'70s Rock

Plump up your chest hair, crack open a Darwin Stubby and pull on those denim flares — we're heading back to the '70s, a decade when rock ruled the radio with larger-than-life sounds polished to a gleaming metallic sheen, and tunes like Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" contained the meaning of life. Led Zeppelin ("Kashmir") and Pink Floyd ("Money") set the super-band standards, Skyhooks ("Horror Movie") added a touch of twisted glam, and a young man from New Jersey named Bruce Springsteen entered our consciousness with a straight shot of rock 'n' roll adrenaline — "Born to Run". Prepare to be wham-glammed by Bowie and Ferry, in Next Steps.

The '70s may have been the Me Decade, but our Next Steps batch contains rock for everybody, whether you're partial to the groundbreaking proto-punk of the Saints "(I'm) Stranded" or prefer the wham-bang-thank-you-ma'am glam of David Bowie's "Suffragette City." Roxy Music glanced askance at the jet set and showcased Brian Eno's cutting-edge synth work on '72's "Virginia Plain," Daddy Cool mined a third wave blues groove with "Eagle Rock," and Ian Anderson cranked up the flute-fortified prog-rock theatrics on Jethro Tull's "Aqualung." Iggy's lusty punk, Lemmy's toxic bass . . . you'll find them both, and more, in Deep Cuts.

At iTunes we make sure your '70s rock favourites never fade away, because we've got the songs that are here to stay. Motörhead gave us heavy metal at the speed of punk with "Bomber," and at the opposite end of the rock spectrum, Melbourne's Ayers Rock settled into nearly ten-minutes of jazz-fused prog with "Crazy Boys." Iggy Pop offered a master class in pure, naked adrenaline on "Lust for Life," Rod Stewart injected a whole lotta soul into his folk-rockin' tale of messing around with an older woman ("Maggie May" — check out Ronnie Wood's guitar), and the women from Heart rocked hard through "Barracuda."

It was the '70s, and a world exhausted by the struggles of the decade that came before was all too ready to give way to full-on rock indulgence. We're talking about rock for rock's sake, loaded with the pleasurable heft of Les Pauls and Marshall stacks, the silky sheen of satin sheet harmonies, and the kind of barb-in-your-brainpan hooks that, to this day, still won't let go. On your own, it could take another decade to collect only the best of the bunch, but with our '70s Rock Essentials we whittle the process down to a minute or two, with everything from Boston's arena-rockin' anthem "More Than a Feeling" to Hawkwind's cosmic grinder "Silver Machine," Meat Loaf's overblown ode to motorcycle lust, "Bat Out of Hell," the Angels' hard/pub rock classic "Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again," and Edgar Winter's instrumental jam behemoth, "Frankenstein." Rock on, friends. Rock on.