The highest ranked Jamaican album on Rolling Stone’s new list of the 76 Best Albums of 1976 isn’t by Bob Marley.
That honour goes to King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown by Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, which landed at No. 5. That puts a dub record ahead of Bob Dylan’s Desire at No. 13 and The Eagles’ Hotel California at No. 11.
The list, published on Sunday, features seven albums by Jamaican artists in total. Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life took the top spot, which surprised exactly nobody.
Seeing Pablo’s melodica and Tubby’s mixing desk sitting just behind it in the top five is the real headline for reggae fans.
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry has his fingerprints all over the countdown. Return of the Super Ape by Perry and the Upsetters sits at No. 24. Max Romeo and The Upsetters’ War Inna Babylon, another Perry production, comes in at No. 49.
Then there’s the Wailers angle, which might be the most fun part of the whole list. Peter Tosh’s Legalize It is at No. 35, Bob Marley’s Rastaman Vibration is at No. 43 and Bunny Wailer’s Blackheart Man is at No. 54. All three men founded the Wailers together in Kingston in the early 1960s, and by 1976 each of them was releasing records under his own name.
Legalize It was Tosh’s solo debut, and Blackheart Man was Bunny’s first solo album. Rastaman Vibration was the one that cracked America, becoming Marley’s first album to reach the top 10 of the Billboard 200. Seeing it ranked below his former bandmate’s debut will raise eyebrows among plenty of Marley loyalists.
There are a couple of ways to read that. One is that critics looking back fifty years are rewarding the rawer roots and dub records that shaped so much of what came after.
The other is that Marley’s catalogue is so stacked that a single year’s release was always going to be judged against Catch a Fire, Natty Dread and Exodus.
Burning Spear rounds out the Jamaican entries with Garvey’s Ghost at No. 74. It’s the dub companion to his album Man in the Hills, and its title nods to Marcus Garvey, a figure central to Spear’s music.
Two of the seven Jamaican picks are dub albums, which says a lot about how that sound’s reputation has grown since the 1970s.
The rest of the list paints a broad picture of 1976. Millie Jackson’s Free and in Love is at No. 18, Abba’s Arrival is at No. 26 and Linda Ronstadt’s Hasten Down the Wind is at No. 38. Rose Royce’s Car Wash sits at No. 45, Marvin Gaye’s I Want You is at No. 51 and Rod Stewart’s A Night on the Town lands at No. 64.
With 1976 now half a century in the rearview, this is the kind of ranking that gets argued over in record shops and group chats for weeks. Marley fans already have their case ready, and Tosh fans are probably enjoying the moment.
