I give a mark out of 10 to every track – this poll is for you to tick all the songs you’d have given 6 or more to, and you can discuss the year in general in the comments box.
Loading ...A year of few number ones, though it took me an age to finish. My highest marks were 8 for Shakespear’s Sister and Charles And Eddie; lowest was a 2 for Wet Wet Wet. Onwards!
I'm writing about every UK number one single, in order. It's taken a while, it'll take a while longer. Wander around in the archives, or join in with the marvellous bunch of commenters we've managed to attract - new voices always very welcome!
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I agree with Punctum re general wellbeing having an effect. I admit that how good a year was for me personally may probably slightly influence my opinion – I had such a great time in 1983 that nostalgia may be making me more positive about stuff like ‘Baby Jane’*, ‘La Dolce Vita’, ‘Down Under”Club Tropicana’ and ‘I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues’ than I would otherwise be. Having said that I don’t think any of them are bad pop records.
And even with my most objective head on I believe there’s a real fall off in 1984 and by 1985/86 it’s all got pretty hideous.
Yes Wichita I was 18 in 1983 so I am around the same age and to me Frankie just seemed like an ugly comedown after the pop splendour of the previous 2 or 3 years. I supposed I realised at the end of 1983 that 1982 was finally over…Throughout 1983 I had gradually been immersing myself in the jazz-funk (and emerging electro) clubbing culture and so was drawing away from mainstream pop anyway but in retrospect it looks like a good time as any to have got out.
I don’t mind 1975 personally:
Kraftwerk ‘Autobahn’,other good Krautrock, plenty of good modern soul/funk, early disco, big year for jazz-funk/fusion (‘Expansions’etc), ‘real’ and pop reggae, IMO last good Pink Floyd album. Not that the 10 year old me would have heard any of that aside from a bit of Capital Radio/Radio London played soul/disco/pop reggae at the time though.
*nb I can’t hear or even think of this song without being transported to sitting at a table out the back of my local pub in the early evening sunshine of a Saturday night in the summer of 1983
I’m a “glass is as EMPTY AS IT IS FULL” guy when it comes to…every year of my life, including my young adulthood the late-90s which may be as maligned as the mid-80s tend to be.
Some years might be better argued as good/bad for number ones or the charts in general (1992 DOES suffer in these respects due to factors such as the sales slump, the credibility struggles of TOTP and “1FM” (he he) at the time and fewer chart-toppers than previous years altho some may argue the latter as good especially as a dramatic shift would soon follow.
#56 1975 was a great year for music! All the ones Andy Pandy mentioned, plus Young Americans, Siren, Blood on the Tracks, Horses, Physical Graffiti, Red, Bob Marley and the Wailers Live. Also: Love to Love You Baby, Little Johnny Jewel, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, Cortez the Kiler.
And if you went out, you could catch Stevie Wonder in his pomp, the Wailers touring Natty Dread, and Miles Davis with his Agharta / Pangaea band.
It was all there. As long as you could get yourself to downtown Manhattan / London / Osaka.
#63: Completely agree, and after one more MAJOR entry (and then nothing for a couple of weeks because I’m going on holiday. I’ll be back though) TPL will be diving into 1975, one of the most bizarre years for number one albums I can recall (no peeking ahead now!).
Also bamboozling was the 1975 segment of Kid Jensen’s Double Top 20 show on Smooth FM this week; this weird Bermuda Triangle of a chart where various bits of pop history flotsam and jetsam met in limbo; see for yourself. And with all this great music around (as mentioned above). The answer, as usual, is music radio programming policies and chain store-biased chart data.
And re 1975 I even missed Steely Dan at the top of their game.
#60, Wichita: Yes, soul before disco, in the sense of “Disco” being the Bee Gees and all that sailed. Your two examples are exactly the sort of thing I liked and am talking about. Hamilton Bohannon!
Glam wasn’t ‘over’ by 1975, it was certainly on its last legs (but who knew this at the time?)
At least in some cases the ‘soul before disco’ idea is completely literal:
Don’t leave me this way (1975)
Don’t leave me this way (1976) (although it didn’t hit #1 until 1977)
Anyhow, 1975 is a pretty fascinating crossover year for different sorts of dance music with all of Fire, Lady Marmalade, Jive Talkin’, (Bowie’s) Fame getting to #1 in the US.
Glam wasn’t ‘over’ by 1975, it was certainly on its last legs (but who knew this at the time?)
John Craven did; there was a special edition of Search dealing with it, and another entitled “Are The Rollers Finished?” when “Love Me Like I Love You” got stuck at #17 in spring ’76 (after the programme the single vaulted to #4!).
I’d say Don’t Leave Me This Way is full-on disco. In no way do I think this is a derogatory thing to say, but the regimented beat with the hissing hi-hat – well, that’s disco to me.
Re 66: … but maybe I see “Disco” as something different to other commenters here… Hamilton Bohannon is SURELY more disco than soul? Disco Stomp sounds closer to Hello’s New York Groove than George Perkins’ Crying In The Streets.
Re 68: Amazing! And two mentions for John Craven within 12 comments. And he was right, let’s see what Sweet got out and wrote their own hard rock songs, Fox On The Run and Action being their last Top 20 hits bar one in ’78; Gary Glitter scored one top 10 hit early in the year, his last til the 80s; Slade’s excellent How Does It Feel (no.15) saw them bow out of the Premier League, stats-wise at least (I LOVE the non-hit Nobody’s Fool from ’76); T Rex and Bowie had already shifted into soulful territory; The Rubettes and Mud alone carried the torch, the latter scoring six hits and an unforgettable performance in Never Too Young To Rock.
ps Punctum, the Rollers’ Just A Little Love is one of my favourite ‘finds’ of the year, so cheers for that! It would slot easily onto a Fading Yellow pop-psych comp.
Well, the “Disco” I was meaning was the “Saturday Night Fever” scene change.
#68, like any scene extant, there’s someone saying “Is it all over?” before it is. Not much point afterwards. “Is the X-Factor 2011 over? Oh yes it is, thanks.”
I used to say (still do, in fact), Punk was not dead when people said “Punk is Dead”, it was dead when people said “Punk’s not dead”.
Another indicator of a scene in terminal decline is a novelty hit. Not necessarily a pisstake, or a bad record, but a novelty nonetheless:
Rock’n’roll: The Champs – Tequila (1958)
Girl groups: The Shangri La’s – Leader Of The Pack (1965)
Flower power: Simon Dupree & the Big Sound – Kites (1967)
Swinging London: Des O’Connor – Dick A Dum Dum (1968)
Punk: Jilted John – Jilted John (1978)
The major exception is Rick Dees’ Disco Duck in ’76 – the scene grew and grew regardless. And Glam was always too much of a pop playground to be satirised, La Glitter having already broken all barriers.
Since when is any of these a “novelty”?
Since forever! Tequila?
LOTP is high camp
Kites was a psych cash-in, with a Chinese spoken passage.
Dick A Dum Dum is, hmmm, light hearted?
Jilted John is funny.
Disco Duck is a disco novelty record.
#71 – Wikipedia’s definition of a novelty song is “a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs.” However, I’m not sure that gets us very far. Interestingly, the only rock’n’roll “novelty” song mentioned in the Wikipedia article is Yakety Yak (1958) – if that is “novelty” then so is Tutti Frutti!
Sticking with the mid-to-late 50s rock’n’roll era, I think the way in which “novelty” makes most sense is as a “comical” way of mocking (and cashing in on) a genre that was replacing established genres and was largely unloved by the establishment. For rock’n’roll, such novelty songs were around right from the start – e.g. Stan Freeberg’s Heartbreak Hotel, the Goons’ Bloodnok’s Rock and Roll Call, Mitchell Torok’s When Mexico gave up the Rhumba (to do the Rock’n’Roll), or Kay Starr’s Rock’n’Roll Waltz (all 1956).
Re 74: Thought I might open a can of worms there. I think you’re right on the songs that mock R&R. I picked Tequila because it’s made by R&R musicians, not mocking, just a bit… daft? I love it, but it doesn’t quite have the impact of Yakety Yak or Summertime Blues (both of which are built for ‘comical effect’), does it? It feels like the wind is going out of the sails.
Bobby “Boris” Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers “Monster Mash” stands out for me. 1962 might be a bit late for R&R parodies, but it’s really a parody of dance crazes than the music itself. It got the #3 slot in 1973 and has been a required feature of any Halloween party I’ve been to. Bobby Pickett has subsequently made a lucrative career from this one song or derivatives of it. It also works as a stand-alone pop song, which the best novelty records seem to achieve. I’d count “Yakety Yak” among those, definitely.
There were novelty punk singles the very moment “Anarchy” was issued. jking, for one
What’s JK’s novelty punk single? None of his ’75-’76 releases seem to fit the bill. Perhaps it was a bit like this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELKb-lcW4e0&feature=player_detailpage#t=70s
I’m surprised about the comments about disco above – I thought it was one of the (few?) musical developements when it was agreed on exactly what year it not only started (1974) and that it became very big (pop number 1’s etc) straight away (George McRae) by the end of 1975 it was so big there were already articles saying was it was on the way out. Little did they know!
#78: It was “God Save The Sex Pistols” by “Elizabeth.” Which wasn’t very funny.
Yes. I’m assuming it wasn’t funny, never heard it.
Mind you, as Jonathan King would doubtless be the first to tell you, he recorded a song called “Anarchy Rock” as a b-side to The Weathermen’s “Honey Bee keep on stinging me” (ooh if only!), back in 1971.
He also recorded a “punk” single in 1972 entitled “Supershit.”
Let’s not talk about him too much, he might turn up.
He really might. Maybe here’s here already.
Good spot FG, Monster Mash was the signified that the dance craze started by Chubby Checker was in decline. No hits for Chubby, Dee Dee Sharp, The Orlons or The Dovells – all Philly dance craze specialists – after MM.
Is it ‘affectionate novelties’ I’m thinking of? Snidey ‘satire’, whether it’s J King or Stan Freberg, only tends to happen when a genre emerges. Not sure where Disco Duck fits into this pattern.
Signifier, I meant.
That’s probably it, yes: The “Think” sample of James Brown going “yeah, hoo!” never got used again after Bombalurina’s “Itsy bitsy”, also the “ah yeah” too,.
Also, Aneka’s “Japanese Boy” killed the NME sponsored JapPop movement stone dead!
an article in this week’s edition of the New Statesman magazine identifies 1992, with John Major’s victory in the General election as the ‘end of socialism’ in the UK:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/03/education-labour-benn-school
Those Finnish 1992 no.1s in full:
Good year for Felix. And Lithium at no.1! I’d like to hear Moogetmoogs. Neon 2 I’m guessing were a Finnish 2 Unltd-alike?
Jan 20 The KLF – Justified & Ancient
Feb 17 Moogetmoogs – Kolmen minuutin muna
Mar 2 Hausmylly – Gigolo
Mar 16 Popeda – Kersantti Karoliina
Mar 30 Kurre – En rakkauttas saa
Apr 13 J. Karjalainen – Telepatiaa
Apr 27 ZZ Top – Viva Las Vegas
May 11 DJ Konnat – 9700-Irma
May 25 Wilson Phillips – You Won’t See Me Cry
Jun 8 Kaivo – Kun olet mennyt
Jun 22 Erasure – Abba-esque
Jul 20 Nirvana – Lithium
Aug 3 Madonna – This Used to Be My Playground
Aug 17 Shamen – L.S.I.
Aug 31 2 Unlimited – The Magic Friend
Sep 14 Neon 2 – Polku
Sep 28 Felix – Don’t You Want Me
Oct 12 East 17 – House of Love
Oct 26 Neljä Ruusua – Juppihippipunkkari (Remix)
Nov 9 Felix – It Will Make Me Crazy
Nov 23 KCD – Simo Goes Poing!
Dec 21 Colours – Help Us Back Home Sarajevo
The final Number One of 1992 presumably a comment on the Bosnian war, which began in April of that year.
Colours, whoever they were, beating U2 and Pavarotti to the punch by three years.
Yes, intriguing. The official British line was still “they’re all as bad as each other”, and would be for some years.
The penultimate no.1 was presumably a comment on Gabber.
Kat of this parish is doing OneWeekOneBand again. She’s going to be talking all week about The Fall!!
http://oneweekoneband.tumblr.com/post/67987229739/coming-up-the-fall
Going through all the Popular 1992 threads (mostly a month ago but as I have no order to how I read things, I only just got round to finishing it now) has seen me reconsider Ain’t No Doubt and Sleeping Satellite. I’d known, or at least known of (and barely listened to) each song for a very long time thanks to 90s number one specials on music TV. I cared for neither but now I really quite love them both.
Recently, 1992 has become something of an in-joke year for me among certain friends, someone connecting the dots that albums I have been hooked on relatively recently (Jehovahkill, certain compilations, and not for the first time, Nonsuch) from 1992, as well me going on about numerous hits, mostly rave hits, from the same year. My favourite singles of 1992 are mostly fall into the latter category (Don’t Go, Injected with a Poison, Trip to Trumpton), though some aren’t (Leave Them All behind, Motorcycle Emptiness).
Favourite songs from 1992 which weren’t singles
The Cure – This Twilight Garden
XTC – Rook
Disco Inferno – Love Stepping Out
Julian Cope – Necropolis
Ween – Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)
Peter Gabriel – Love to Be Loved
Alianza – Santiago
Aphex Twin – Heliosphan
The Prodigy – Hyperspeed (G-Force Part 2)
Nicolette – O Si Nene