The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era: #50-41

We are saluting the year in which Air France and British Airways began the first regularly scheduled commercial supersonic transport (SST) flights, the Cray-1 (pictured above) was the world's first commercially developed supercomputer and Bjorn Borg and Chris Evert won the men's and women's Wimbledon Tennis championships, respectively.

In music, the 10 songs below are part of the 100 songs from 1976 which rank the highest in 2016:

#50:

Got To Get You Into My Life

Beatles

(no original video available)

Although they had broken up six years earlier, the Beatles took a song originally on their 1966 album Revolver and re-released it as a single from their compilation album Rock 'n' Roll Music.  Just like 32 of their other songs had done, "Got To Get You Into My Life" hit the Top 10.

#49:

You Sexy Thing

Hot Chocolate

We lost Errol Brown, lead singer of this group, to liver cancer last year.  Brown and Hot Chocolate scored one of their biggest career hits with this one in '76.

#48:

Love So Right

Bee Gees

The Bee Gees registered their fourth Top 10 hit in a two-year period with this #1 smash.

#47:

Love Rollercoaster

Ohio Players

Here's a song that went to #1 on both the Popular and R&B charts for the 10-member Ohio Players.

#46:

Get Closer

Seals & Crofts

This song peaked at #6 at the time, but time has proven it to be underrated, as sales and continued airplay 40 years later place it among songs that were much bigger hits at the time.  

#45:

Disco Lady

Johnnie Taylor

Meanwhile, this #1 song of four weeks has dropped like a rock for Johnnie Taylor.

#44:

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Neil Sedaka

In 1962, Neil Sedaka reached #1 with the song "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do".  Fourteen years later, Neil recorded a different, much-slower version of the song.  He included a snippet of the original at the beginning of the new version to remind listeners of how it originally sounded.

#43:

Theme From S.W.A.T.

Rhythm Heritage

In 2016, the instrumental has become a lost art with the current generation of musicians unable to record good ones.  In 1976, Rhythm Heritage came up with The #29 Instrumental of the Rock Era*.

#42:

Magic Man

Heart

At #42, another song which was highly underrated at the time, as proven by its ability to stand the test of time.

#41:

The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald

Gordon Lightfoot

Of all the works written by Gordon Lightfoot, he considers this to be one of his best.  It is one of the great story songs of the Rock Era and is the true story of the sinking of the bulk carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975.