Plethora of Pop’s Rate-A-Record

1976: Red-White-and Country Blue

Crossover Country Hits to savor and rate

Photo by Max on Unsplash

For our Bicentennial year, I painted our high school football stadium’s bleachers red, white, and blue. What did you do?

Unbelievably, I had no radio out there to keep me company in the Alabama hot sun. Not even a water bottle. It’s a wonder I didn’t stroke out, but when you’re nineteen going on twenty, there’s not much any older person can tell you about where sanity is, about loving to change the world, or about what you might be doing ten or forty years after.

As I examine the Hot 100 songs for 1976, I think about myself back then, and how I might have whispered to a scream about how anyone could prefer John Travolta’s “Let Her In” (#74) to the two songs that follow: The Sweet’s “Fox on the Run” (#75) and Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” (#76). 76 for 1976, okay, there’s a divine symmetry in that, and look, Bowie found himself at #33 (“Golden Years”).

The #1 song for our country’s triumphant 200 years was that ol’ Brit Paul McCartney, his band Wings, and their “Silly Love Songs.” I really do like that song, but I bet I’ve played Bowie’s standard three times as much.

Here’s the entire list: