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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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Patti Smith, ‘Horses’

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.” Has an album ever kicked off so startlingly great? Patti Smith was largely unknown when she dropped her debut, Horses, but it soon became the blueprint of punk rock — which she fused beautifully with her lifelong love of poetry. Smith flips a Van Morrison classic on its head (“Gloria”), reflects on poverty (the defiant “Free Money”), and drops a stunning, 10-minute odyssey packed with figures both real and literary (“Land”), all with the help of her incredible band: guitarist Lenny Kaye, pianist Richard Sohl, bassist Ivan Kral, and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, plus the Velvet Underground’s John Cale in the producer chair. The iconic black-and-white cover, in which Smith poses androgynously with a black coat over her shoulder, was shot by her Just Kids muse Robert Mapplethorpe. “I’m a girl doing what guys usually did,” she told Rolling Stone in 1976. “The way that I look, the goals and kinds of things I want to help achieve through rock.” Mission accomplished. —A.M.

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Bob Dylan, ‘Blood on the Tracks’

Bob Dylan shocked the world with Blood on the Tracks, the album where he sang in a fiery new adult voice — a man in pain, brooding over lost love, as he rambles on down the road. Nobody knew he still had this much passion in him. But Dylan made Blood on the Tracks while his marriage fell apart, singing “Tangled Up in Blue” with raw intensity. It was the ultimate rock comeback, reviving him after years of half-assed albums and depressingly polite tunes. But it’s also the ultimate breakup record. When you’re suffering a dose of heartache, nothing hits quite like hearing Dylan moan the desperate blues of “You’re a Big Girl Now” or snarl the bitter rage of “Idiot Wind” or accept his fate with the stoic generosity of “If You See Her, Say Hello.” He’s a Jack of Hearts getting kicked around by the simple twists of fate, as his boot heels go wandering from Delacroix to Montague Street, from San Francisco to Ashtabula, from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol. The way he sings the line “You’re gonna make me give myself a good talking-toooo” — he deserved the Nobel Prize for that alone.Blood on the Tracks was an immediate commercial and critical smash. “A lot of people told me they enjoyed that album,” Dylan said. “It’s hard for me to relate to that — I mean, people enjoying that type of pain.” But for the past 50 years, Blood on the Tracks has been an album people always turn to in hard times. Especially those moments when romance leaves you tangled up in blue, with a corkscrew in your heart.–R.S. 

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