Music Entertainers
of the 70s

The seventies were a time when a new generation of young people were exposed to new media and hence newer ideas in almost every field. Elvis was still probably the biggest entertainer in the world in the 70´s and in 1973 he held the historic Hawaiian concert which was televised worldwide to almost 1.5 billion people in over 40 countries.

TV and motion picture brought to varied audiences images, lifestyles and music from diverse regions and peoples. This led to the emergence of a new vocabulary and experimentation in music. After the war the second generation of German musicians began experimenting with music, these included experimental classical music and the tradition of Krautrock or Kraut music, rooted in the experimental classical music.

This later influenced both art rock and progressive rock.
The main exponents of these genres include Genesis, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Pink Floyd. The experimental nature of progressive rock is exemplified in songs such as Pink Floyd's Echoes.





The seventies is also when many legendary rock bands started, or hit their peak, including The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Queen, U2, Black Sabbath, KISS, The Who, Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Van Halen. In Europe, there was a surge of popularity in the early decade for glam rock, thanks largely to the rise of T Rex, Gary Glitter and David Bowie, and bands like Slade and the Sweet.

We also saw the rise of Alternative Pop music with the soft, velvety tones of the brother and sister duo the Carpenters. The group went on the become the biggest selling artists of the decade (1970-1980).

Disco Dies in 1981

The commercial cinemas around the world tended to imitate nuances of disco beats in their movies to present their movies as western and upbeat. These included the increasingly popular Kung-fu movies in far East Asia and Bollywood movies from India.

One of the most successful European groups of the decade was the quartet ABBA. The Swedish group, who are still the most successful group from their country, first found fame when they won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. They became one of the most widely known European groups ever, and were the decade's biggest sellers. "Waterloo" and "Dancing Queen" are two of ABBA's most popular songs.



To many people, the Seventies will be most remembered for the rise in disco music. First creeping into dance clubs in the mid-seventies (with such hits as "The Hustle" by Van McCoy), songstresses like Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Dalida and Anita Ward popularized the genre and were described in subsequent decades as the "disco divas." The Village People scored a Top Ten hit with "Y.M.C.A." and the Bee Gees had a string of #1s following their collaboration on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.



As quickly as disco's popularity came, however, it fell out of favor with the new decade, and effectively died in 1981, with the popularity of New Wave bands such as Blondie and Devo, who both formed their respective bands in the seventies. Many of the aforementioned singers who became popular during the disco era found themselves out of tune with the 1980s, and were out of work for many years, until a renewed interest in disco brought many of them back to the forefront. Many songs from the disco era are still very popular dance hits and receive continuous airplay in nightclubs throughout the world.