1976: A Great Year in Music

1976 was a great year for pop music. And as a freshman in college, I spent lots of time listening to the radio, the airwaves filled with some of the best music ever to come down the pike – before or since. Of course, my focus and efforts should have been more directed toward my studies – instead of spending time listening to music, partying, and growing the world’s worst mustache – but how was I supposed to know that?

Still, it was a year of great songs (and I mean really great songs!) like The Eagles’ Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way, Stevie Wonder’s I Wish, and Peter Frampton’s Show Me the Way. Of course, the year also brought us a handful of less-than-memorable classics – songs like Leo Sayer’s You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and KC & The Sunshine Band’s Shake Your Booty, but even those songs weren’t all that bad. 

For me, however, one of greatest songs to come out of 1976 was the Boston tune, Smokin’. Even today, I hear that song and I just can’t sit still. If it comes on the radio while I’m driving in the car, it gets totally cranked up until the speakers in my poor little Honda CRV almost blow up! (Okay, perhaps that’s an overstatement – but not by much!) And, as a great car song, it inspires fits of head-bobbing-while-driving better than almost any other song I know. (The obvious exception being the middle section of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. And if you remember the car scene in the movie Wayne’s World, then you know exactly what I’m talking about!)

Not only was the song Smokin’ a classic, and one of my all-time favorites, but Boston’s debut album boasted some other great tunes, as well: More Than a Feeling, Peace of Mind, and Rock and Roll Band – all great songs!

I’m proud to say I still have my original copy of the first Boston album – too bad I don’t have a turntable to play it on!