A Night on the Town by Rod Stewart

A Night on the Town, Rod Stewart's seventh album, came out on June 18, 1976, with Tom Dowd producing, and it's the sound of Rod, a year clear of the Faces, settling into solo stardom without going soft. The sleeve drops him, in period costume, into the middle of Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette, and the music is just as sure of itself.

"Tonight's the Night" is pure seduction, so frank about sex and a first time that some stations banned it, and it still ruled the US and Canadian charts for the best part of two months. His take on Cat Stevens' "The First Cut Is the Deepest" became one of his signature songs. The heart of the record, though, is "The Killing of Georgie", a sad, clear-eyed story of a gay friend thrown out by his family who finds his place in New York's nightlife, only to be killed by a New Jersey gang in a robbery. It was his fifth UK number-one album in a row.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.