September
1978
Willis wanted real words instead of ba-dee-ya; White refused, and the groove outlived any lyric she could have written.
★ 8.3
Browse by time · year
1978
Showing 85 works across all media from 1978
Darkness on the Edge of Town
1978
Three years of litigation kept Springsteen out of a studio, and when he got back in he gave away most of the catchy songs.
★ 8.2
I Will SurviveGloria Gaynor
I Will Survive
1978
Buried as a B-side until DJs flipped it, and Gaynor cut the vocal in a back brace after spinal surgery.
★ 8.1
The Deer Hunter
Directed by Michael Cimino
1978
Cimino spends a whole first act on a steel town and a wedding, so that when the war arrives it lands on people you already know by name.
★ 8.0
Heart of Glass
1978
A demo kicked around since the mid-seventies, rebuilt on a Roland drum machine that appalled their punk friends.
★ 7.9
I Wanna Be Sedated
1978 · From Road to Ruin
Joey wrote it stranded in a shut-down London at Christmas, and Johnny's solo is one note, repeated.
★ 7.6
Roxanne
1978 · From Outlandos d'Amour
Copeland turned Sting's bossa nova into a tango, and the piano clang at the top was an accident they kept.
★ 7.6
One Nation Under a Groove
1978 · From One Nation Under a Groove
Clinton, Shider and Junie Morrison cut it at United Sound; six weeks at R&B number one, 1978's longest run.
★ 7.4
White Man in Hammersmith Palais
1978
Strummer expected roots rebellion at an all-night Palais reggae bill, got showbiz, and slipped reggae bass into punk.
★ 7.2
Miss You (The Rolling Stones)
1978 · From Some Girls
Four-on-the-floor from a Billy Preston jam, harmonica by Sugar Blue, found busking in Paris, and their last American number one.
★ 7.1
Kolyma Tales
1978 · 508 pages
Shalamov spent seventeen years in the Kolyma camps. His stories are short, about frostbite and stolen bread and men too weak to lift a shovel, and he insists that suffering teaches nothing.
★ 7.1
Because the Night
1978 · From Easter
Springsteen abandoned the demo, Iovine passed Smith the cassette, and she wrote the verses waiting on a phone call.
★ 7.0
Orientalism
1978 · 394 pages
Western scholarship on the East was never neutral, Said argues: scholars and novelists built an exotic, backward Orient that empire could claim to govern. He upended how the West studies everyone it ruled.
★ 7.0
(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding?
1978 · From Armed Forces
Nick Lowe wrote it for a pub-rock flop, produced Costello's B-side version, then got rich when The Bodyguard covered it.
★ 7.0
The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything...it's Forty-two.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy · 1978
A Distant Mirror
The Calamitous 14th Century
1978 · 704 pages
Tuchman holds the fourteenth century up as a mirror to our own: plague killing a third of Europe, a war without end, and one French nobleman whose life ran through all of it.
★ 6.8
Life
A User's Manual
1978 · 661 pages
Take the facade off a Paris apartment house: Perec fills every room with a life and threads them around an Englishman whose fifty-year project is designed to leave no trace on the world.
★ 6.8
The Last Waltz
Directed by Martin Scorsese
1978
A rock concert storyboarded like a feature and shot on 35mm by seven camera crews: The Band's 1976 farewell is the concert film everything else gets measured against.
★ 6.8
Rock Lobster
1978 · From The B-52s
A baritone Mosrite missing its two middle strings, and a party record that talked Lennon out of retirement.
★ 6.7
Who Are YouThe Who
Who Are You
1978 · From Who Are You
Townshend woke in a Soho doorway after drinking with two Sex Pistols, and Keith Moon's last album took the title.
★ 6.7
This Year's Model
1978
Costello had been working as a computer operator two years earlier. The sleeve was printed deliberately off-center with the camera and tripod showing.
★ 6.7
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
1978 · 470 pages
Human beings want what other people want, Girard argues, and communities discharge the violence by killing one arbitrary victim together. Myth hides that murder. The Gospels expose it by calling the victim innocent.
★ 6.7
SurrenderCheap Trick
Surrender
1978
Two deliberate key changes raise the temperature under a teenager discovering his parents are cooler than he is.
★ 6.6
Beast of Burden
1978 · From Some Girls
A thank-you note to Jagger for shouldering the band, by Richards' account, with Wood taking the solo.
★ 6.5
Delirious New York
1978 · 320 pages
Manhattan built itself without a theory, so Koolhaas supplied one afterward: the grid, the skyscraper, and Coney Island as a culture of congestion. He turned density from planning's disease into architecture's ambition.
★ 6.5
Last Dance
1978
Jabara reportedly locked Summer in a hotel bathroom with a cassette until she agreed; it won the Academy Award.
★ 6.4
One Nation Under a Groove
1978
The title track runs sixteen minutes and was cut with the band playing together in the room, audience noise dubbed on afterward.
★ 6.4
Is This Love (Bob Marley)Bob Marley and the Wailers
Is This Love (Bob Marley)
1978 · From Kaya
Kaya's warmest track went top ten in Britain, and its London video gave a young Naomi Campbell her debut.
★ 6.4
The Last Waltz
1978
Martin Scorsese shot it with seven cameras and a written shot list keyed to the lyrics. Neil Diamond and Muddy Waters both turn up.
★ 6.3
Radio RadioElvis Costello
Radio Radio
1978 · From This Year's Model
Booked after the Sex Pistols' visas fell through, Costello halted his SNL performance mid-song to play this unreleased attack instead.
★ 6.3
Animal House
Directed by John Landis
1978
Made for three million and returned more than a hundred: every campus comedy since is a footnote to it, and John Belushi carries whole scenes with almost no dialogue.
★ 6.2
Take a Chance on Me
1978 · From Gold: Greatest Hits
Ulvaeus chanted "tck-a-ch" to pace his jogging; it became the a cappella hook on ABBA's seventh UK number one.
★ 6.2
Superman
Directed by Richard Donner
1978
Warner promised audiences they would believe a man could fly, and they did: Christopher Reeve plays both halves so completely that a pair of glasses becomes a plausible disguise.
★ 6.1
★ 6.0
Running on EmptyJackson Browne
Running on Empty
1978
Cut live at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 1977, David Lindley's lap steel riding a song Browne wrote on his commute.
★ 5.9
Is She Really Going Out With Him?
1978
Graham Maby's bass carries the whole thing, a 1978 flop until reissue, and Jackson insisted it was a funny song.
★ 5.8
The Snow Leopard
1978 · 368 pages
Months after his wife's death, Matthiessen walks deep into the Nepalese Himalaya with a biologist counting blue sheep, studying Zen as he goes and watching for a snow leopard he never sees.
★ 5.6
Hold the Line
1978
Paich's pounding piano intro, Porcaro's triplet hi-hat, and Lukather's solo, all on a debut single that hit number five.
★ 5.2
52nd Street
1978
Joel brought in jazz session players and a horn section, and this became the first album anywhere to be released commercially on compact disc.
★ 5.1
God and the Astronomers · 1978
Hot BloodedForeigner
Hot Blooded
1978
One riff played idly in Jones's apartment, and Gramm making him stop and play it again.
★ 5.0
Outlandos d'Amour
1978
Made in scraps of studio time for about fifteen hundred pounds, and Roxanne is named after a poster the band walked past in Paris.
★ 5.0
Waiting for Columbus
1978
Tower of Power's horn section joined them for these shows, and a good deal of it was quietly fixed in the studio afterwards.
★ 4.8
Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?
1978 · From Blondes Have More Fun
Stewart heard Jorge Ben's Taj Mahal at Rio Carnival, absorbed the melody unwittingly, and signed the royalties over to UNICEF.
★ 4.5
Mona Lisa (Botero)
1978 · Location unknown
Botero inflated the most famous face in the world until the little mouth vanished into acres of cheek. Affectionate rather than cruel.
★ 4.4
Grease
Directed by Randal Kleiser
1978
It was the highest-grossing musical ever made for more than twenty years: John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John are both obviously too old for high school, and it has never mattered.
★ 4.0