Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross photographed by Jim Britt, 1973.

Berry Gordy, Diana Ross, and Marvin Gaye

D i a n a R o s s // M a r v i n G a y e

Year-End Poll #24: 1973

[Image description: a collage of photos of the 10 musicians and musical groups featured in this poll. In order from left to right, top to bottom: Tony Orlando and Dawn, Jim Croce, Roberta Flack, Marvin Gaye, Paul McCartney and Wings Kris Kristofferson, Elton John, Billy Preston, Carly Simon, Diana Ross. End description]

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*Turns my chair around so I can sit in it backwards*

So. You were just caught trying to cover up a major break-in into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in order to cement your reelection.

As I alluded to last poll, one major historical event I need to mention is the Watergate scandal. The actual break-in took place the previous year, but the resulting investigations and trials won't start to take place until this year -- after Nixon's reelection. However, there aren't many songs about the incident from this time, or at least not in the charts. Most of the songs protesting Nixon tended to focus on the war.

Speaking of the Vietnam War, 1973 does not mark the end of the war, but it does mark the beginning of the United States' exit. To bring it back to the music, one of the 60's polls included the Monkees' Last Train to Clarksville, a song that wasn't explicitly written about the war, but had the war projected onto it because it's a song about someone leaving home and not knowing when they're coming back. It seems fitting that one of the songs on today's poll is Tony Orlando and Dawn's Tie a Yellow Ribbon[...], a song that wasn't explicitly written about the war, but had the war projected onto it because it's a song about someone coming home and not knowing what his welcome will look like.

Soul music is continuing to have one of its golden ages, with artists like Roberta Flack and Marvin Gaye topping the charts. It's been a while since I talked about Billboard from the business side of things, but the explosion of this genre gives me a good excuse to do so. In 1973, the Billboard chart for R&B songs was changed from "Best Selling Soul Singles" to "Hot Soul Singles". This change may not sound that significant, but it becomes more notable when you see how often this title changes. This article goes more into depth about Billboard's complicated history when it comes to its representation of Black music.

Which reminds me, it's time to start talking about disco. It will reach the polls soon, I promise, but now feels like a good time to set the scene before we get to that point. As I mentioned in a previous poll, the disco scene really came out of soul. Especially Philly Soul, which had lush instrumentation that worked really well with the overall atmosphere of early disco. At this point in history, disco is still an underground subculture, and musically the line between it and soul music isn't that clear. Disco as its own genre of music that could be identified as such by the average listener will come later.

I don't usually talk about the formation of genres until they reach the charts, but I'm going to make an exception here. Because 2023 is the 50th anniversary of this genre, the genre has grown into a dominating musical force across the globe, and it's the only genre I actually studied in college.

In 1973, a Jamaican-American teenager named Clive Campbell (more widely known as DJ Kool Herc) and his sister, Cindy, started hosting parties out of their apartment in The Bronx, New York. These parties would play a lot of funk records, but he wouldn't just play them. Instead, he would play two copies of the same record on a turntable so he could extend the percussion section of the song, also called the break (which is where breakdancing comes from). This would lay the foundation for hip-hop, further expanded by artists like Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa. All three of these men are still alive and I've linked interviews with some of them.

Hip-hop and rap are often used interchangeably, but there is a difference. Hip-hop exists both as a subculture and as a style of music. It incorporates art forms such as DJing, breakdancing, graffiti, beatboxing, rapping, and many other elements. That's why I said DJ Kool Herc helped set the foundation of hip-hop. Within early hip-hop culture, the MC was mostly there to bounce off of the DJ and keep the energy up. That isn't to discredit the difficult work of early MCs (trust me, if you were bad at it, the audience would let you know). Rap itself as an art from has a plethora of different artistic roots in Black culture, from scat singing in jazz, to various traditional West African storytelling techniques, to early 20th century gospel groups, to rhyme games, to Black radio DJs. The genre started to get more notice outside of the party scene as wordplay and flows started to expand further, especially as the first hip-hop groups started to form and the MCs became part of the "band". Like disco, hip-hop was still very much an underground subculture, but it would soon take over the nation.

It will be another 17 years before the first rap song reaches number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby). We won't see a rap song featured on these polls until 1995. But it's hip-hop's 50th birthday, and so much of modern American culture doesn't make sense without its involvement.

💎.

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/michael-jackson-invincible-2001-album-art-prints-michael-jackson.html Super Star The King of Pop Michael Jackson, “Invincible” 2001. The metal fine wall art framed poster and canvas print in different sizes. “Invincible” track listing: Unbreakable, Heartbreaker, Invincible, Break of Dawn, Heaven Can Wait, You Rock My World, Butterflies, Speechless, 2000 Watts, You Are My Life, Privacy, Don't Walk Away, Cry, The Lost Children, Whatever Happens, Threatened

Diana Ross & Marvin Gaye photographed by Jim Britt, 1973

NANCY DREW || 2x08: The Quest for the Spider Sapphire

“Tell me, dear, do you happen to know the time?”

Diana Ross & Marvin Gaye

Stop, Look & Listen (To Your Heart)

1973

I don't care what the The Official Crisis on Infinite Earth Crossover Index says.

Super Friends comic is Earth-One canon

Remember you’re a womble!

I can’t believe this followed Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye and preceded the Chi-Lites!

How come the drummer looks like he’s actually playing but the rest is clearly sheer dickery?

💭 #ThoughtInTheNight BECAUSE I LOVE YOU… I WANT TO SPEND EVERY MOMENT OF MY LIFE WITH YOU… I KNOW I'M DREAMING AGAIN… BUT THAT IS MY WISH… THAT MY DREAM WOULD BE A DREAM SHARED WITH YOU. I WANT TO MAKE YOU FEEL SPECIAL, TAKE CARE OF YOU, PAMPER YOU AND DO ANYTHING TO BRING A SMILE ON YOUR FACE. MY ONLY WISH… I TELL YOU CONSTANTLY… I JUST WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY. YOU'RE NOT JUST THE CENTER OF MY LIFE, YOU'RE MY WHOLE LIFE. YOU KNOW YOU MEAN EVERYTHING TO ME. I LIVE IN THIS WORLD BECAUSE OF YOU AND FOR YOU… BECAUSE LOVING YOU MAKES ME FEEL ALIVE… I FEEL HAPPY… MY LIFE NOW, IT MAKES SENSE. AND EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE MY IMPOSSIBLE DREAM… YOU'RE MY EVERYTHING… YOU'RE MY LIFE… AND I'LL KEEP ON LOVING YOU, THINKING ABOUT YOU, DREAMING OF YOU… FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I LIVE TO LOVE YOU… I LOVE YOU TO LIVE… YOU'RE MY EVERYTHING.

Marvin Gaye to Berry Gordy, Diana Ross and Motown as a whole at some point (late 70s?):