This week in music charts!

I was just going to write about the importance of the charts.
In the U.K there was only one chart that really mattered.
Based on actually sales you could end up with Country, New Wave, Heavy Metal, and Novelty records in adjacent position.
It would determine who got shown on Top of the Pops later that week, one of the rules being that they never showed acts that were going down the charts.

You can still look at what was happening that week
https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19870823/7501/

From a few weeks earlier I found a more comprehensive explanation.
I'm wondering if the text is Bruno Brookes exact words.
https://talkaboutpopmusic.com/2021/08/02/charts-uk-top-40-singles-chart-2nd-august-1987/

The bit about Def Leppard is particularly interesting. Imagine following them for eight years and then seeing them finally getting a Top Forty hit
and an appearance on Top of the Pops.


Of course I am sure there were at a few fans who would claim they had sold out and gone too mainstream.
Some people thought any band that played Top of the Pops had "sold out".

 

Why just look at the charts when you can listen to one from today 43 years ago?


Hopefully you can listen on Youtube like I can.

In the U.K. there was only one chart that had any significance and it was this one,
based on the previous weeks sales, and presented like this every week on a Sunday.

This was the reason every teenager with any interest in pop music wanted a Radio Cassette Recorder. It seems like RetroRadioUK got himself a very nice Akai home system.
If you could afford the tapes, and the DJ didn't talk too much over the music, it was like getting a KTel album every week. Of course the novelty of some songs would wear off when you got a song like Bryan Adams "Everything I Do" which stayed at Number One for sixteen weeks back in 1991, so most people would be sat there with their fingers on Play and Record hoping to time it right to just record the songs they liked and hadn't recorded the previous week (not that I ever did such a thing ). If you didn't get it you either had to buy the album or hope that a copy would turn up in a bargain bin or in a second hand shop.

 

I wonder if youngsters are still interested in The Charts? I don't remember when I last listened to them but then I don't like modern rap music which seems to dominate them.

People listening to streaming services also seem to like the classics
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55717156
I do wonder if, after synthpop, every music style that can be done now has been so while there have been recent tracks I have liked like The Weeknd they wouldn't sound out of place in an 80s chart.

I have just got to the end of listening to the chart. I last heard 10CC's Dreadlock Holiday on the radio about a week ago. I don't think I have heard the David Essex or Commodores tracks for a while and enjoyed them both.

I had been looking for old progammes like this and the Youtube recommendations suddenly suggested one of these. The same person has posted several dozen on Youtube.

 

Longman I did record the charts when I was younger, I still have 2 cassettes of the charts. I have May and June 1986. I got the tracks i wanted did not really have to hover over the recorder as I knew the tracks I wanted and what position they were in. Most kids waited till Sunday, what they did not notice was the charts was released on Tuesday. Since I knew by Tuesday, I was ready when it was played on Sunday.

Here are links to the ones I have in my music library May 1986 and June 1986

 

I have inserted the smiley that was obviously required. I have at least a dozen tapes of "Top 40 hits" recorded in the first half of the 1980s. Back then I listened to them so much that I knew which song was coming next, and even which songs I mis-cued or the DJ talked over.

Listening to the chart I posted above the biggest surprise was the traffic announcement in the middle, especially bearing in mind that people all over the U.K. would be listening. I hope everyone survived as it sounded to be a serious accident.

As for the charts being announced earlier in the week, when my parents got a Teletext TV I quickly realised I could check the Chart Positions using that, so if the track I was interested in was at Number 3 I had a good idea when it was going to be played. I don't think I bought many singles, saving my money for Albums which, if they had four or five good tracks were better value for money.

 

I bought loads of singles but 12" singles at that, but was in the 90's when I had loads more disposable cash. Here are my 12" singles.

 

Here are the U.K. breakers from the same week
https://www.mixcloud.com/kickup80s/uk-top-40-15-21-february-1981-the-chart-breakers/

Listening to Wave105's Golden Hour on the way into work each morning I think that the 80s as we know it started in 1981. The first three groups/artists in this mix, Duran Duran, Kim Wilde, and Toyah were all making their chart debuts. Moving into the 21st Century I have seen all three of them.

 

I'd never heard of Heart until they started playing this on the Radio in 1986

I bought the album and thought they were an amazing new band, so it was a surprise when a colleague (who was far more into music than me) said they had been around for years.

Another band that completely transformed themselves was Genesis. In the 1970s they were only known to Prog Rock enthusiasts. In the 1980s both they, and Peter Gabriel, were regularly in the singles charts.

p,s, R.I.P John Lennon who was murdered in December 1980.
Even in February 1981 he had two songs in the Top 20 as a result
https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19810215/7501/