This Week In 1975 Had A Top 5 Unlike Anything Before Or Since

A seven-day period in late September 1975 goes down in pop chart history for having the single most varied Top 5 on record. The 1970s were an explosively creative and disparate time for mainstream music. There seemed to be something for everyone, and everyone seemed to be buying a lot of records. So many genres and sub-genres enjoyed peak moments in the '70s, including singer-songwriter confessional rock, soft rock, power pop, reggae, punk, disco, new wave, hard rock, arena rock, heavy metal, funk, and country. The main, all-encompassing chart of the era was Billboard's Hot 100, and that variety and breadth were well-represented throughout its many positions. 

But nowhere did it get more dizzyingly envelope-pushing than at the Top 5 of the Hot 100 in Billboard's September 20, 1975 issue. All five songs are completely unlike each other, and everything else that could be heard on the radio at that time. It's both a time capsule of 1975, with its songs that define rock history, and proof for an argument that the '70s is music's best decade ever.

Billboard maintains many music charts, including The Hot 100, which started back in 1958 with the toxic love song "Poor Little Fool" as its first modern No. 1 hit. That list is a snapshot of the 100 most popular songs in a given week according to radio play, sales, and since 2007, streaming numbers, and in Billboard's September 20, 1975 issue, the five highest songs on the Hot 100 demonstrated just how multi-faceted pop music could be.

Rock legend David Bowie made it to the No. 1 position for the first time with "Fame." The week of Sept. 20, 1975, Bowie's foray into funk (with low-key support vocals from John Lennon) spent one of its two weeks at No. 1. At No. 2 was "Rhinestone Cowboy," a glitzy, modern country song with strings by Glen Campbell. Coming in at No. 3 that fateful week: "At Seventeen" by folk singer Janis Ian. So quiet and slight that it's barely there, Ian tells a sad story about being a painfully lonely teenage misfit. "I'm Sorry," one of the best John Denver songs that isn't "Take Me Home, Country Roads," came next at No 4, and it's a sweeping apology song from the country-folk singer-songwriter. Rounding out the Top 5, almost inexplicably: musically and politically hard-hitting classic soul. The Isley Brothers' "Fight the Power Part 1." Never before and never since, so far, has the Top 5 demonstrated such a breadth of creative styles.