Famous Music
Groups From the 1970s
The 1970s produced several of the most famous bands in the history of music. Popular music of the 1970s ran the gamut from soft country rock to punk rock and there seems to have been one or two defining groups for each genre of music. Many of these bands continued to put out music even in the 21st century and their back catalogs continue to sell very well.
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac was one of the most popular bands of the 1970s. Fleetwood Mac was formed by Mick Fleetwood, Peter Green and John McVie and in their earliest incarnation they were a blues group in the 1960s. The band experienced some success with a more rock edge in the early 1970s, but it was with the addition of members Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham in the 1970s that they exploded into the public consciousness as a mainstream pop band. The band's most successful albums of the decade were Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, and Tusk. Some of their biggest hits of the 1970s were "Go Your Own Way," "Dreams" and "Sara."
The Eagles
The Eagles still hold the record for the biggest selling album in the United States of all time. According to the Recording Industry Association of America the best-selling album in U.S. history is Eagles Greatest Hits. Don Henley and Glenn Frey were the primary songwriters of the band. The full lineup of the band changed over the course of the decade with Bernie Leadon dropping out and Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit joining after the band had already become a success. Hotel California was the band's biggest studio album success and they had a number of hit singles over the decade including "Lyin' Eyes" and "Life in the Fast Lane."
ABBA
ABBA proved that a band from a foreign country besides England could enjoy spectacular success in the United States. Although this famous 1970s band hailed from Sweden they sang in English in pop songs that were perfect for dancing to in clubs around the country. The songs were also very big radio hits. The members of ABBA were Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog. Bjorn and Benny had known success prior to ABBA during the 1960s, but it would be winning the Eurovision Song Contest of 1974 that sent them and their fiancés into the stratosphere of worldwide success. The song that won the contest was "Waterloo" and it became just the first in a long line of worldwide hits that also included "Knowing Me, Knowing You" and "Dancing Queen."
