1970s Radio Songs

No matter our ages, American childhoods almost always begin with the same songs: "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star", "Itsy Bitsy Spider", and "I'm a Little Teapot". Soon, we graduate to Disney songs, like "When You Wish Upon a Star", and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". A child of the 1970s, I also learned songs from PBS television's Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street.

Because my parents had been actors before my birth, and my father continued the theatrical life as a director, I also heard many showtunes in my early years, from shows such as The Sound of Music and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

But when my parents turned on the radio, then my little preschool world was suddenly charged with new music, full of color and life that the previous music didn't have. The first song I remember hearing on a radio was 1969's "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head", written by Burt Bacharach and sung by B.J. Thomas:

I have very early memories of being three or four and jumping around in the rain and singing this song with my parents. It had such joy, and there was something humorous to me about the singer singing the "raindrops keep falling" on his head, sounding like he's complaining, but sounding happy at the same time. It was emotional complexity I didn't find in Disney movies or Sesame Street.

Not long after this, I heard a song I couldn't believe was on the radio, because it was about kids on a playground! I was five when "Playground in My Mind", written by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss and sung by Clint Holmes, was released in 1972. It sounded like it was written just for me and my friends:

By this time, I was listening to the radio a lot in my kitchen over breakfast and in the car. My mother loved to turn it up and sing loudly with her favorite radio songs. One of them was the lengthy but catchy "American Pie", released in 1971, and written and sung by Don McLean:

I had no idea what any of this song meant at the time, but it just seemed to make my mother so happy as she sang and drove me to the store or the bank or wherever we had to go. Years later, she told me what a fan of Buddy Holly she was, and that this song was about the plane crash that killed him, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper, which, to many people, meant the end of early American Rock And Roll. Again, happy and sad blended in a song as it can in all of our lives.

But there was no complexity in the feeling I had at age seven when I first turned on my first transistor radio on Christmas morning, 1973. A present from my grandparents, it was a small, grey, rectangular box with tiny holes from which poured out glorious radio music that was finally under my control.

Like the title of the first song that came out of that radio when I turned the dial, I was on "Top of the World". The Carpenters, featuring the angel-voiced Karen Carpenter, ruled early 1970s pop music and gave their smooth sound a country twang with this song:

When I wasn't in school or watching TV, this radio, and the ones to come in later years after it broke, were always near me. This was especially true in the summer, when I could take my radio outside. Many of my neighbors had their radios outside too, and strangers at the park and at the beach played their radios too.

Music was not as private an entertainment in the 1970s as it is today. Little earphones attached to wires existed, but they didn't work very well, and no one seemed to mind hearing other peoples' music, at least not in my childhood experience.

This song, the number one song of 1975, brings me right back to the summer of that year, running and playing in my neighborhood, swinging at the park, and running along the beach:

Another summer song that I assumed was about such afternoon happiness, I found out later was about, as we used to call it, "S-E-X"! A girl at my summer day camp explained the lyrics to me when I was nine.

While I had recently learned about the mechanics about making a baby from a book my mother gave me, the fact that a radio song was about that blew my mind! Could other radio songs also be about S-E-X?

This 1976 song, "Afternoon Delight", by Starland Vocal Band, is so catchy and makes me chuckle every time I hear it when I think about how it went right over my head until that day at summer camp:

When that summer was over and I began fourth grade, I used to walk nine blocks to school by myself. This shows you how long ago that was! I usually had a song in my head, and that year, 1976, I had the recently released song, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" in my head more than any other. It seemed it was constantly on the radio.

I don't think I even knew what Elton John and Kiki Dee looked like back then. This was way before MTV, and I didn't care what the singers looked like, especially when they sang such a fun song as this one, written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin:

That song's beat went perfectly with my small footsteps to school. That school year would be my last one in the city I'd lived in for six years. In the summer of 1977, my family moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a small town in Northern New Jersey.

By now, I was approaching eleven years old, and as I adjusted to louder, faster talking New Jersey kids and a new school, I had changing feelings to go along with what the school nurse called "your changing body". It was all very cringy, though we didn't use that word back then. My new friends and I mostly said, "Gross!"

For me, my childhood seemed to be slipping away, just as popular radio music was being taken over by disco. I didn't mind this, though. I was never a disco hater, especially when disco brought to my mind images of very attractive young men, like John Travolta, The Bee Gees, and their very cute little brother, Andy Gibb. I often practiced my disco dance moves in my bedroom to 1978's "Shadow Dancing":

Andy Gibb songs always take me back to a confusing time for me, and also probably for the American music industry. People must have wondered how long disco would rule the airwaves, and if rock and roll would ever rule again. I like both, and it wouldn't be long before rock and roll would come back to radio. That wouldn't happen until I was in high school.

I will leave you with a radio song that my best friend in sixth grade introduced me to. In fact, she introduced me not only to this song, but to this amazing artist who is still going strong, and his then new album, 52nd Street. It is Billy Joel's "Honesty", released in 1978. Its sorrowful melody and sincere delivery is haunting to me still, and puts me back in my friend's bedroom late at night when I would be there for "sleepovers".

When my best friend and I weren't giggling about my poster of John Travolta or hers of Scott Baio and Shaun Cassidy, we were listening to Billy Joel, as we approached the end of the 1970s, a decade like no other in music in terms of complexity and diversity.

Not only did I have the above songs on my radio, I had artists such as The Jackson Five, Sonny and Cher, and The Osmonds to watch on TV. I am lucky to have had this music as the soundtrack of my childhood.