5 Rock Songs From The '70s That Aged Terribly

It really is remarkable how much rock music from the 1970s — a decade that commenced more than half a century ago — still has the power to move modern audiences. Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" is still as adrenaline-inducing as arena rock gets. Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir?" It doesn't get much heavier than that even decades later. And try to find a person in the western world who isn't ready at all times to join in and sing along to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

But five decades is a long time, and tastes, culture, and politics move can shift a lot in such a long period, especially as technology has advanced. It goes without saying that a significant amount of music that was popular in the 1970s has lost its appeal to modern listeners, for one reason on another. In some cases, lyrics can become problematic to the point of feeling offensive, or else other elements in the song can sound incredibly, cringeworthily outdated. At the other end of the spectrum, some songs can end up being victims of their own success; having been replayed to death over the years, they have utterly lost their edge or been reduced to rock cliché. Here are five once-respected '70s rock songs that don't quite hold up today.

The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar," which was first released as a single in 1971, was for a long time held in great esteem among Rolling Stones fans and rock listeners in general as one of the band's greatest songs. Having hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May of that year — their sixth single to do so — the song became a stalwart of The Rolling Stones' stage shows for decades after. The song's infectious riffs continued to resonate with crowds well into the 21st century.

However, the song is also deeply problematic from a modern perspective. Beginning with the lyrics "Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields," the song goes on to describe a Black woman, presumably an African-American slave, whom the narrator describes as being as sweet as "brown sugar," noting that she tastes "just like a Black girl should." Whips, a common weapon of slave-owners, also feature in the original line "hear him whip the women just around midnight." The song openly fetishizes Blackness as well as the relationship between a slave and slaver from a white perspective, and describes how "cold English blood runs hot" as a result. The Rolling Stones' singer and lyricist Mick Jagger made some efforts to change the line about whipping, but the song remained deeply problematic even then. After being played at nearly every show in the 50 years since it was released, it was finally dropped from The Rolling Stones' live sets in 2021, but with no promise that it won't be added in again.

This entry may be sacrilege to generations of rock fans, but Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," an epic 1971 ballad in three movements, arguably hasn't aged well. The British band is generally known for going big with their music, but "Stairway to Heaven," in many ways their defining track, is especially overblown. Let's start, however, with noting what is great about it. Opening with an atmospheric acoustic section, the song builds in momentum and power toward a hard rock climax that culminates in an iconic guitar solo before settling back into a contrasting acoustic ending, which seems especially poignant after the driving rhythms of Zeppelin's stellar rhythm section. Like many of Zeppelin's best songs, it takes you on a journey and creates a dramatic sense of having experienced something truly mystical.

But while the song may be Zeppelin's most famous composition and a defining song of the classic rock era, it has aged terribly due to its reputation for being a bit pretentious – and the fact that it's been overplayed to death. In fact, the song is said to be banned in many guitar stores, with staff sick of hearing budding musicians attempting to master Jimmy Page's famous riffs while testing out instruments in-store (the phenomenon may have originated in an amusing scene from the rock-comedy "Wayne's World," with Wayne being stopped from playing the song while buying a Fender Telecaster). While the performances of all four members of Led Zeppelin are extraordinary on the recording, for many listeners, years of radio replays and hearing sub-par bands attempting to replicate the piece has ruined the song. Even the band members themselves don't seem to hold it in such high regard, with vocalist and lyricist Robert Plant having expressed his dislike for "Stairway to Heaven" on several occasions.

Another huge rock banger from the 1970s that has lost its edge is Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water," a 1973 classic that no music lover could fail to recognize. In fact, that may be the main problem with it. The origin of "Smoke on the Water" has become part of rock lore. In 1971, the band was in Switzerland ready to record their next album at The Rolling Stones' Mobile Studio, which was to be installed in a casino in Montreux. However, the night before the sessions were due to begin, the casino hosted a Frank Zappa concert, and was burnt down after an attendee let off a flare which set fire to the building. Deep Purple were forced to relocate, but penned "Smoke on the Water" about the fire, which occurred on the shores of Lake Geneva.

The most famous feature of the song is undoubtedly Ritchie Blackmore's iconic guitar part, a catchy, chromatic riff that also has sing-along value at sports stadiums and elsewhere. It is one of the first things rookie guitarists attempt to master as it is relatively simple and universally known. And that ubiquity is arguably its downfall; the song is so visible in the pantheon of classic rock music that it has become a cliché which can be used to parody the genre it exemplifies. And once again, the band themselves don't even take their most famous creation that seriously. As bassist Roger Glover told Louder: "In retrospect, 'Smoke On The Water' is pretty hilarious. It's like writing a song about any mundane daily activity: 'I went to the grocery store / To buy some cheeeese.'"

Now we move on to soft rock — obscenely soft rock, by today's standards. From the late 1950s onward, Paul Anka made a name for himself as a songwriter and performer with prodigious talent. Among his greatest compositions are "My Way," the 1969 hit for Frank Sinatra and countless others since, and Tom Jones' "She's a Lady," which hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971. Those tracks are undoubtedly classics with wide appeal, but "(You're) Having My Baby," Anka's 1974 single featuring both infuriatingly saccharine lyricism and the exasperating use of parentheses in the title itself, just isn't a winner, despite holding a No. 1 spot on the ingles charts for three weeks following its release. To most modern ears, the song just sounds like sugary slush, despite the adequate and professional performance and production from those involved.

But why it really grates the nerves – and did for many even in the 1970s, despite its commercial success — is that it was tin-eared to the changing social landscape when it came to gender roles. Feminist activism was gathering steam in the 1970s, and Anka's use of the words "my baby" instead of "our baby" in the refrain seemed to signal all that was wrong in terms of gender dynamics. Still other lyrics appeared to alienate those who advocate pro-choice family planning. "(You're) Having My Baby" features prominently in many "worst songs of all time lists," but even without the insensitive angle, it's surely deserving of its place in them based on its saccharine sound alone.

Just like fashion or hairstyles, what is considered "sexy" can change drastically over the years. And while many once-fashionable things from the 1970s such as flared jeans and choker necklaces may be making a comeback in clothing stores, the sickly brand of light-hearted sexiness that permeates the Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" isn't so titillating in the world of music anymore. A soft country rock ditty that went to No. 1 for two weeks in 1976, the song is a skincrawling paean to daytime nookie, with lyrics that ask: "My motto's always been 'when it's right, it's right'/ Why wait until the middle of a cold, dark night?" 

The instrumental is inoffensive enough, but it's difficult to imagine how this song might get someone hot under the collar nowadays when compared to the funk and soul tunes from the same era that still pack a punch. Inexplicably, the song also won the Starland Vocal Band a Grammy for Best New Artist, but the two couples in the band had ironically divorced by the time the song was a hit, and the one-hit-wonders promptly vanished after winning. Even for those who can still find a little enjoyment in the song's playfully raunchy lyrics, the catchy tune itself is an earworm that may repeat in your head incessantly, turning an innocent "afternoon delight" into hours of torturous mental music.