’70s albums that were way ahead of their time
’70s albums that were way ahead of their time
Ricardo RamirezFri, April 3, 2026 at 3:56 PM UTC
0
’70s albums that were way ahead of their time
The 1970s produced the most commercially successful music in history.
It also produced records so far outside what audiences were ready for that they landed with barely a sound. Most of these you know. What you may not know is how far ahead of the curve they were.
Here are nine albums with ideas the rest of the music world would not catch up to for years.
Image Credit: Weatherman90 / Wiki Commons.
Fleetwood Mac, Tusk (1979)
After Rumours sold 40 million copies, Lindsey Buckingham recorded Tusk at home, banging on a Kleenex box for percussion. What he was building was the template for lo-fi indie pop and the genre-hopping albums that would define the next two decades.
Image Credit: AVRO / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 nl.
David Bowie, Low (1977)
Brian Eno and Bowie locked themselves in a French château and made an album where Low had almost no vocals and synthesizer textures like dispatches from an unnamed future. RCA tried to stop it. It invented ambient music and the emotional register that powers electronic music to this day.
Image Credit: Wirestock/depositphotos.
Neil Young, Tonight’s the Night (1975)
Young recorded this album after two friends died of overdoses and left in every mistake. It became a blueprint for the 1990s alternative movement.
Image credit: Roberta Bayley / Wikipedia
Television, Marquee Moon (1977)
Verlaine and Lloyd developed an interlocking guitar with no precedent in rock, long and architectural, closer to jazz than rock. U2, R.E.M., and Interpol built careers on it.
Image Credit: DepositPhotos.com.
Stevie Wonder, Innervisions (1973)
On Innervisions, Wonder played every instrument himself and wrote about police brutality and addiction when the radio wanted none of it. Prince spent the 1980s working from the same blueprint.
Image Credit: benhoundijk / Deposit Photos.
Patti Smith, Horses (1975)
Horses opened with a spoken improvisation over a piano chord, spent ten minutes exploring a medley that moved from garage rock to spoken word to something that had no name yet, and recorded the whole thing with a directness that sounded nothing like the polished rock of 1975. Horses essentially invented punk poetry and the aesthetic that would define alternative music for the next two decades. It sold modestly on release. Today it sits near the top of virtually every serious list of the greatest albums ever made.
Advertisement
Image Credit: Amazon.com.
Kraftwerk, The Man-Machine (1978)
The Man-Machine sounded like assembly lines and robot voices. Hip-hop producers sampled it. Electronic dance music built entire genres from it.
Image credit: Sachyn Mital / Wikipedia
Shuggie Otis, Inspiration Information (1974)
Otis recorded this album alone, layering psychedelic soul over early drum machines. D’Angelo and Pharrell later cited it as key. It sounded like 1999 in 1974.
Image credit: Caribou records / Wikipedia
Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue (1977)
Dennis Wilson made a solo album with none of the California sunshine his band was known for. Reissued in 2008, critics called it one of the great overlooked records of the era.
Image Credit: Raph_PH / Flickr.
Neil Young, On the Beach (1974)
Young was so determined to make this album difficult that he refused to allow it to be released on CD until 2003. Recorded in a mood of deliberate withdrawal from the fame of Harvest, it is quieter, stranger, and more unsettling than anything he had released before. Critics at the time found it formless. What Young was actually doing was inventing the brooding, introspective singer-songwriter mode that would produce an entire generation of artists. He called it his most personal record. It took thirty years for the broader world to agree.
Image Credit: Alessandro Biascioli/iStock
Takeaway
Every record here was too early. The artists who make things nobody understands yet are often the ones who end up mattering most.
Ask us! What questions do you have about content, strategy, pop culture, lifestyle, wellness, history or more? We may use your question in an upcoming article!
Ask us a question
Related:
Quiz: Can you guess the 1971 song from just one lyric?
Can you guess the 1975 song from just one lyric?
Like MediaFeed’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
