In 1970, Billboard magazine published a chart ranking the top-performing songs in the United States in the easy listening market. The chart, which in 1970 was entitled Easy Listening, has undergone various name changes and has been published since 1996 under the title Adult Contemporary. [1] In 1970, 16 songs topped the chart based on playlists submitted by easy listening radio stations and sales reports submitted by stores. [1]
In the issue of Billboard dated January 3, the number one position was held by "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" by B. J. Thomas, which was in its third week in the top spot, [2] and in the same week moved in the top spot on Billboard's pop chart, the Hot 100. [3] It remained atop the Easy Listening chart for the first four weeks of the year before being replaced by "Without Love (There Is Nothing)" by the Welsh singer Tom Jones. Thomas and Jones returned to number one later in the year with "I Just Can't Help Believing" and "Daughter of Darkness", respectively, and were two of the four acts to achieve two Easy Listening number ones in 1970. Elvis Presley reached the top spot with both "The Wonder of You" and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and the Carpenters had number ones with both "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun". The former song was the breakthrough release for the Carpenters, also topping the Hot 100 and launching a period of international stardom for the brother-sister duo. [4] [5] After spending six weeks in the top spot of the Easy Listening chart in July and August with "(They Long to Be) Close to You", the Carpenters spent a further seven weeks at number one in October and November with "We've Only Just Begun", the longest unbroken run of the year atop the chart. The duo's total of 13 weeks spent at number one was the most by any act in 1970.
In April, the Beatles achieved their first and only number one on the Easy Listening chart with "Let It Be". [6] Although the British quartet had achieved huge success in the United States, spearheading the so-called British Invasion of the American market, [7] [8] few of their songs had been popular on easy listening radio; "Let it Be" was only their third song to appear on the chart. [6] Within days of the song topping the chart, Paul McCartney announced his departure from the group, instigating a split which was complete by the end of the year, bringing to an end the career of a band widely regarded as the most successful and influential of all time. [9] [10] [11] "Let It Be" also topped the Hot 100, as did "Bridge over Troubled Water" by Simon & Garfunkel and "Everything Is Beautiful" by Ray Stevens. [12] The final Easy Listening number one of the year was "It's Impossible" by Perry Como, which held the top spot for the final four weeks of 1970.
† | Indicates number one on Billboard's year-end easy listening chart for 1970 [13] |
"Touch Me When We're Dancing" is a song written by Terry Skinner, J. L. Wallace and Ken Bell. Skinner and Wallace headed the Muscle Shoals, Alabama session group Bama, who first recorded this song and released it as a single in 1979 reaching number 42 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart and number 86 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song was later recorded by The Carpenters in 1981 for their Made in America album. In 1984, it was recorded by country music artists Mickey Gilley and Charly McClain for their 1984 duet album It Takes Believers and in 1986 by the country music group Alabama.
"There! I've Said It Again" is a popular song written and published by Redd Evans and David Mann in 1941. In early 1945, Vaughn Monroe and his Orchestra released Victor 20-1637, which reached the number one position on the Billboard's National Radio Airplay chart for five straight weeks, then no.2 for six more weeks, and a total run of 29 weeks. It finished 1945 as the no. 4 record of the year.
"My Melody of Love" is the title of a popular song from 1974 by the American singer Bobby Vinton. Vinton adapted his song from a German schlager song composed by Henry Mayer, and it appears on Vinton's album Melodies of Love. The song was also recorded by Spanish pop singer Karina as "Palabras de Cristal".
Andy Williams' Dear Heart is the sixteenth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams and was released in the spring of 1965 by Columbia Records and was the last of his Columbia releases that remained exclusively within the realm of traditional pop. After covering two Beatles hits on his next non-holiday studio album, The Shadow of Your Smile, he would try out samba music on In the Arms of Love, aim for a much younger crowd with "Music to Watch Girls By" on Born Free, and focus more on contemporary material on subsequent albums.
The Andy Williams Show is the twenty-sixth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was released in the fall of 1970 by Columbia Records. In his review on AllMusic.com, William Ruhlmann writes that "The Andy Williams Show LP was not a soundtrack recording from the TV series, and it was not really a live album, although it gets categorized as such. What appears to be the case is that Columbia Records took a group of Williams' studio recordings, most of them made during the summer of 1970 and consisting of his versions of recent soft rock hits, and added a lot of canned applause along with some of the kind of musical interludes used to usher numbers on and off on the show, including bits of its "Moon River" theme music at the start and the finish."
Love Story is the twenty-seventh studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was released on February 3, 1971, by Columbia Records. This was another in his series of cover albums, but the title track, subtitled "Where Do I Begin", was the one song included that he originated.
You've Got a Friend is the twenty-eighth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams, released in August 1971 by Columbia Records. The album bears a striking resemblance to the Johnny Mathis album You've Got a Friend released that same month. Besides sharing their name, the two albums are both made up of covers of easy listening hits of the time, with 11 songs each, and the two albums have seven songs in common that are positioned in a similar order.
You've Got a Friend is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on August 11, 1971, by Columbia Records. The phrase "Today's Great Hits" can be found above the title on both sides of the record jacket as well as both sides of the LP label as if to emphasize that this is essentially an album covering songs that were recently on the charts. This was a common practice of many vocalists of the period, so much so in fact that fellow Columbia artist Andy Williams also released an album titled You've Got a Friend in August 1971 on which he coincidentally covers seven of the 11 tracks that Mathis recorded for this album.
Feelings is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on October 20, 1975, by Columbia Records and strayed slightly from the singer's usual practice of covering hits by other artists by including two new songs, both written by Jerry Fuller: "Hurry Mother Nature" and "That's All She Wrote", which Ray Price took to number 34 on the Country chart the following spring.
I Only Have Eyes for You is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on May 10, 1976, by Columbia Records and included two new songs, "Yellow Roses on Her Gown" and "Ooh What We Do", which was written specifically for him, as well as a contemporary arrangement of the 1934 title track that foreshadowed his recordings of standards that incorporated a disco beat a few years later.