'70s Rock

Rev your engine and slap in the 8-track tape — we're heading back to the '70s, a decade when rock ruled the FM dial with larger-than-life sounds polished to a gleaming metallic sheen, and tunes like the Eagles' "Hotel California" wrapped up heady SoCal hedonism in one smooth-groovin' package. Meanwhile, hits like Kansas' epic "Carry on Wayward Son" married guitar crunch to high harmonics, Trooper and Triumph delivered bar-room classics ("Raise a Little Hell" and "Rocky Mountain Way," respectively), and Bruce Springsteen entered our consciousness with a straight shot of rock 'n' roll adrenaline called "Born to Run." Time travel was never so easy — warp into Next Steps for more '70s rock glory.

The '70s may have been the Me Decade, but Next Steps have something for everybody, whether you're partial to the fiddle as existential weapon in the Charlie Daniels Band's country-rock showdown "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" or prefer the flute-fortified prog-rock theatrics of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung." The feline scream of Ted Nugent's six-string on "Cat Scratch Fever" reveals the Motor City Madman as one crazy kitty, while the Guess Who caught the era's anti-war mood with "American Woman," despite the song's misinterpretation as a chauvinist tirade. Jackson Browne may have been "Running on Empty," but we still have a whole playlist to go — check Deep Cuts for more.

"It's better to burn out," sings Crazy Horse sage Neil Young on the live scorcher "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)," but at iTunes we make sure your '70s rock favourites never fade away. Just like the mountains that "come out of the sky and stand there" in the Yes incantation "Roundabout," we've got the songs that are here to stay. Tracks like Lou Reed's decadent underground odyssey "Walk on the Wild Side" or the gorgeously gloomy black-light special "Nights in White Satin" by the Moody Blues.

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 talkin' rock for rock's sake, loaded with the pleasurable heft of Les Pauls and Marshall stacks, the 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 Meat Loaf's operatic ode to teen lust, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," to Edgar Winter's instrumental-jam behemoth, "Frankenstein." Rock on, friends. Rock on.