The 17 songs that capture the dark side of 1970s America for Bbc Classical Music

America in the Seventies was swept up in grand utopias, but also scarred by collective traumas that marked the loss of innocence for an entire era. The utopian promises of the Summer of Love had by then faded, replaced by the harsh realities of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and a punishing economic crisis that turned many industrial hubs into ghosts of the future "Rust Belt." Against this backdrop, the music changed too: the acoustic warmth of the Sixties gave way to distorted, tension-laden sounds, mirroring a country increasingly at war with itself. Starting from these premises, Steve Wright, for the online magazine BBC Classical Music, has compiled a list of 17 songs that tell the dark side of 1970s America. "From the fierce, urban punk of Detroit and New York to the searing social indictments of soul's greatest voices," Classical Music writes in its introduction, "these 17 songs capture the darkest side of American life: urban decay, political disillusionment, racial tensions and economic anxieties. From the fury of the Stooges to the cynicism of John Lennon, here are the sonic snapshots of a decade in which the American dream was fading: the soundtrack to an entire nation's rage."

Here are the 17 songs that capture the "dark side" of 1970s America according to BBC Classical Music (full feature here).

1. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Ohio (1970)
   Written by Neil Young in shock after seeing the images of the Kent State University massacre, turns distorted guitars and tension into a document of generational fracture. Here, the pain of the counterculture becomes direct political rage, right up to an explicit call-out of Nixon.
2. Patti Smith – Piss Factory (1974)
   Patti Smith draws on her own alienating experience working in a baby-carriage factory to tell of class resentment and the refusal of a life spent in dead-end labor.
3. John Lennon – Working Class Hero (1970)
   With just an acoustic guitar, Lennon indicts education, career and the mechanisms through which society conditions and breaks individuals.
4. Gil Scott-Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (1971)
   Over funk bass and frantic percussion, Scott-Heron attacks consumerism and television culture, setting them against the real struggle for civil rights. A foundational blueprint for the future hip-hop.
5. Dead Boys – Sonic Reducer (1977)
   Having moved from Cleveland to New York, the Dead Boys brought to CBGB a fury that in this track becomes suburban rage and a desire for escape, complete with Stiv Bators' sneer and a razor-sharp guitar riff.
6. James Brown – The Big Payback (1973)
   James Brown stages a revenge against those who betrayed him, amid screams and horns used almost like percussion. The groove shows how anger can turn into something danceable, too.
7. Black Flag – TV Party (1979/1981)
   A satire of American passivity in front of the television, an alibi for ignoring the surrounding decay. Rowdy chants and sarcasm express the nihilistic humor of early hardcore California scene.
8. Steely Dan – King Of The World (1973)
   Fagen and Becker imagine a survivor of a nuclear holocaust who, from a ham radio station in New Mexico, desperately searches for someone else still alive. The brilliant, jazzy arrangement contrasts with the apocalyptic scenario, condensing the fears of the Cold War.
9. The Stooges – Search And Destroy (1973)
   The voice and self-destructive imagery of Iggy Pop move within a wall of sound dominated by James Williamson's ferocious guitars.
10. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Fortunate Son (1970)
    Anything but a patriotic anthem: it's a frontal denunciation of class privilege during the Vietnam War, aimed at the children of the elite who could avoid the draft. John Fogerty gives voice to the resentment of those who were sent to the front instead.
11. Fear – I Don’t Care About You (1978)
    A nihilistic manifesto of Los Angeles hardcore, carried by Lee Ving's contemptuous voice and music that's short, blistering fast, and deliberately abrasive.
12. Richard Hell & The Voidoids – Blank Generation (1977)
    Richard Hell describes the void left by the failure of American society, turning apathy into a form of defiance. Robert Quine's dissonant guitar accompanies a broken voice for one of the defining expressions of the era of CBGB and of the no wave.
13. Suicide – Frankie Teardrop (1977)
    A primitive drum machine spectral synthesizers and Alan Vega's screams accompany the story of a worker crushed by poverty to the breaking point. An extreme portrayal of urban collapse and individual alienation in the industrial age.
14. Stevie Wonder – Living For The City (1973)
    Stevie Wonder confronts systemic racism and the trap of urban poverty head-on, even including a dramatization of a young man's wrongful arrest.
15. Death – Politicians In My Eyes (1976)
    The three Hackney brothers, from industrial Detroit, build lightning-fast proto-punk aimed at the hypocrisy and emptiness of the political class.
16. The Eagles – The Last Resort (1976)
    Behind the famous laid-back California sound, the Eagles construct a bitter funeral for the American dream: the conquest of the West becomes a story of paradises found and then destroyed by progress and consumerism.
17. The Ramones – 53rd & 3rd (1976)
    The Ramones' debut also reflects the squalor of mid-70s New York, and this track tells the desperate story of a young man selling himself on a notorious Manhattan corner.

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