A friend sent me this, so I’m posting it, a little nervously… more fascinating archival material.
Just one short comment: fairly delighted (and surprised) to see Pagliaro’s “Some Sing Some Dance” rank #6 on the Top 6 (!) singles list. To put this in some perspective, it apparently only needed three votes to attain that position. Still, we’re talking about a bilingual pop craftsman from Montreal, who never once cracked the Top 100 in the States. “Some Sing” has always been a personal favourite (it made my recent Top 100), and it’s odd to see it played back in this context. (Odd enough that even the Fusion eds felt the need to clarify in the introduction to the poll, “That Pagliaro song is from Canada, near as we can tell.”)
RockCritics.com 
Rather amazed that Harvest isn’t on there. Far from my favourite Neil album, as you know, and I guess Fusion was more of a metal-glam publication, but I would have thought that any group of rock critics in ’72 would have voted Harvest as one of the year’s top 40. I see three or four singer-songwriter LPs, including Joni, so it’s not like they had a philosophical objection to singer-songwriters. Also weak on all the great neoclassical soul (just Johnny Nash, I think, who was more reggae anyway), although that stuff was more suited to a singles list.
Richard Meltzer was a big fan of “Pags”…my guess is the votes came from Fusion regulars Meltzer and Nick Tosches, and maybe one more from the extended family of that wing of critics — the ones Ken Emerson memorably dissed in his “two sides of rock critics” piece for said Fusion.
I bought Michel P’s greatest hits the first time I went to Montreal in the ’70s, along with Meltzer’s other valued recommendation: Stompin’ Tom Connors, he of “Bud the Spud” and “Hockey Night in Canada” fame.
–Billy Altman
Thanks, Billy. Now that you mention it, I did once come across something Meltzer wrote about Pagliaro (I think it was even for a Montreal publication, somewhere I have a photocopy of said piece).
Phil, the first thing that struck me about the list was the paucity of black pop — especially given what a monumental year ’72 was in that respect. But yeah, maybe it would’ve figured better in a singles list.
Meltzer wrote about Michel Pagliaro? That is so awesome! Pagliaro had some pretty snazzy singles in both French (try “J’entends frapper” and “Ti-bidon”) and English back then. Oddly enough, the French stuff tended to be less subtle hard rock, whereas the English-language hits were a lot more melodic and Beatlesque (I actually enjoy “Lovin’ You Ain’t Easy” and “What the Hell I Got” a lot more than “Some Sing, Some Dance”).
Rather amazed that Harvest isn’t on there. Far from my favourite Neil album, as you know, and I guess Fusion was more of a metal-glam publication, but I would have thought that any group of rock critics in ’72 would have voted Harvest as one of the year’s top 40. I see three or four singer-songwriter LPs, including Joni, so it’s not like they had a philosophical objection to singer-songwriters. Also weak on all the great neoclassical soul (just Johnny Nash, I think, who was more reggae anyway), although that stuff was more suited to a singles list.
Looks more like ” best of white peoples music”. Where is Curtis Mayfield? Funkadelic? Aretha Franklin? JImmy Cliff? Stevie Wonder?