1974 OMAs: Album of the Year

Better than I expected

• The Divine Miss M, Bette Midler

If you only listen to one song:
"Living for the City" by Stevie Wonder (live)

The Divine Miss M
To be honest, the only thing I knew about Bette Midler was that she was famous because she was talented.^[1]

I'm not sure I like this album, but I'm impressed by it. It's a very good album.

Living For The City
"Living For The City" is an interesting song for 2020... it touches on employment discrimination and a judiciary that's biased against people of color^[2]. Innervisions was released in 1973 -- 47 years ago. So, at the very least, for the past 47 years somebody has known about employment discrimination and a judiciary that's biased against people of color. And, presumably, if it was prominent enough that A) Stevie Wonder thought to write a song about it and B) he presumed that enough people would connect to the message that he could safely put it on an album, a lot of people have known about it.^[3]

Behind Closed Doors
I definitely was in the right demographic to love High Fidelity when it was released as a movie. At some random point High Fidelity references the song "Behind Closed Doors". It's not an especially important moment... it's just a very specific moment and I've seen that moment multiple times.

While listening to Charlie Rich's 1973 album, it took me a few days to shake a "what feels familiar about this..." feeling before I the connection finally clicked.

It is a pretty good song. And Behind Closed Doors is wildly enjoyable.

The 1974 nominees for Album of the Year

• Behind Closed Doors, Charlie Rich
• The Divine Miss M, Bette Midler
• Innervisions, Stevie Wonder
• Killing Me Softly, Roberta Flack
• There Goes Rhymin' Simon, Paul Simon

The current One Man Academy (OMA) project is listening to the Grammy's Album of the Year nominees and re-choosing winners, absent of historical context.

Featured songs from this post: Spotify

All previous OMA Album of the Year Winners