Cat Stevens "Tea for the Tillerman" [1970]

Along with fellow soft folkies James Taylor and Jim Croce, Cat Stevens can be held responsible for the onset of wussified radio popsters like Harry Chapin and Dan Fogelberg in the mid-70s, and still later the indie beardos of the 20-teens. It's enough right there to see what sent Stevens screaming toward hard-core Islamicism, without even investigating the 19th-century family values lullabies that perpetually gross out the listener through "Tea for the Tillerman"'s entirety. "Wild World" is his G-rated, sac-less hectoring older brother version of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," and naturally it became a big AM hit. Basically, the UK couldn't stand the loss of the Beatles as an entity so went lurching for whatever contemporary music might again placate all the grandmas out there. Conceived as a cheapo-Elton John LP construct, "Tea for the Tillerman" has plenty of meandering piano filler in between his hippie-dippie singles, which are the aural equivalent of Vaseline and quaaludes. Even Stevens knew this caliber of played-out Simon & Garfunkelocity couldn't last much longer, and when he finally disappeared he ran as far away from the music industry Jews as possible -- only to resurface years later to call for the head of Salman Rushdie on a platter, self-fulfilling his notion that there are indeed a lot of bad people out there.