Music scholar, historian, and African American Studies lecturer Alexander Shashko turns the clock back fifty-five years: “This was supposed to be a list of ten songs from 1970, the year that the Department of African American Studies began. As I was compiling it, though, I kept finding myself trying to choose between two songs that reflected similar themes—and were both fantastic songs. So you’re getting a top ten list with twenty songs bundled into pairs that represent something about the music of that year, and the culture of the era. Enjoy.”
- “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Diana Ross and “Move On Up,” Curtis Mayfield: Two titans of sixties soul celebrate the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement with the unmistakably utopian messages that those triumphs are new steps to climb greater heights.
- “ABC,” The Jackson 5 and “Signed, Sealed & Delivered,” Stevie Wonder: Future and future past. The brothers set a new standard for teen pop that they and generations of boy bands, to this day, are trying to match. Motown’s original teen superstar offered a final blast of his youthful, joyous style before embarking on a creative journey that few artists would ever match.
- “Express Yourself,” Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice elf Agin),” Sly and the Family Stone: Two songs that define Black pride as individual freedom, the promise of the Civil Rights era to liberate African Americans to define themselves on their own terms.
- “Super Bad (Parts 1 & 2),” James Brown and “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,” James Brown: The Godfather of Soul didn’t need to explain Black pride, though he did that, too. It lived and breathed in the confidence of every staccato note in his songs during this era, when he was redefining the very sound of Black music.
- “Ball of Confusion (That’s What The World Is Today),” The Temptations and “War,” Edwin Starr: The specter of Vietnam loomed large over 1970s, and these two Motown stars exchanged the giddy optimism that defined the early years of Motown for more combative voices determined to save lives at home and abroad.
- “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go,” Curtis Mayfield and “Paranoid,” Black Sabbath: That Curtis Mayfield placed a song with this title on the same album alongside “Move On Up” speaks volumes about the ongoing struggle between optimism and pessimism in youth culture as the sixties ended. Though there wasn’t much struggle with Black Sabbath, who would spawn an entire genre of music built around alienation and dread.
- “Band of Gold,” Freda Payne and “The Thrill Is Gone,” B.B. King: Two songs about longing and regret during two very different parts of a relationship. If you’d like, place another huge hit that year into the storyline – Chairman of the Board’s “Give Me Just A Little More Time.” The success of these songs predicted the melancholy that would suffuse so much music in the 1970s.
- “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” Creedence Clearwater Revival and “Rainy Night in Georgia,” Brook Benton: Rain, here, symbolizes melancholy and renewal. CCR posits a troubling question whose answer might just lie in the flooded fields of Woodstock. For Benton, the skies clear when the train arrives in the new home where he’s putting aside his past in the hope of a better future.
- “Spirit in the Dark,” Aretha Franklin and “O-o-h Child,” Five Stairsteps: Reminders that even when the world bewilders, messages of hope have the power to get us off the floor and keep going.
- “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Simon & Garfunkel and “Let It Be,” The Beatles: Are these songs of exhaustion amidst tumult, songs of forgiveness for past failures, or songs of optimistic persistence in troubled times? Yes. That’s why Aretha, Elvis, Dion, Merry Clayton, Buck Owens, Ray Charles, Joan Baez, Bill Withers, Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama are just a few of the artists who lent their voices to these two monumental ballads over the rest of the decade.