15. Other types of music dominated at different times of the year
The biggest selling song during the summer months of 1970 was not from rock and roll, or hard rock, or R&B, or Motown. It was a song called (They Long to Be) Close to You. Performed by the brother and sister duo The Carpenters, it remained at Number One for four weeks. It was a year of musical diversity on the pop charts. Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head held the top spot for four consecutive weeks early in the year. Late in the year, a made-for-television band and family, The Partridge Family, held the top spot for three weeks and catapulted David Cassidy to fame. The song was I Think I Love You.
1970 was the last year The Beatles put newly recorded singles on the charts, though all four members would hit them individually. It was one of the last years that commercial radio concentrated on singles airplay, within months album-oriented rock emerged, and AM radio began to alter formats to all-talk and all-news rather than playing records. The superior sound carried by the FM signal, in stereo, killed the market for singles beginning in 1970, though the 45 single continued to be the focus of the recording industry to market bands for some years to come.