3 Pop Songs From the 1970s That Will Actually Make You Smarter

Pop music in the 1970s had urgency. It boasted a message. While the artists wanted you to get up, dance, and shake your groove thang, they also wanted you to listen and pay attention to what they were saying.

That’s just what we wanted to explore below. We wanted to highlight three tracks from the era that sharpen your mind and your dancing skills. Indeed, these are three pop songs from the 1970s that will actually make you smarter.

“Superstition” by Stevie Wonder from ‘Talking Book’ (1972)

If there is one person alive who embodies music, it’s Stevie Wonder. He’s at the top of the list. And the song that’s most associated with the artist has to be his 1972 tune, “Superstition”. On the track, Wonder sings, “When you believe in things you don’t understand
Then you suffer.” Since when do you hear such profound ideas on a No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100? But that’s the power of Stevie Wonder. He not only gets you to move, but he gives you ideas to take with you for the rest of your life. Indeed, that lyric alone is enough to land “Superstition” on this list.

“I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor from ‘Love Tracks’ (1978)

Sometimes adding a little courage and fortitude to your bag of tricks is enough to constitute a rise in your intelligence, too. For what good are smarts if you’re too worried to use them? You have to adapt to a difficult world out there. And there might not be any song better to help you along your way than “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor from her 1978 LP, Love Tracks. If your knees ever feel wobbly. If your brain ever feels scared. If your spine ever feels like jelly—just listen to Gaynor. She will steady your mettle (and mental).

“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Diana Ross from ‘Diana Ross’ (1970)

Sometimes when we go through life, we think certain things are impossible. Who knows? If the right counter-argument never came our way, perhaps we’d always think this. But that’s where the 1970 single “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Diana Ross from her self-titled LP comes in. Ross reminds us—indeed, she teaches us the lesson again and again—that nothing is impossible. Nothing is out of reach. Perhaps more than any other, that’s what we need to learn to get through life.

(Photo by David Redfern/Redferns)