ever filmed in the Twin Towers. Max Von Sydow steals the show as a contract killer. Cliff Robertson appears as a CIA supervisor involved in an underground government after oil, and John Houseman is always worth seeing.

Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino is still good, but once was enough for me. Hits hard.

Elsewhere, Any American Troops remaining in Vietnam were captured, killed or both by a new Laotian regime, another assassination attempt was made against President Gerald Ford, and the next few months were not going to let 1975 go quietly. As leaves changed colors and everyone began to feel the holiday spirit coming, they were about to have that delayed for them.