1 Karma Chameleon
2 Uptown Girl
3 Red Red Wine
4 Let’s Dance
5 Total Eclipse of the Heart
6 True
7 Down Under
8 Billie Jean
9 All Night Long – Lionel Richie (2)
10 Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This – Eurythmics (2)
11 You Can’t Hurry Love
12 Too Shy
13 Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)
14 Every Breath You Take
15 Is There Something I Should Know?
16 Give It Up
17 Blue Monday – New Order (9)
18 I.O.U. – Freeez (2)
19 Baby Jane
20 They Don’t Know – Tracey Ullman (2)
21 Say Say Say – Paul McCartney/Michael Jackson (2)
22 Words – FR David (2)
23 Tonight I Celebrate My Love – Peabo Bryson/Roberta Flack (2)
24 Bad Boys – Wham! (2)
25 Flashdance (What A Feeling) – Irene Cara (2)
26 Only You*
27 New Song – Howard Jones (3)
28 Love of the Common People – Paul Young (2)
29 Moonlight Shadow – Mike Oldfield (4)
30 Sign of the Times – Belle Stars (3)

* Christmas period sales were too late to be included!

But for me it could well be an age thing. 1983 is the first year that I can remember hearing most of the number ones at the time, rather than second time around. In most cases I didn’t even hear the full song, but a single chance hearing of the chorus, verse or hook was enough to make it stick in my head. It wasn’t just the year’s number ones either, when anniversary editions of the Now series were released for the tenth anniversary I realised just how many of the year’s hits had been banked in my memory for ten years without titles, artists or context.

An indication of how hook-filled the New Pop was? Or is it just an age thing?

As for Melly’s book, it’s a cracker. Simultaneously awestruck by these kids who cost him a cosy living, and crisply cynical when he needs to be. I’ve been after a first edition 4evs – the Penguin edition always seems to disintegrate on touch.

And as for Thom Gunn’s pome about the King, I prefer Scooter’s tear-soaked The Shit That Killed Elvis.

*i own melly’s book but have never quite got round to reading it

**just after i stopped being sight&sound’s sub and fact-checker, they printed a story which meant to reference thom gunn, but actually referenced ben gunn (who is the mad marooned pirate in treasure island)

Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs
He turns revolt into a style, prolongs
The impulse to a habit of the time.

There was always a tension in punk between those who saw it as an end to standard ideas of ‘rock’ and those who saw it as a return to the essentials – which seems to lead inevitable to the ‘Classic’ view of rock or pop. Interesting that 1983 saw Mick Jones booted out of The Clash – as he seemed to have more time for mixing new styles such as dub and hip-hop – by Joe Strummer who seemed more conservative. It riles me that Jones doesn’t get the adulation given to Strummer, who has virtually been raised to sainthood.

re: 17 & 22 I’d be interested to know when the seperate ‘Indie’ and Dance charts began to feature in NME and elsewhere. I always associate ‘Blue Monday’ with the former – probably because it was the indie equivalent of ‘The Sound of Music’ longevity wise. Those seperate charts reflect the atomisation of pop and an end to the serendipity and musical misegenation which Tom was lauding elsewhere

It’s quite incredible that wild card club smashes like Hip Hop Be Bop were never hits. It’ll be interesting, as the 80s progress, to see how many of the decade’s best singles were either minor hits or not at all – the major label’s conservative stranglehold (how many hits did N Kershaw/H Jones/P Young have between them??) being their lesson learnt from punk, with no small help from equally conservative Radio 1. And between them they truly succeeded in squeezing much creativity from the charts, the bastards. Seeds of C86 are sewn here (first Creation single also in late ’83).

“Barney Bubble died on November 14, the day that the Cruise missiles arrived in Britain.”

The Face magazines records of the year (in no set order) were:
Billie Jean – Michael Jackson
Blue Monday – New Order
Pills & Soap – The Imposter
Juicy Fruit – Mtume
Autodrive – Herbie Hancock
Native Boy – Animal Nightlife
Let’s stay together – Tina Turner
You brought the sunshine – Clarke Sisters
Every Soul – Ruby Turner
Don’t mess with Bill – Ruth Pointer
Let’s dance – David Bowie
I just gotta have you – Kashif
Out come the freaks (II) – Was not was
Ain’t nobody – Rufus
Get Loose – Evelyn King
Soweto/Zulu’s on a time bomb – Malcolm McClaren
Long Hot Summer – Style Council
Little Red Corvette – Prince
Let the music play – Shannon
Jam on revenge – Newcleus
Hip Hop don’t stop – Mann Parrish
Coup – 23 Skidoo
Get Wet -C Bank
Rockin Radio – Tom Browne
The Roxy – Phase Two
Love Town – Booker Newbury III
Just fascination – Caberet Voltaire
Last night a DJ saved my life – In Deep
Une Sale Histoire – Fab Five Freddy
Pacman – The Pacman
Candy Girl – New Edition
Just be good to me – SOS Band
Go deh Yaka – Monyaka
Outstanding – The Gap Band
White Lines (Don’t do it) Grand Master & Melle Mel

Hamilton: “Hurrah for things that never go in galleries! Here’s a gallery show that finally gives them their due!”

Punk: “Let us escape from all these fusty old rules! Here is the list of things you must to do achieve this!”

As mentioned in the Only You thread, ’83 marked the start of the classicism of pop. Booker Newberry’s Love Town, a pleasant enough contemporary-sounding club hit with a decent vocal, was hailed an instant classic and came in a retro ‘instant classic’ sleeve.

Kent and Bam Caruso joined Edsel, Ace and Charly in issuing non-hit, carefully conceived packages of pop’s past in ’83. Hearing The Left Banke’s Pretty Ballerina or Mary Love’s Lay This Burden Down for the first time was always going to make retro/pastiche/tributes like Uptown Girl and True (complete with their 100% top end, bass free productions) sound feeble. It’s hard to be objective but, nostalgia aside, I really don’t think the majority of these number ones have aged well (not even Candy Girl which I loved back then).

I don’t mean to sound snob, I hope I don’t. I should add there was much genuinely NEW in ’83 (Blue Monday, Looking For The Perfect Beat) that thrilled me just as much as obscure northern/psych. But it was a bad year for Richard Hamilton’s model of POP I’d say; return of old school, pre-punk values (yeah, yeah, been ‘ere before…)

I’m shocked at how little love there is for the Paul Young record, my second fave after ‘Billie Jean’

Re the voting, I’m guessing a lot of readers may not be obsessive/autistic enough (unlike me for example) to check each track out before voting. KC isn’t exactly a radio staple in ’09. So they’ll vote for the ones they know and pass on the ones they don’t.

As it goes, Give It Up was my second favourite no.1 of the year, behind the consensus classic.

In the case of the Police, it’s also that song’s ubiquity which generates more negative, or critical, comment – you are commenting not just about the song but the public’s reaction towards it. Why is it so popular? Why do people choose it as a wedding song, despite its lyric…etc

With many others, they are largely forgotten, so maybe the bar is lower.

So I wonder if the people who comment are unrepresentative of the readership?