The 11 Best 1970s Glam Rock Albums (Ranked)

Here are the eleven best 1970s glam rock albums ranked in order.

There probably isn’t another period in rock history quite like the early-to-mid 1970s and there probably never will be again, in all honesty. As we know, the late 1960s was when the tides began to turn; gone were the days where people thought The Beatles actually had long hair. By the time the 1970s rolled around, it was game over. Rockstars were decked out in makeup, platform boots, glitter, and clothes that simply would’ve been unthinkable a few years earlier. Some of the Alice Cooper group’s first outfits were old figure skating leotards they got on clearance, for crying out loud!

The music that was being written and recorded at this time was just as varied as every single band’s image was. David Bowie was building entire characters and worlds around his records, Marc Bolan was bringing rock and roll back to it’s simplest form, and then you had bands like Sparks, Roxy Music, and The New York Dolls that took glam to a considerably stranger place.

The 11 records below represent some of the finest examples of what glam rock could be during its heyday in the 1970s. Some are obvious classics that would be absolutely criminal to leave off of this list (which we’re sure you’re expecting) and others are albums that helped to push the genre in unexpected directions. At the end of the date, all of them capture something essential about the era which was all about being as far out there as you possibly could.