I give marks out of 10 to every song – based on whatever criteria you like, here’s your opportunity to say what you’d have given more than 6 to from 1976. Tick as many as you like.
Loading ...And use the comments to discuss the year as a whole, if you like.
Tom in FT /Popular • featured content/Pop/popular year poll • 9,617 views
All, 1–25, 26–50, 51–75, 76–100, 101–125, 126–150, 151–175, 176–200, 201–225, 226–250, 251–275, 276–300, 301–325, 326–350, 351–375, 376–400, 401–425, 426–450, 451–475, 476–500, 501–525, 526–551.Back up to post. More comments: All, 1–25, 26–50, 51–75, 76–100, 101–125, 126–150, 151–175, 176–200, 201–225, 226–250, 251–275, 276–300, 301–325, 326–350, 351–375, 376–400, 401–425, 426–450, 451–475, 476–500, 501–525, 526–551.
All the UK number ones since 1952, reviewed in order and rated by whim. As featured on Radio 2, The Times, Metro, Paul Cornell's LiveJournal, etc etc.
If you enjoy Popular please link to it or tell your friends about it. The more people we have commenting and sharing their views on these songs, the better.
Index of reviews and scores so far
Popular FAQ
Popular Facebook Page
Popular Lucky Dip (a random post)
TPL update.
TPL: yes, it’s them again. 1976 record buyers, eh? What were they on?
They were on to something, that’s for sure.
TPL: another update.
I had more to say about it here but FT is VERY difficult to post to late Saturday night – I keep getting “Bad Request” messagea snd it takes me ten minutes just to put up a simple link here as opposed to the approx. ten seconds it takes me on Twitter or ILx.
You need to sort out/extensively simplify this website because it’s going to put people off posting.
Apologies this glitchiness keeps happening to you two — I *think* (purely based on googling for similar problems on other word press websites) that it’s the interrelationship of long urls and the set-up of our web server, rather than the over-complexity or otherwise of FT itself (because some of the other websites worrying about it are much simpler). But I am not a WordPress tech-head.
(Also worth pointing out: like motorways, FT maintenance generally — inevitably — happens not during weekday working hours but at the weekends, after small children have gone to bed and the like. So late Saturday night may not be the ideal timeslot for posting important informational comments. And unlike motorway maintenance, FT’s elves work for the love of it: if they feel unloved, they do other things instead.)
i have to agree FT does seem very unresponsive at the mo.
(edit – mind you, that was just a couple of seconds to submit and refresh just now. Long by commercial standards, but i can live with that. i’ve been fretting when I see it taking ~10 seconds to click through a link)
Not sure whether this is relevant to other gremlins but it probably is: I normally just follow FT’s rss feed page, http://freakytrigger.co.uk/comments/feed/ rather than go directly to FT’s or Popular’s home page. But that feed page has been strangely blank/inoperative for at least the last 12 hours.
I’ve done some braindead housekeeping – minor WP update, delete 11000 spam, mySQL table optimise. it’s the hard things like reducing plugins/queries that will probably make the difference though.
i’ve also set it to auto-bin spam on old posts. i don’t think this is a big deal as I don’t think anyone looks in the spam bin any more, but thought it worth flagging up.
@admin. The Feeds page is loading up properly again now. Thanks.
@admin. Whoops, spoke too soon. The Feeds page is completely non-functional again under Chrome. It works under Firefox only on PCs, and it displays beautifully under Safari (on both PCs and Macs) but shorn of standand FT formatting.
TPL addresses immediate pre-punk hardcore feminism innit.
TPL: described by the guitarist as “our most important album.”
TPL finally reaches Abba.
TPL considers the final non-compilation UK number one album by Rod.
TPL at long last gets to these guys.
What guys? The link is not working.
Try here Swede:
http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/beach-boys-20-golden-greats.html
another great piece of writing by Marcello
Gottit! Thanks, Pillers.
TPL update; I’ve said it before, but this blog is not what you think it’s about.
http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/stylistics-best-of-stylistics-volume-ii.html
TPL reaches pub rock. Or does it?
TPL warmly welcomes back our old friends “Various Artists”.
Incidentally, a word about TPL posting dates and times; it is clear to me that the late night Saturday blog work can’t continue since the effect it is having on my health outweighs the benefits of posting. If I want a speedy return to the specialist stroke unit I just need to keep on doing what I’m doing now. This is a particularly urgent matter to address since I’m currently going through the phase where albums just seem to be getting bigger and bigger (it IS the seventies) and thus the quantity of work needed to research and write about them, let alone listen (or re-listen) to them, is expanding exponentially.
What I’m therefore going to do is change the posting day; from now on until further notice, new TPL posts will go up on Wednesday. This is my day off from my day job and it makes far more sense to write these records up in the daytime. This will start with entry #175, which will go up at some point tomorrow.
You have been undertaking a phenomenal project, Marcello, and I’m full of admiration for you. But as you say yourself, this work, no matter how much you love it, cannot be allowed to compromise your health and wellbeing. I personally am preparing my latest novel but my writing is not the only thing in my life and never has been. Next week, my annual 2 week leave begins to cover Wimbledon and I go into my “Swede, tennis correspondent bubble” for a fortnight and everything else can bloody well wait. If I didn’t have that, the Beachy Head chaplain would be darting out of his hut again. To paraphrase the old WW2 cry, Keep Calm but don’t necessarily Carry On.
Wise words from the Swede. TPL in the 70s is the best thing of its kind on the internet right now. But good things should come to us who wait.
As promised, here’s entry #175.
TPL looks at the man without whom there might not have been an entry #175.
The last TPL entry for 1976: part imagined backstory, part belated (if posthumous) birthday present – http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/glen-campbell-glen-campbells-twenty.html