The Steve Miller Band were on a roll when they arrived in “Swingtown,” and the trade press felt it too. The third single from their 1977 album Book of Dreams was predicted to follow the Top 30 US success “Jungle Love” and before that the top tenner “Jet Airliner” into the charts.
“This record centers around an infectious drum/bass riff,” avowed Cash Box. “The other hook seems to be a non-verbal, vocalized melodic phrase that is repeated by synthesizers towards the close. Sounds like the next high-charting single from Book of Dreams.” Billboard noted that the track began “with a momentum-building guitar/drum instrumental and jettisons into high energy, rock’n’roll boogie. Miller’s vocal is irresistibly etheral [sic] and the tunes wind down again with a free-flowing instrumental passage.”
That synth ingredient was indeed a hypnotic feature of the track, written by Miller himself with Steve McCarthy for the band’s then-current tenth studio LP. Their red-hot sales run would ensure triple platinum certification for the album in America alone, and a No.2 peak on the Billboard chart. The continuity in success from the group’s previous album Fly Like An Eagle was perhaps aided by the fact that the two records were recorded in the same sessions.
“Swingtown” itself entered the Hot 100 at No.76 in the issue dated October 15, 1977 and rose as high as No.17 in Christmas week, when it was one place ahead of Queen‘s still-rising “We Are The Champions.” It has assumed anthemic proportions at football games at University of Wisconsin, Madison, where its opening chant is sung by fans. Miller himself graduated from U of W.
“The thing I love about that song is the sort of southwestern harmony that it has,” Miller told People in 2017. “That was a song we worked on for a long time to make it sound the way that it did in the studio. We had a thing called the Condor Innovator, which made your guitar sound different. It was one of the first guitar computers. So ‘Swingtown’ was a studio production number.”
Buy “Swingtown” on the Steve Miller Band’s Complete Albums Volume 2 (1977-2011) vinyl boxed set.
