Member-only story
The Most Unappreciated Album of 1975: Joan Baez’s ‘Diamonds & Rust’
It’s a forgotten classic
There is no question that 1975 was a year of amazing music. Besides the release of Springsteen’s Born to Run (the greatest album of all time) in August, the year before America’s bicentennial saw classics like Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled album, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, and many others. In his ongoing series on the best and worst albums by year, Terry Barr uses a website called besteveralbums.com to find how albums ranked for each year. For 1975, I was stunned to find that one of the truly great albums of that year languished at #175 on their list: the stellar Diamonds & Rust by folk/rock icon Joan Baez.
That this album ranked below both Chicago IX: Chicago’s Greatest Hits and the self-titled debut of the Motor City Motor Mouth whose name I refuse to type is enough to make me lose what little faith in humanity I had left. I have a problem with Born to Run coming in third behind Wish You Were Here and Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks too, but at least those are semi-defensible. Diamonds & Rust ranking this low is so inexcusable I almost labeled this a rant.
But enough of my useless complaining. Diamonds & Rust is composed primarily of Baez covers of songs written by some of the biggest artists of the…
