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The 75 Best Albums of 1975

Disco, punk, reggae, and metal were rising, and artists from Patti Smith to P-Funk to Willie Nelson were kicking out classics

By ROLLING STONE
Photo collage of 1975 albums

America was a mighty weird place in 1975 — but music was the weirdest thing about it. The entire culture was changing fast. It was the year Jaws invented the Hollywood blockbuster. Saturday Night Live revolutionized TV comedy. The Feds finally caught up with fugitive Patty Hearst. Muhammad Ali crushed Joe Frazier at the Thrilla in Manila. The Vietnam War ended. Cher married Gregg Allman, then filed for divorce nine days later — a record even by Seventies standards.

You could stay home with your brand new Pet Rock to watch The Jeffersons, Starsky and Hutch, All in the Family, or Welcome Back, Kotter. Or you could go to the movies to see Dog Day Afternoon, Nashville, or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The Big Red Machine beat the Red Sox in the World Series. Your mood ring turned to purple. Rod Stewart snuggled with Britt Ekland on the cover of the Rolling Stone. New York City was in its “Ford to City: Drop Dead” era. Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft. Mary Tyler Moore had a bad day at the funeral of Chuckles the Clown. Judy Blume published Forever. Everybody on the dance floor was doing the Hustle.

On your radio, the year’s biggest hit was the Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together.” We got timeless rock classics by legends like Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young. We got cosmic funk from Parliament-Funkadelic. Freddie Mercury set a new record for the most Galileos in one song. Disco, punk, reggae, and metal were rising. Willie Nelson transformed outlaw country with Red Headed Stranger. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac. Kiss became superstars with Alive!

So let’s break it down: the 75 best albums of 1975, complete with a playlist of key tracks from each LP. Some of these albums are famous classics beloved around the world. Others are cult favorites, buried treasures, rarities, or one-shots. We’ve got prog, dub, Afrobeat, German art rock, soul, pop trash, jazz, honky-tonk, Brazilian psychedelia, KC and the Sunshine Band. Some were blockbuster hits; others flopped. But one thing these 1975 albums share: They all sound fantastic in 2025. So as they say in Rocky Horror: Let’s do the time warp again.

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31

Kiss, ‘Alive!’

To experience the power of Kiss in the early days, you had to see them live. That’s why their first two records in 1974 failed to rise higher than Number 87 on the Billboard 200 even as their shows were drawing large crowds all across the country. That’s why the band decided to capture the power of their gigs on the 1975 concert LP Alive!, showcasing songs like “Black Diamond” and “Strutter” that felt comparatively flat on record. And though record buyers couldn’t see the show’s pyro or blood spitting when listening to Alive!, the raw energy still came through. It created lifelong Kiss fans and moved the band forever into arenas. Many sequels to Alive! were recorded over the years, but none stand up to the original. And yes, they heavily doctored the Alive! tapes in the studio. This was commonplace at the time, and done skillfully in this instance. —A.G.

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30

KC and the Sunshine Band, ‘KC and the Sunshine Band’

One of the greatest disco albums ever made, dedicated to the principle that “do a little dance” plus “make a little love” is all you need. KC and the Sunshine Band were Miami funkateers led by Harry Wayne “KC” Casey and Richard Finch, the house band at the pioneering disco label TK Records. “Get Down Tonight” was the first of their five Number One hits, tantric repetition with guitar hero Jerome Smith and drummer Robert Johnson slamming it home. “It had that strange, mystical feeling,” Casey said, “a feeling I had never felt before.” They sped up the tape so the high-pitched guitar comes on like a swarm of bees. They keep the party going with “That’s the Way (I Like It),” “Boogie Shoes,” and “I Get Lifted.” That’s the way — uh huh, uh huh — the whole world liked it. —R.S.

29

Kraftwerk, ‘Radio-Activity’

Global audiences discovered Kraftwerk for the first time through “Autobahn,” a whirling electronic jaunt that became an unexpected novelty hit in early 1975. That left them unprepared for the austere and enigmatic Radio-Activity, a concept album centered on communication through sound waves. “Like most concept albums, it’s loaded with dead spots,” read a contemporaneous Rolling Stone review that also described several album cuts as “plain stupid.” Other listeners marveled at how Kraftwerk transformed its kosmiche musik into haunting melodies swathed in strange percussive noises as well Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter’s simple yet evocative vocals. Countless acts from U.K. synth-pop Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark to French house duo Daft Punk found inspiration in this minimalist gem, one that imagined synthesized transmissions, not rock & roll guitars, would be the sound of the future. —M.R.

28

Funkadelic, ‘Let’s Take It to the Stage’

George Clinton was on fire in 1975, as his P-Funk empire cranked out three masterworks by both of his bands. Let’s Take It to the Stage isn’t a live album, despite the title — just Funkadelic at their hardest, rocking out in “Good to Your Earhole” and “Better by the Pound.” It’s the tightest album either Funkadelic or Parliament ever made. The Funk Mob guitar crew — Eddie Hazel, Garry Shider, Michael Hampton — go nuts all over the album. Clinton — or as he calls himself in the credits, the “Maggot Overlord” — makes the title tune a diss track, taking shots at the rival bands he accuses of faking the funk, like “Fool and the Gang” or “Earth, Hot Air, and No Fire.” “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” (rhymes with “Shit! Goddamn!”) is only two minutes long, but it’s a mission statement for the whole Parliafunkadelicment Thang. —R.S.

27

Aerosmith, ‘Toys in the Attic’

The Bad Boys from Boston claimed their place in America’s high-school parking lots with Toys in the Attic, the Live at the Apollo of Seventies dirtbag rock. Every detail was perfect: the guitar attack of Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, the muscle-car funk of Joey Kramer and Tom Hamilton, the nonstop sleaze yabber of madman poet Steven Tyler. The album jumps right out with the Ramones-velocity whiplash of “Toys in the Attic,” then crashes into the Biblical blues goof “Adam’s Apple,” the proto-rap “Walk This Way,” the sex strut “Sweet Emotion.” But the peak is “No More No More,” the ultimate Aerosmith existential statement on the endless quest of playing in a rock & roll band. “Ain’t seen the daylight since I started this band,” Tyler laments, before Perry takes over at the end to tell his side of the story in a magnificently scuzzy elegy of a solo. —R.S.

26

David Bowie, ‘Young Americans’

“It doesn’t look good for America,” David Bowie said in 1975. “They let people like me trample all over their country.” Young Americans was the Thin White Duke’s valentine to Philly soul — but ironically, this was the album that made him a bona fide star in the U.S., even though he mocked his own record as “plastic soul.” He scored a Number One hit with “Fame,” while venting his tormented emotions in “Win” and the title song, where he drops to his knees to plead, “Ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cryyyyy?” One of the backup singers was a kid Bowie overheard humming in the hallway; Bowie recruited him on the spot and gave him his first job. The kid’s name? Luther Vandross. By the end of 1975, Bowie was on Soul Train with Don Cornelius, lip-synching “Fame.” Is it any wonder? —R.S.

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