’79 ends up as one of the best years, according to my marks anyhow – but which of its tracks would you have handed six or higher to? Pick as many as you want, then discuss the year in the comments boxes if you like.
Loading ...My highest marks were 9s for Buggles, Dury, Blondie – lowest 2s for Lena M and the Rats.
Tom in FT /Popular • Pop/popular year poll • 1,938 views
All, 1–25, 26–62.Back up to post. More comments: All, 1–25, 26–62.
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.
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I told you I’d be back when the seventies were over!
(No, really–I hadn’t visited this site for some weeks, and then this morning I groggily clicked the FT bookmark when I meant to click the one next to it on the list and. . . .)
I actually ticked ten here, and they more or less coincide with the majority. (OK, I really do like the PF track in spite of myself.) This must mean:
GOODBYE SEVENTIES!!
Hope you’ll stick around Doc – we’re losing too many good people here!
And it would be 20 years before we could talk about the decade without people laughing and making jokes about flares.
Voted for 8, didn’t vote for 10, but then I’m really picky. Seems that a strong year for singles in general means a strong year for no1s, rather than the rubbish holding sway at the top.
XTC also got to make their TotP debut with the massive Number 54 smash ‘Life Begins At The Hop’ – interestingly, both this and ‘Nigel’ are of course Colin Moulding’s songs. Pity he seems to have given up now.
Of the records I know from that NME list, there are only three or four I’d rank below six, and a couple of them are probably more to do with overexposure than the records themselves. ‘Shake Your Body’ is a solid five for me though.
TotP, back then, was 35 or 40 minutes long, so they could occasionally put a band on that they wanted to give a boost to. When they got shaved to 30 mins, the top40 rule was more rigorously enforced.
I voted for 10 here. A good few others would be 5s, which is a good record in my book. I’m heartened to note that the misanthropic ones who have voted “none of them!” in previous polls have yet to register in 1979!
On careful reflection, I would rate Dance Away as my outstanding single of a very good year. There aren’t many records that can still give me a near-orgasmic glow and shiver (at the same time) after thirty years, and this is one of them. Had it made the top, a clear 10 from me.
voted (anonymously on another PC) for 14
these polls are attracting lots of voters now!
Re 29 and 30 it was also a question of logistics. If several records climbing the charts were by, say, American acts not then in the country, or bigger UK acts who may have been on tour, in the era when promo videos were not commonplace, TOTP could easily find themselves short of live performances to fill a 30 or, as Mark points out, a 35-40 minute time slot.
Often they simply repeated an act’s performance from a fortnight previously, but I imagine they were reluctant to rely on this. So, sometimes an act with a single outside the Top 40 got on the show.
I remember the Mark I Human League performing Rock’n'Roll, although the track never made the Top 40. I also rememember a somewhat sinister 2 appearances by an act called Platinum Blonde, who did a medley of Blondie hits in the summer of 81 stars-on-45 craze. And this depite the record not making the Top 40 – definitely something fishy going on there!
Actually, I should have asked Michael Hurll. I’ve just come from a meeting with him. I’m not sure he’d remember now -the chap’s about 80.
Yeh,a brilliant year for #1s..I voted 12-6
Only Village People,Pink Floyd,Cliff,Art Garfunkle,Dr Hook and Lena Martell scored below 6
Quality namedrop there Conrad!
Re nomarks on TOTP. The mid-70s was the era for these – I seem to remember it was almost a feature, to have a “new release” on every week. I can remember a female glam rocker called “Bobbie McGee” (can’t remember the song), a nondescript bunch called Longdancer doing something instantly forgettable (completely flopped – I wonder what happened to that David A Stewart fellow) and some mob called 1776, doing a terrible version of “Oh Susanna”.
Slightly less left-field, but rather more pleasing, was the surprise appearance by SAHB doing “Delilah” before they had ever hit the singles chart, although they were pretty well known, I suppose.
Thanks Erithian – there aren’t many websites where that would be considered a namedrop!
But that one was special (special) sooo special…
You’ll get some of Tom’s attention with comments like that
And so what if I do? – got bottle and I’m gonna use it!
Re 20 & 21: TOTPWatch. The Leyton Buzzards performed ‘Saturday Night Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees’ on the edition transmitted on March the 9th 1979. Also in the studio that week were; The Buzzcocks, Cliff Richard, Dennis Brown, The Dooleys, Inner Circle, Motorhead, The Real Thing and The Late Show (who?), plus Legs & Co’s infamous interpretation of ‘Something Else’. The host was David Jensen.
And here are the charts of 1979 seen upside down; Those singles which peaked at number 40 (I adore the first one and don’t know the others);
10 Mar Trash – Roxy Music – 1 week
24 Mar Bristol Stomp – Late Show – 1
12 May As Long As The Price Is Right – Dr. Feelgood – 1
16 Jun I’d Be Surprisingly Good For You – Linda Lewis – 1
30 Jun One Rule For You – After The Fire – 1
4 Aug The Boss – Diana Ross – 1
18 Aug You Need Wheels – The Merton Parkas – 1
27 Nov Heartache Tonight – The Eagles – 1
I remember all of those #40s except the Dr. Feelgood. Really liked “Trash” at the time, to the extent that the follow-up “Dance Away” came as a crashing disappointment; I was hoping for Roxy Mark II to be a lot more “Trash”-like. (I like it well enough now, though.)
But “The Boss” stands head and shoulders above all of them, obviously!
I’m hoping that ‘The Bristol Stomp’ sounded more like Pigbag or The Pop Group than some Wurzels-style novelty reworking of ‘The Disco Stomp’…
How was “The Boss” not a bigger hit???
yes the strength of the nme’s “line”at this point was that pop and the avant-garde weren’t just nodding acquaintances but compadres
ie you felt (well, i felt) that if the pop group were asked “is the name ironic?” they would say NOT AT ALL
NME Readers’ poll for 1979: Best single;
1. The Specials/ Gangsters
2. The Jam/ Eton Rifles
3. The Police/ Message In A Bottle
4. Tubeway Army/ Are ‘Friends’ Electric?
5. Pink Floyd/ Another Brick In The Wall
6. The Boomtown Rats/ I Don’t Like Mondays
7. The Police/ Roxanne
8. The Jam/ Strange Town
9. The Jam/ When You’re Young
10. The Clash/ London Calling
Melody Maker readers’ poll for 1979: Best single;
1. The Boomtown Rats/ I Don’t Like Mondays
2. Tubeway Army/ Are ‘Friends’ Electric?
3. Dire Straits/ Sultans Of Swing
4. Supertramp/ The Logical Song
5. The Police/ Roxanne
6. Judie Tzuke/ Stay With Me Till Dawn
7. Motorhead/ Overkill
8. The Police/ Can’t Stand Losing You
9. Dave Edmunds/ Girls Talk
10. Ian Dury & The Blockheads/ Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
11. Gary Moore/ Parisienne Walkways
12. The Specials/ Gangsters
13. Supertramp/ Breakfast In America
14. Roxy Music/ Dance Away
15. Ian Dury & The Blockheads/ Reasons To Be Cheerful
16. The Ruts/ Babylon’s Burning
17. David Bowie/ Boys Keep Swinging
18. Yes/ Don’t Kill The Whale
19. Blondie/ Heart Of Glass
20. Spyro Gyra/ Morning Dance
re 48 & 49 are an interesting reflection of the tastes of the two music papers – MM readers were obviously still split between punk and the old guard – Don’t kill the whale more popular than Heart of Glass? Pah! Mind you the NME chart looks rather monotone in comparison (with both the MM readers and NME critics poll). Do you have the Sounds readers chart Billy? I suspect that there may be a bit more metal in there.
I’ve not seen any of the Sounds readers’ polls (or most of the critics ones, either) but would be really interested to find out.
i might be able to dig out the sounds polls for 1979, from my giant pile of stuff a normal person would have thrown away — i think this is the year i gave up reading sounds IN JUSTIFIED DISGUST (they sacked jane suck and hired garry bushell) (and gave the firs raincoats LP a bad review!)
Here are the phantom number ones that got to the top spot on the NME chart, but not the Guinness one; Chiquitta, Oliver’s Army, In The Navy, Pop Muzik, Dance Away, Silly Games. No mean list in its own right!
1979 on TPL begins and this all has to come to an end.
TPL, and EMI’s strange notions on what constitutes dance music.
Back to K-Tel.
Back to Barbra.
Back, boringly, to Abba.
TPL on ELO.
TPL goes disco.
Achilles’ last stand; TPL on In Through The Out Door.
TPL with maybe 1979′s most boring number one album.