If you’re a baby boomer who once jammed out to hard rock in 1971, you probably still have the same music taste after all these years. And you definitely still remember the following four hard rock hits that took over the airwaves that very year.
“Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones from ‘Sticky Fingers’
It hasn’t exactly aged well, but this hard rock, boogie-adjacent hit from The Rolling Stones was one of the biggest rock tracks of the year in 1971. “Brown Sugar” is a pretty simple song about drugs and girls, but the groove of it is what had listeners hooked. The track peaked at No. 1 in the US and No. 2 in the UK.
“Strange Kind Of Woman” by Deep Purple
Deep Purple dropped this bluesy hard rock song in early 1971, and it was a fast hit on the charts. If you ever saw Deep Purple live, you might have gotten to experience Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan’s call-and-response guitar-vocal battle on stage whenever this jam made it to their setlist. It’s totally unforgettable.
“Strange Kind Of Woman” by Deep Purple peaked at No. 8 on the UK Singles chart, but didn’t chart in the US.
“Hymn 43” by Jethro Tull from ‘Aqualung’
Jethro Tull added a healthy dose of progressive rock to this hard rock jam, and it’s still a favorite among fans to this day. “Hymn 43” is a somewhat controversial song about Jesus Christ and Christians who use his name for “unsavory things,” per songwriter Ian Anderson. It didn’t do particularly well on the charts and didn’t reach the Top 40 on the Hot 100, but “Hymn 43” got a lot of retrospective love after the fact.
“Love Her Madly” by The Doors from ‘L.A. Woman’
This Doors classic from 1971 leans more toward blues rock than hard rock, but it’s still worthy of a spot on our list of baby boomer rock jams. One of many memorable songs from L.A. Woman, “Love Her Madly” made waves on the mainstream charts. The track peaked at No. 11 on the Hot 100 and reached the Top 10 in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.
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