Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Directed by George Lucas
1977
Modern Hollywood begins here: Lucas told the oldest story there is inside a universe that looked used and lived in, and the blockbuster has run the business ever since.
★ 9.5
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1977
Showing 138 works across all media from 1977
Stayin' Alive
1977 · From Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
Barry Gibb's falsetto over a drum loop so metronomic that paramedics still use it to time chest compressions.
★ 9.4
I Feel LoveDonna Summer
I Feel Love
1977
Moroder's pulsing synth track, Summer floating above it, and the record Eno reportedly called the sound of the future.
★ 9.3
Rumours
1977
Two couples in the band were breaking up while they recorded, and kept writing songs about each other that the other had to sing.
★ 9.1
HeroesDavid Bowie
Heroes
1977 · From "Heroes"
Recorded beside the Berlin Wall, Fripp's feedback howling while Bowie sings himself hoarse over a single defiant day.
★ 9.1
Dreams (Fleetwood Mac)Fleetwood Mac
Dreams (Fleetwood Mac)
1977 · From Rumours
Nicks wrote it in a black velvet studio room at Sausalito's Record Plant; it remains the band's only US number one.
★ 8.9
Annie Hall
Directed by Woody Allen
1977
The romantic comedy has never recovered from it: Allen talks to the camera, walks into his own memories, drops subtitles over small talk, and breaks every rule the form had.
★ 8.8
Hotel CaliforniaThe Eagles
Hotel California
1977 · From Hotel California
Felder demoed it on a four-track in Malibu, and his Les Paul duels Walsh's Telecaster through the outro.
★ 8.8
Aja
1977
Becker and Fagen ran seven guitarists through the solo on Peg before they kept one, and worked the rest of the record the same way.
★ 8.7
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
1977
Sid Vicious barely plays on it, and a record shop was taken to court over the word bollocks and won.
★ 8.5
Go Your Own Way
1977 · From Rumours
Buckingham aimed Mick Fleetwood at the Street Fighting Man groove, then sang a breakup line Nicks demanded he cut.
★ 8.5
Song of Solomon
1977 · 337 pages
Hunting gold in the South, a rich man's bored son finds his family's history instead, hidden in a song children sing. Morrison turns it into myth: an African ancestor who flew home.
★ 8.4
God Save the QueenThe Sex Pistols
God Save the Queen
1977 · From Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
Written as "No Future," banned by the BBC, and stuck at number two amid loud suspicion of chart rigging.
★ 8.3
One LoveBob Marley and the Wailers
One Love
1977 · From Exodus
A 1965 Studio One ska tune rebuilt for Exodus, with Mayfield credited to keep the borrowing legal.
★ 8.3
We Will Rock You
1977 · From Greatest Hits
May came home from a Stafford gig where the crowd sang back, and built a chorus from stomps and claps.
★ 8.1
Trans Europa Express
1977
Kraftwerk's rhythm rode a train across Europe, name-checked Bowie and Iggy Pop, then turned up inside Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock.
★ 8.1
Marquee Moon
1977
The two guitars never play the same part, and the singer, Tom Verlaine, refused to double-track anything, so you hear what happened in the room.
★ 8.1
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1977
Spielberg made the rare first-contact film that treats the aliens as something to hope for: an ordinary man starts building a mountain in his living room and cannot say why.
★ 8.0
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope · 1977
We are the Champions
1977 · From Greatest Hits
Mercury wrote it with audience participation in mind, and a 2011 study named it the catchiest song in pop.
★ 7.7
The ChainFleetwood Mac
The Chain
1977 · From Rumours
Razor-blade tape splices turned rejected scraps into the one Rumours song credited to all five, McVie's bass ending it.
★ 7.7
Sir Duke
1977 · From Songs in the Key of Life
Wonder built it for Ellington after his death in 1974, then handed the melody to horns playing in unison.
★ 7.7
Lust for Life
1977
Bowie found the beat in an Armed Forces Network call sign; Hunt Sales hammered it out in Berlin.
★ 7.7
Exodus
1977
Marley made it in London after being shot at home in Jamaica, and side two is nothing but songs people still sing at weddings.
★ 7.6
American Girl
1977 · From Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Petty cut it on the Fourth of July, 1976, and Roger McGuinn heard the Byrds so clearly he covered it.
★ 7.6
Psycho Killer
1977 · From Talking Heads: 77
A ballad first, written at art school, until Weymouth's French bridge and bassline turned it feral.
★ 7.6
Marquee Moon
1977 · From Marquee Moon
Ten minutes captured in one take; Ficca thought it was a rehearsal and Verlaine refused Andy Johns another go.
★ 7.5
The PassengerIggy Pop
The Passenger
1977
Gardiner found the riff wandering under apple blossom, and Bowie sings behind Iggy at Hansa by the Wall.
★ 7.5
Flash LightParliament
Flash Light
1977
Bootsy passed on the bass part, so Worrell chained three Minimoogs together and gave Parliament its first R&B number one.
★ 7.5
Three Little BirdsBob Marley and the Wailers
Three Little Birds
1977 · From Exodus
Reportedly inspired by canaries at his Hope Road windowsill, cut in London, and the gentlest reassurance in reggae.
★ 7.4
Mr. Blue Sky
1977
Two weeks of Alpine fog broke, and Lynne wrote this and thirteen more songs, closing it with a vocoder.
★ 7.3
Alison
1977 · From My Aim is True
Costello glimpsed a supermarket checkout girl, Clover backed him before the Attractions existed, and one line titled his debut.
★ 7.2
On Photography
1977 · 224 pages
Taking a picture is a form of acquisition, close to aggression, Sontag argues, and a world drowning in images loses the power to feel them. You will not photograph casually again.
★ 7.1
A Time of Gifts
1977 · 321 pages
At eighteen in 1933 Fermor set off on foot from Holland for Constantinople, sleeping in barns one night and in castles the next, and caught central Europe in its last clear light.
★ 7.1
Lovely Day
1977
Withers holds the last note for eighteen seconds, Ray Parker Jr. plays guitar, and morning suddenly looks survivable.
★ 7.0
Like a HurricaneNeil Young
Like a Hurricane
1977 · From American Stars 'n Bars
Young wrote it on doctor-ordered voice rest, whistling the melody, then chased Sampedro's Stringman chords for eight electric minutes.
★ 7.0
How Deep Is Your Love
1977 · From Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
Seventeen weeks in the American top ten, and a ballad Stigwood refused to let them hand to Yvonne Elliman.
★ 6.9
White Riot
1977 · From The Clash
Strummer and Simonon were in the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival riot; the single ran under two minutes and reached thirty-eight.
★ 6.9
The Living Mountain
1977 · 176 pages
Summits barely register. Shepherd spent a lifetime in the Scottish Cairngorms and writes about going into the mountain rather than up it, attending to water and frost until the seeing becomes the point.
★ 6.9
Sound and Vision
1977 · From Low
The BBC ran its long instrumental intro under programme trailers, and Bowie's ultimate retreat song went to number three.
★ 6.8
Solsbury Hill
1977 · From Peter Gabriel
Seven-four time, Steve Hunter's Martin triple-tracked at three tape speeds, and Gabriel's first record after walking out of Genesis.
★ 6.8
The Hour of the Star
1977 · 81 pages
Macabéa is a half-starved typist from Brazil's Northeast, and the writer narrating her keeps stopping to ask what right he has to her poverty. Lispector makes that discomfort the whole book.
★ 6.8
Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
Various artists
1977
The Bee Gees wrote most of it in about two weeks in a French château, without having read the script or seen a frame.
★ 6.8
Pretty Vacant
1977 · From Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
Matlock's riff, lifted off ABBA's "SOS", and the sound of a generation deciding not to care.
★ 6.7
Watching the Detectives
1977 · From My Aim is True
Costello wrote it after a night with the first Clash album; Nieve's piano stalks it like Bernard Herrmann.
★ 6.6
Coming into the Country
1977 · 438 pages
Three Alaskas: a river trip above the Arctic Circle, the hunt for a new capital site, and the trappers of Eagle on the Yukon. Reporters have been studying McPhee's patience ever since.
★ 6.5
Blank GenerationRichard Hell and the Voidoids
Blank Generation
1977
A rewrite of a 1959 novelty called "The Beat Generation", with Quine and Julian's guitars turning parody into manifesto.
★ 6.4
Complete Control
1977
Lee Perry produced it after CBS released a single without the band's consent; Topper Headon's first Clash session.
★ 6.4
I Want You to Want Me
1977
Nielsen's studio take on In Color went nowhere; the live Japanese version, crowd and all, hit number seven.
★ 6.4
Brick House
1977
Drummer Walter Orange stepped out front, LaPread's bass line did the rest, and funk got a permanent floor-filler.
★ 6.4
Easy
1977
Richie traced that Sunday-morning ease to the small Alabama town he grew up in; the singer is walking away relieved.
★ 6.3
Sheena is a Punk RockerThe Ramones
Sheena is a Punk Rocker
1977 · From Rocket to Russia
Joey Ramone spliced a jungle-comics heroine with punk's primal charge, and Britain sent it to number twenty-two.
★ 6.3
Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel)
1977 · From The Stranger
Bebop alto player Phil Woods takes the solo, and the melody Joel dreamed won Record and Song of the Year.
★ 6.2
Birdland
1977
Zawinul named it for the club where he heard Basie, Ellington and Miles, then made an instrumental a hit.
★ 6.1
Woman at Point Zero
1977 · 128 pages
In an Egyptian prison a woman awaiting execution tells a psychiatrist her life: genital mutilation, forced marriage, prostitution, and the man she killed. El Saadawi drew it from a real condemned prisoner.
★ 6.0
Rich Girl
1977
Hall wrote it about a fast-food heir, changed Rich Boy to Rich Girl, and took the duo to number one.
★ 6.0
Best of My Love
1977
Maurice White and Al McKay wrote it, Earth Wind and Fire's rhythm section played it, and the Hutchinson sisters soared.
★ 6.0
Dispatches
1977 · 260 pages
Herr covered Vietnam for Esquire at twenty-seven and wrote the siege of Khe Sanh and the ruins of Hue at the pitch of a bad trip. Apocalypse Now took its narration from him.
★ 6.0
My Aim is True
1977
Costello recorded it on days off from his job at a cosmetics factory, backed by an American bar band that included Huey Lewis.
★ 6.0
The Thorn Birds · 1977
Dust in the Wind
1977
A fingerpicking exercise Livgren's wife overheard and told him to finish, now Kansas's only American top ten.
★ 5.9
Rocket to Russia
1977
They were openly chasing a hit single and never got one. The harmonies come straight off the girl-group records they grew up on.
★ 5.9
The Stranger
1977
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant is three unfinished songs stitched into one. The whistling at the start of the record is Joel himself.
★ 5.8
Holidays in the Sun
1977 · From Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
Marching boots open the record, and a collapsed Jersey holiday sent the band to Berlin for their subject.
★ 5.8
Margaritaville
1977
Norbert Putnam moved the sessions to Miami for the beachfront air, and Buffett turned one ruined afternoon into the chorus.
★ 5.7
Only the Good Die Young
1977 · From The Stranger
Liberty DeVitto hated reggae, so the demo's lilt became a shuffle; the radio bans only sold more copies.
★ 5.7
See No Evil
1977 · From Marquee Moon
Verlaine hired Andy Johns off Goats Head Soup, cut the two guitars to separate channels, and punk got counterpoint.
★ 5.7
Trenchtown RockBob Marley and the Wailers
Trenchtown Rock
1977
Self-produced by the Wailers, and the track that opened the Lyceum nights Island taped in July 1975.
★ 5.7
Wonderful Tonight
1977
Clapton wrote it on a Martin D-28 while Pattie Boyd got ready for a Buddy Holly party, by his account.
★ 5.7
Whole Lotta RosieAC/DC
Whole Lotta Rosie
1977 · From Let There Be Rock
Vanda and Young cut it at the Let There Be Rock sessions, reworking a 1976 outtake called Dirty Eyes.
★ 5.7
In Patagonia
1977 · 204 pages
Chatwin traveled Patagonia chasing a scrap of giant sloth skin from his grandmother's cabinet, and collected Welsh settlers, anarchists and Butch Cassidy. He remade travel writing into something as strange as fiction.
★ 5.6
A Rumor of War
1977 · 356 pages
Caputo landed at Da Nang in 1965 with the first American ground troops, eager for it. His tour ended with murder charges over two Vietnamese civilians his men shot, and he excuses nothing.
★ 5.6
Come Sail Away
1977
A piano ballad at first, then a synthesizer break, then guitars, angels and a starship headed skyward.
★ 5.5
Uptown Top Ranking
1977
Two Jamaican teenagers, seventeen and eighteen, answering Trinity over Alton Ellis's riddim, number one in Britain within months.
★ 5.3
A Lover's Discourse
Fragments
1977 · 234 pages
Waiting in a café for someone who does not come, rereading a letter, saying I love you and hearing it fail: Barthes breaks obsession into figures, each spoken in the lover's voice.
★ 5.2
A Scanner Darkly
1977 · 289 pages
An undercover narcotics agent is assigned to watch a suspect who is himself, and the drug splitting his brain hemispheres keeps him from noticing. Dick closes by naming the friends he lost.
★ 5.2
Learning to Labour
1977 · 336 pages
Working-class boys are not pushed into working-class jobs, Willis found: they choose them. Twelve lads at a Midlands comprehensive laugh their way through school and hand themselves to the factory floor.
★ 5.2
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
1977
Jankel lifted the bass figure from Ornette Coleman's "Ramblin'"; the BBC banned the single, and Peel played it anyway.
★ 5.1
Cold as Ice
1977
A piano riff hammered like a warning, written by Gramm and Jones, later sampled wholesale by M.O.P.
★ 5.0
Fatale
1977 · 98 pages
Aimee Joubert kills for hire. She arrives in a smug French seaside town, learns everyone's secrets over dinner, and sets the notables to destroying each other. Manchette writes crime as class war.
★ 4.9
Bridge to Terabithia
1977 · 144 pages
Jess can outrun everyone in fifth grade until Leslie moves in next door. They swing over a creek into Terabithia, the kingdom they rule together, and Paterson refuses to protect them from grief.
★ 4.8
Bat Out of Hell
1977
Every label turned it down, and Todd Rundgren produced it partly because he thought it was a parody. It has sold over forty million.
★ 4.5
Feels Like the First Time
1977
One of four songs on the demo that got Foreigner signed, and Gramm sang it at his audition.
★ 4.4
Little Drummer Boy, Peace on Earth
1977
Bowie balked at the carol, so writers built the Peace on Earth counterpoint in an hour; Crosby died weeks later.
★ 4.3
Father ChristmasThe Kinks
Father Christmas
1977
Ray Davies cut it at Konk in 1977, a department store Santa mugged by kids who want jobs, not toys.
★ 4.2
Slap Shot
Directed by George Roy Hill
1977
Real minor-league players filled most of the roster and three of them became the Hanson Brothers: Paul Newman coaches a dying team that discovers the crowd will pay for violence.
★ 4.1
Who's the more foolish? The fool or the fool that follows it?
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope · 1977
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints The sinners are much more fun
Only the Good Die Young · 1977
Baby Come Back
1977
Beckett and Crowley wrote it after two bandmates' breakups, and Lambert and Potter's production held number one for three weeks.
★ 3.6
The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope · 1977
The Green Fields of the Mind · 1977
The Spy Who Loved Me
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
1977
The ski jump off the cliff opening a parachute painted like a Union Jack is the single best Bond stunt: Roger Moore's finest hour, with Jaws and an underwater Lotus.
★ 3.1
Cross of Iron
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
1977
Sam Peckinpah's only war film, told entirely from the German side of the Eastern Front: Orson Welles called it the finest anti-war film since All Quiet on the Western Front.
★ 2.7
A Grin Without a Cat
Directed by Chris Marker
1977
Chris Marker assembled hours of the global left arguing with itself between 1967 and 1977: a chorus of narrators reads his commentary, and none of them is given the last word.
★ 2.0
Inaugural Address of Jimmy Carter · 1977
Annie Hall · 1977
Smokey and the Bandit · 1977