Contents

1977 in music

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This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1977. This year was the peak of vinyl sales in the United States, with sales declining year on year since then.^{[1][clarification needed]}

Specific locations[edit]

• 1977 in British music
• 1977 in Norwegian music

Specific genres[edit]

• 1977 in country music
• 1977 in heavy metal music
• 1977 in jazz

Events[edit]

January–February[edit]

• January 1 – The Clash headline the opening night of London's only punk rock club, The Roxy
• January 6 – After releasing only one single for controversial English punk rock band the Sex Pistols, EMI terminates its contract with them in response to its members' disruptive behaviour last month on ITV's Today and two days ago at London Heathrow Airport^[2]
• January 20 – Jimmy Buffett's Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes is released, featuring the biggest single of his career, "Margaritaville"
• January 22 – German cellist Maria Kliegel makes her London debut at the Wigmore Hall, with a programme of Bach, Kodály, and Franck
• January 26 – Patti Smith falls off the stage while opening for Bob SegerinTampa, Florida, and is rushed to the hospital for 22 stitches to close head lacerations
• February 4
  • Paul Desmond gives his last concert with Dave Brubeck, in New York
  • American Bandstand celebrates its 25th anniversary on television with a special hosted by Dick Clark; an "all-star band", performing "Roll Over Beethoven", is made up of Chuck Berry, Seals & Crofts, Gregg Allman, Junior Walker, Johnny Rivers, the Pointer Sisters, Charlie Daniels, Doc Severinsen, Les McCann, Donald Byrd, Chuck Mangione and three members of Booker T and the MGs
  • Fleetwood Mac's widely anticipated Rumours is released; it goes on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time
• February 14 – The B-52's give their first public performance at a party in Athens, Georgia
• February 15 – Sid Vicious replaces Glen Matlock as the bassist of the Sex Pistols.
• February 19 – The 19th Annual Grammy Awards are presented in Los Angeles, hosted for the final time by Andy Williams. Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life wins Album of the Year, George Benson's "This Masquerade" wins Record of the Year and Barry Manilow's "I Write the Songs" wins Song of the Year. Starland Vocal Band win Best New Artist.

March–May[edit]

• March 1 – Sara Lowndes Dylan files for divorce from her husband of 11 years, Bob Dylan
• March 4 & 5 – The Rolling Stones play two shows at the El Mocambo club in Toronto
• April – Van Morrison releases a new album, A Period of Transition, after a nearly three-year absence
• March 10 – A&M Records signs the Sex Pistols in a ceremony in front of Buckingham Palace; this contract is terminated on March 16 as a result of the band vandalizing property and verbally abusing employees during a visit to the record company's office
• April 21 – Jesse Winchester, who fled to Canada in January 1967 to avoid military service in Vietnam, performs a concert in Burlington, Vermont, his first on American soil in ten years having recently become free to return under the Presidential pardon given to all draft evaders
• April 22 – Pink Floyd open the North American leg of their "Animals" tour in Miami, Florida
• April 24 – Several artists, including Joan Baez and Santana, perform at a free concert for 653 inmates of California's Soledad Prison
• April 26 – New York's disco Studio 54 opens.
• April 30 – Led Zeppelin sets a new world record attendance for an indoor solo attraction at the Pontiac Silverdome when 76,229 people attend a concert here on the group's 1977 North American Tour.
• May 2 – Elton John performs the first of six consecutive nights at London's Rainbow Theatre, his first concert in eight months
• May 7 – Having been postponed from April 2 because of a BBC technicians' strike, the 22nd Eurovision Song Contest finally goes ahead in London's Wembley Conference Centre: the winner is Marie Myriam representing France with "L'oiseau et l'enfant"; the British entry, Lynsey de Paul and Michael Moran's "Rock Bottom", comes 2nd
• May 11 – Punk rock band The Stranglers and support London start a 10-week national UK tour
• May 12
  • Instruments made by all five members of the 17th- and 18th-century Guarneri family of violin makers are auctioned at Sotheby's, with the top price of £105,000 paid for an instrument made in 1738 by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù
  • Virgin Records announce that they have signed the Sex Pistols, the group having had contracts with two previous labels terminated in 4 months
• May 28 – Bruce Springsteen and Mike Appel reach an out-of-court settlement, ending the year-long legal battle that has blocked Springsteen's ability to record new music
• May 29 – Elvis Presley walks offstage in the middle of a concert in Baltimore, Maryland, the first time in his twenty-three year career he has done so; after receiving treatment from a physician, he reappears onstage thirty minutes later
• May 31 – The musical Beatlemania is premièred at the Winter Garden Theatre on Manhattan

June–August[edit]

• June 7
  • The Nikikai Opera Foundation is founded in Japan^[3]
  • The Sex Pistols attempt to interrupt Silver Jubilee celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II by performing their version of "God Save the Queen" from a boat on the River Thames
• June 12
  • Guitarist Michael Schenker vanishes after a UFO concert at The Roundhouse in London (he is replaced for several months by Paul Chapman)
  • The Supremes perform for the last time together at Drury Lane Theatre in London before officially disbanding
• June 15 – The Snape Maltings Training Orchestra makes its London debut at St John's, Smith Square
• June 20 – Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart drives his Porsche over the edge of a canyon, suffering multiple broken bones but surviving as a tree breaks his fall
• June 22 – Kiss are elected "most popular band in America" by a Gallup poll
• June 26 – Elvis Presley sings his final concert before his death, at Market Square Arena, Indianapolis, Indiana. Earlier that day, he has received a plaque commemorating the two billionth pressing from RCA's record pressing plant in Camden, New Jersey
• July 9 – Donna Summer's hit record "I Feel Love" is released in the UK; it is the first hit record to have an entirely synthesised backing track
• July 13 – After a massive blackout hits New York City, NRBQ manages to play an all-acoustic set at The Bottom Line with flashlights taped to their microphone stands
• July 22 – The first night of The Proms are broadcast in quadraphonic soundbyBBC Radio 3 for the first time
• July 26 – Led Zeppelin cancels the last seven dates of their American tour after lead singer Robert Plant learns that his six-year-old son Karac has died of a respiratory virus^[4] (The show two days before in Oakland proves to be the band's last in the United States)
• August 16 – Elvis Presley is found dead at his home GracelandinMemphis, Tennessee. Also that same day, the final concert of Bing Crosby takes place in England, accompanied by Johnny Smith.
• August 17 – Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD) reports that in one day the number of orders for flowers to be delivered to Graceland for the funeral of Elvis Presley has surpassed the number for any other event in the company's history
• August 18 – The funeral of Elvis Presley takes place at Graceland.
• August 20 – NASA's uncrewed probe Voyager 2 is launched carrying a golden record containing sounds and images representing life and culture on Earth, including the first movements of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Guan Pinghu's Liu Shui, played on the guqin, and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode"

September–December[edit]

• September 1 – World première at the Royal Albert Hall in London of the expanded version of Luciano Berio's Coro
• September 3 – Nearly 110,000 fans pack Englishtown Raceway in Old Bridge, New Jersey, for an 11-hour concert by Grateful Dead, Marshall Tucker Band and New Riders of the Purple Sage
• September 15 – The third – and final – annual Rock Music Awards aired on NBC (Fleetwood Mac dominates, winning five awards while Linda Ronstadt receives the Best Rock Female Vocalist trophy for the third time
• September 16 – T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan is killed as a passenger in an automobile accident in Barnes, London
• September 29 – Billy Joel's The Stranger is released containing "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)", "Just the Way You Are" and "Only the Good Die Young"
• October 3 – Elvis in Concert, a TV concert special filmed during Elvis Presley's final tour, is aired on CBS; Canadian Channel CKND-DT simulcasts it. It got bad reviews.
• October 5 – The bicentennial season of La Scala opens in Milan with a production of Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlo
• October 9 – Aerosmith cancels several tour dates after Joe Perry and Steven Tyler are injured by an M-80 explosive thrown onstage at the Philadelphia Spectrum, burning Tyler's left cornea and cutting Perry's left hand
• October 20 – A plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd crashes in a forest in Mississippi, killing songwriter & vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, background vocalist Cassie Gaines and assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick and seriously injuring many of the remaining band members
• October 27 – British punk band Sex Pistols release Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols on the Virgin Records label. Despite refusal by major UK retailers to stock it, it debuts at number one on the UK Album Charts the week after its release. In a promotional stunt the group perform on a boat on the River Thames shortly afterwards, only for the police to wait for them and make several arrests, including that of Malcolm McLaren, the band's manager at this time
• October 28 – British rock band Queen release the album News of the World
• October 31 – The original version of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Jahreslauf is premièred at the National Theatre of JapaninChiyoda, Tokyo, by the Imperial Gagaku Ensemble
• November 25 – 10 Years of Rolling Stone, a television special commemorating the tenth anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine, airs on CBS in the United States; guests include Bette Midler, Art Garfunkel, Billy Preston, Melissa Manchester and Keith Moon
• November 30 – Bing Crosby's final Christmas television special, Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, airs on CBS (containing the notable segment of Crosby joined by David Bowie for the duet "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy")
• December 14 – Saturday Night Fever appears in movie theaters, igniting a new popularity for disco music and pushing it to the forefront of American pop culture, with the soundtrack to the film by Bee Gees (who have composed most of the tracks)
• December 17 – Elvis Costello makes his American television début on Saturday Night Live as a last-minute replacement for the Sex Pistols, who were refused visas to enter America; Costello is banned after substituting the scheduled performance of "Less than Zero" with "Radio, Radio" instead
• December 31 – The sixth annual New Year's Rockin' Eve special airs on ABC and the United States, with performances by Ohio Players, Crystal Gayle, Kenny Rogers, KC and the Sunshine Band and Andy Gibb

Also in 1977[edit]

• "Bohemian Rhapsody" named "The Best Single Of The Last 25 Years" by BPI
• St Magnus Festival of the Arts founded in Orkney by local resident, composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
• The Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe begins its annual festival based on the music of George Frideric Handel
• Luigi Sagrati becomes president of the Unione Musicisti di Roma
• The IRCAM Center, a scientific institute for music and sound and avant-garde electro-acoustical art music, opens in Paris
• The Cars sign a contract with Elektra Records
• Devo signs a contract with Warner Bros
• Midnight Oil sign a contract with CBS Records
• The Neville Brothers sign a contract with A&M Records
• The Police sign a contract with A&M Records
• Van Halen signs a contract with Warner Bros

Bands formed[edit]

• See Category:Musical groups established in 1977

Bands reformed[edit]

• The Animals

Bands disbanded[edit]

• See Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1977

Albums released[edit]

January[edit]

February[edit]

March[edit]

April[edit]

May[edit]

June[edit]

July[edit]

August[edit]

September[edit]

October[edit]

November[edit]

December[edit]

Release date unknown[edit]

Billboard Top popular records of 1977[edit]

Billboard's year-end Hot 100 for the year 1977, printed on December 24, 1977, was based on Hot 100 charts from the issue dates of November 6, 1976 through October 29, 1977. The decision to include the last two months of 1976 resulted in Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night" being listed as no. 1 record of 1977, despite seven of its eight weeks at #1 occurring in 1976 (keep reading).

The completed Billboard year-end list for 1977 is composed of records that entered the Billboard Hot 100 between November 1976 and December 1977. Records with chart runs that started in 1976 and ended in 1977, or started in 1977 and ended in 1978, made this chart if the majority of their chart weeks were in 1977. If not, they were ranked in the year-end charts for 1976 or 1978. If their weeks were equal, they were listed in the year they first entered. Appearing in multiple years is not permitted. Each week thirty points were awarded to the number one record, then nineteen points for number two, eighteen points for number three, and so on. The total points a record earned determined its year-end rank. The complete chart life of each record is represented, with number of points accrued. There are no ties, even when multiple records have the same number of points. The next ranking category is peak chart position, then weeks at peak chart position, weeks on Hot 100 chart, weeks in top forty, and finally weeks in top ten.

The chart presented here depicts the top 30 singles of 1977. In contrast with the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1977, this chart does not truncate or split chart runs between years. It does not add two months from 1976, delete two months from 1977 and then call itself the "Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1977", which it is obviously not. The true number one record of 1977 is Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life", which spent the last 18 weeks of the year accumulating 362 points. The seven additional weeks it scored from 1978 were not even needed for the top prize. Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night" scored only 73 points in 10 weeks during 1977, so based on its 223 points from 13 weeks in 1976, its 296 total points made it the number one record of that year, not 1977. All chart rankings represented below for the Top Soul Singles, Top Country Singles, Top Easy Listening Singles, and Top CashBox pop singles were all calculated in the same manner.

The chart can be sorted by Artist, Song title, Recording and Release dates, Cashbox year-end ranking (CB) or units sold (sales) by clicking on the column header. Additional details for each record can be accessed by clicking on the song title, and referring to the Infobox in the right column of the song page. Billboard also has chart summaries on its website. Sales information was derived from the RIAA's Gold and Platinum database, the BRIT Certified database and The Book of Golden Discs,^[18] but numbers listed should be regarded as estimates. Grammy Hall of Fame and National Recording Registry information with sources can be found on Wikipedia. Archived issues of Billboard from November 1976 to March 1978 and Hot 100 Year-End formulas were used to complete the 1977 year-end chart.

Chronological table of US and UK number one hit singles[edit]

Top 40 Chart hit singles[edit]

Other Chart hit singles[edit]