1974 in Music

A conductor dressed as Napoleon At the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton on April 6, the Swedish entry is introduced by a conductor in full Napoleonic costume, complete with bicorne hat. The song is called Waterloo, and it was almost called Honey Pie. The four performers, two couples who happen to be married to each other, have been entering Swedish competitions since 1971 without international success. This time the English-language version wins. The single tops charts across Europe and cracks the American top ten. The group will become the best-selling act of the decade.

A comeback at the address on the album cover A guitarist who disappeared into heroin addiction for three years returns to the same Miami studio where he made his most celebrated record. The album is named after the house where he stays during sessions, right there on the Florida coast. His cover of a Jamaican reggae song hits number one on the Billboard Hot 100, introducing millions of American listeners to a songwriter from Trenchtown they have never heard of. The reggae original had stalled. The cover makes it iconic.

A song written on a single night, recorded around a hospital bed The lead guitarist of a young British band contracts hepatitis from a contaminated inoculation needle and is hospitalized for weeks. The other three members keep recording, leaving gaps in the arrangements for solos he has not yet played. The singer, meanwhile, writes a song in one sitting about a high-class woman, equal parts Noel Coward and hard rock. It reaches number two in the UK and becomes their first American hit. When the guitarist recovers, he overdubs his parts and the album is finished in four studios across two months.

The Bowery gets a stage A country-bluegrass-blues bar on the Bowery in lower Manhattan has no stage until a young band convinces the owner to build one. Their first show there is March 31. Two weeks later, a poet and her guitarist are in the audience. By summer, a second band, four friends who all share the same fake surname, begins a residency. They will play the club seventy-four times before the year ends. None of these bands have record deals. None of them sound like anything on the radio. The venue's booking policy, originally limited to country and bluegrass acts, expands permanently.

Forty shows in forty-two days A songwriter who has not toured in eight years returns to the road in January with a five-piece band he once shared a house with in Woodstock. The tour covers twenty-one cities in six weeks, every show sold out. At the Chicago opener, the first song is an unreleased track from the early 1960s. Professional tapes roll at four different venues. A live double album follows in June. Then the songwriter retreats to a New York studio in September and begins recording the most painful album of his career, cutting through songs so fast that the hired session band cannot keep up and is dismissed after one day.

A concept album about a Puerto Rican kid on 42nd Street A band retreats to an 18th-century poorhouse in Hampshire to write, then records in a Welsh barn using a mobile studio. The singer insists on writing every lyric himself and disappears for weeks to work on a film screenplay that never gets made. His daughter is born during sessions. The double album tells the surreal story of a young man wandering through Times Square. It is the singer's last record with the band. The tensions that began in a barn will become a formal departure by the following summer.

A B-side that became the first disco hit Two members of a Florida sunshine band write and record a backing track in forty-five minutes as a throwaway demo. It is meant to be a B-side. A singer who happens to be visiting the studio adds his falsetto vocal. The record uses a drum machine, one of the first pop singles to do so. It spends two weeks at number one on the Hot 100 and three weeks at number one in Britain. The groove, mechanical and warm at the same time, becomes a template. Nobody is calling it disco yet, but the DJs in New York loft parties know exactly what it is.

The autobahn as instrument Two musicians in Dusseldorf purchase their first portable synthesizer early in the year and begin recording at their home studio and at a farmhouse outside Cologne. The centerpiece is a twenty-two-minute track that imitates the experience of driving on a German highway: the hum of tires, the doppler shift of passing cars, a melody that floats above pulsing electronic sequences. No drums are played by hand. The rhythm comes from modified preset drum machines. Released in November, the album points toward a future where the entire band is electronic. An edited single version will become an international hit the following year.

Two number ones on the same day A country singer from Locust Ridge, Tennessee claims she wrote her two most famous songs on the same afternoon. One is a plea to a rival, inspired by a red-haired bank clerk who flirted with her husband. The other is a farewell to her longtime mentor and duet partner, a goodbye so gentle it barely raises its voice. Both reach number one on the country charts in 1974. Eighteen years later, the farewell song will be re-recorded by another singer and become one of the best-selling singles in history.

A nervous breakdown captured on tape A guitarist decides to disband his group before their new album is even recorded. He describes suffering a nervous breakdown during sessions at Olympic Studios in London, withdrawing his creative opinion entirely and leaving the bassist and drummer to direct the recording. The violinist is not told he is being fired until the day before sessions begin. Guest horn players are brought in to fill the space left by a disintegrating lineup. The resulting album is dense, distorted, and furious, the heaviest thing the band has ever made. It is released in October as a headstone for a group that no longer exists.

Robert Mapplethorpe pays for the session A photographer puts up the money for his friend to record her first single at a Greenwich Village studio on June 5. The A-side is a spoken-word piece laid over a rock arrangement. The B-side describes the dehumanizing monotony of factory work in South Jersey. One guitarist in the session also plays in the band that convinced the Bowery bar owner to build a stage. A thousand copies are pressed on a private label. It is the first record of what will soon be called punk, and it costs one photographer's fee to make.

A stutter that was never supposed to be released A Canadian guitarist writes a song as a private joke for his brother, who has a speech impediment. He deliberately stutters through the vocal, never intending it for public release. Radio stations somehow get hold of the album track and begin playing it. The songwriter is embarrassed, calling it a stupid song. It reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in November. The band's third album tops the chart in both the US and Canada.