Sometimes it’s appropriate to create an album title that stretches longer than a country mile. Something that slips off your tongue in the course of a near-minute. Other times, though, concision is what’s called for. Indeed, sometimes brevity is what’s best.
Here below, we wanted to highlight three occasions when the short won out over the long. Because when it comes to rock, why waste time? These are three classic rock albums from 1974 that we still totally stan today.
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‘Autobahn’ by Kraftwerk (1974)
The German-born electronic group Kraftwerk is known for its computer-created songs with all of their beeps and boops. But the band is so much more than that. They have impacted music in seminal ways, both in helping to create an electronic music movement and in the fact that their songs have been sampled and covered a great deal (see: Jay-Z’s “(Always Be My) Sunshine”, which samples Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love”). But Autobahn might just be the band’s best known album.
‘Kiss’ by Kiss (1974)
The debut studio album for the party rock band known for painting their faces, this LP includes a number of Kiss’ most well-known songs, including “Nothin’ To Lose”, “Firehouse”, and “Kissin’ Time”, which is a cover of a song originally by Bobby Rydell. From 1974 on, Kiss would be making headlines with pyrotechnics and bombastic live shows. It’s a career that would span 50-plus years and is, in many ways, still continuing today. That’s the power of a great debut.
‘Caribou’ by Elton John (1974)
In total, Elton John released a dozen albums in the 1970s—that’s an incredible number for anyone, especially someone who performs original work solo from behind a piano. And in the middle of the decade, the British-born artist released the 1974 LP, Caribou, which went on to rocket up the charts and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200. With two recognizable singles, including “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”, which hit No. 2 on the Hot 100, this album is one to dive into like an ocean and swim around it for a while.
Photo by David Redfern/Redferns
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