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)
#74, Actually, i had to work out why I thought it was better than the record (for once)…
It was because the backing was less dominant, so Lee had to sing stronger to make up.
(His vocals were a ton better than most artists singing live in past weeks.)
They were very good, and I suspect that it was the failure of the band to keep up with him (they were fully half a beat behind the vocal) that made the overall impression less than compelling. I see from Vince Aletti’s The Disco Years that he rated “I’ll Go Where Your Music Takes Me” #6 in his Essential Disco Singles of 1976 list so again it has to be down to the backing (I’ll have to reacquaint myself with the original record). See also the repeatedly fluffed lead trumpet lines on “More Mor More.”
The uncut version of the show broadcast on Saturday night included three more songs – the Bellamy Brothers promo we’ve seen before, yet another appearance for BBC favourite Paul Nicholas (with DLT muscling in on Ruby Flipper in the background) and R-Flip again doing their thang to Archie Bell’s “Soul City Walk”. This was the week I turned 14, and even though the quality is variable as ever, even the dross gives you a bit of nostalgia. Except for City Boy, which I’d totally forgotten.
Spot on Punctum re Midge Ure – “Requiem” revisited the gothic/teenybop mixture of “Forever and Ever” to much less effect, and the whole band looked a bit awkward at how it turned out. I do wonder who was buying it.
Kudos to Lee Garrett for a committed performance though – a generation later it became commonplace (and a bit tedious) for rappers to holler “Top of the Pops!” during performances, but his doing so in 1976 really stood out.
I used to HATE it when, during the show’s later years, singers used to go ‘Hey, Top Of The Pops!’ or words to that effect. Anyone who did it immediately went down in my estimation.
Likewise, though I’ll make exceptions for the Rezillos and Bob Geldof! (Any other hit songs with “Top of the Pops” in the lyrics? The underrated “Saturday Gigs” by Mott the Hoople springs to mind.)
79, 80, make that three. If everyone had latched onto Lee Garrett’s pointless improv, TOTP would have become unbearable much sooner.
One thing that strikes me about these 1976 TOTPs (apart from how much dross was in the charts at the time) was the BBC bias towards certain singles. Why were they so keen to promote a naff Paul Nicholas record that appeared to be ” racing up the charts ” as though submerged in glycerine. Was it because singers like Paul Nicholas would fit right in on Saturday evening entertainment?
Also apart from DLT proving he’s his own biggest fan the prissiness of the DJs is kinda annoying. Did it piss off viewers at the time when yet another ballad was introduced as ” a rilly-bute-ifull sound from Eric Carmine/Diana Ross/Frankie Valli “?
So far I’ve been most impressed by the lead singer from Fox whose out-charisma-ed a lot of the more eager-to-please performers also it was interesting to finally find out what Andrea True looks like.
#70 ok, fair enough, it got to number 8. I had a vague recollection it had made 15 or thereabouts while hanging around for a while. For me, a ‘minor’ hit is between 30 and 15, whereas any lower is ‘got in the chart’, although thesedays just getting above 40 is a smasheroo…
#82, I think Paul Nicholas got on a lot because he was easily available. Also, the DJ’s ‘prissiness’ is more having a DJ actually pleased that a record they like and favour is on the show. As opposed to Fearn and Reggie’s endless enthusiasm for whatever happens to be on. OK, it may be a bunch of turps, but at least now you know where Noel Edmonds is coming from (or, did, anyway)
My last memory of NEdm as a DJ was his Sunday afternoon show (or was it Sat?) where he used to play “Lullabye Love” (Simon Ward?) every damn week, and a mimsier record you will never hear. Made “I’ll never love anyone anymore” sound like Motorhead/Girlschool’s “Please Dont Touch” by comparison…
I’m finding the djs hard to watch or maybe make that Dave Lee Travis and Noel Edmonds hard to watch – cringing is not the word – DLT beggars belief. Jimmy Savile less so – its just Jimmy Savile – and Tony Blackburn in retrospect was obviously always a bit cooler than the rest – although paradoxically at this point in the 70s he had the reputation as the most naff.
I don’t think the music is irredeemably naff at all – was any other time since really that much better? – off the top of my head in the last few weeks – we’ve had very good tracks from Gladys Knight, Lee Garrett (even if through no fault of his own the BBC backing made it unlistenable), Johnny Taylor, Diana Ross (2 good songs), Abba, Rolling Stones, Diana Ross, Andrea True Connection, Dooley Silverspoon, Four Seasons, Fox, Eric Carmen, – none of those would disgrace any era (even the Mud track was funky).
PS if I remember correctly from vague memories of listening to him at about 14 on his Sunday morning show Noel Edmonds used to like Harry Chapin and Jim Croce – but at least as someone said he HAD his own taste in music and obviously was a music lover unlike DLT or those awful mediocrities from the end of TOTP’s history in the 2000′s
I can’t remember Tony Blackburn ever being ‘cool’; he was naff even in the sixties when ‘naff’ wasn’t even a word!
Yes but i suppose he at least had youth on his side in the 60s and by the end of his radio 1 career and before his rebirth as a kind of Soul Godfather on Radio London in about 1982/83 surely he was looked on as particularly uncool even by Radio 1 standards – I bet back then even people of the ilk of DLT and Noel Edwards used to laugh at him behind his back.
But seeing him on those 1976 TOTP from today’s standpoint he seems far classier/less embarrassing/less frantically “fun” than the others and hasn’t the accepted knowledge for a time now been that his pushing of soul on Radio 1 (and even making some of those classics hits)meant he’s looked on in a much more favourable light than he was back then – didn’t John Peel go up to him at a party years later and say words to the effect of “I take it all back you were right all along”.
Even being the “uncool” one on a pirate radio station surely put you a little ahead of the curve, in terms of er coolth. TB was never not a twerp in terms of projected professional personality: which shouldn’t be confused with the quality of the tastes he always defended, though this is an easy mistake to make… people who stick to their guns and ignore all mockery begin, over time, to reveal a dimension to their character which the surface may not at ALL hint at.
I will own that Blackburn did a grand job of promoting Motown and its relatives; I’ve given him this credit before on Popular. Pete Murray and David Jacobs always did seem fish out of water, even in their pre-pirates, Radio Luxembourg days, but surely Luxy endowed a certain amount of cool?
Funnily enough I liked Brian Mathew in his Saturday Club days and I have a great deal of respect for him fifty years on. Mathew was never one for the gimmick or the jingle or the stupid barking dog, so he’s much more my type.
Plus, Tony did tend to self-importance on regular occasions. He was one of those calling for Punk to be banned purely because he didn’t like it. Nowadays, he’s more accepting of tastes other than his own, but still…
Yeah he was obviously far from perfect, (aren’t we all?) but over the years as Lord Sukrat says he has revealed himself as far more of a substantial personality than anyone would have thought. And did he really say he want punk “banned” or just say he didn’t like it?
Time has exposed just how Middle-England the old school Radio 1 DJ roster was, with the exception of Peel and Nightingale, they turned out to become a bunch of reactionary old farts. Tony Blackburn went up in my estimation after I’m A Celebrity… and you can’t doubt his taste in music, despite his mistaken belief that Punk was a bad thing.
Dunno about calling for punk to be “banned”, but he’s eager to dismiss it whenever he’s a talking head on nostalgia shows. I always had it in for him after he was apparently instrumental in getting Sweet’s “Turn It Down” banned, hastening their career decline, and his principal objection seemed to be the word “punk” in the lyric.
Noel was a big one for singer-songwriters, you’d get a lot of Joni Mitchell, Nilsson and Cat Stevens on his weekend show before he moved to the breakfast slot. Like Blackburn, though, he had a discernable musical taste, and Jimmy Savile was just a pop fan through and through ever since running the first “discotheques”, as he’d be keen to tell you.
Tone did call for “Pinball Wizard” to be banned, so maybe I was conflating a bunch of stuff.
However, on balance, A good DJ. (He did go through a horrendous “Medallion Man” phase, 20 years too late)…….
…
“Pinball Wizard”?! Why??
because it’s frightful rubbish?
Because of “bad taste”, i.e. writing songs about deaf, dumb and blind kids.
I thought it was written about Nik Cohn!
Well, sort-of: He was a big pinball fan, and Pete wrote it to ‘please’ him.
Christ, it was grim stuff tonight.
Why have Mud in the studio live for the second time in three weeks for a song which peaked outside the top ten?
Why show that appalling Tina Charles song again under similar circumstances?
Why allow David Hamilton and his cringeworthy links anywhere near a microphone and camera?
Confused? you will be…