Popular '79

12-6 for me. I didn’t vote for Buggles, Rats, Art, Lena, Hook and Floyd.
1979 was a top year for music that I like: Slow Train Coming, Metal Box, London Calling, Rickie Lee Jones; to name but a few.

Thanks for reminding me of some of those songs Mike. Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards ruled that year. One of my happiest memories ever was sitting in a London bar in 1979 celebrating a friends birthday with cocktails to the sound of ‘We are family’. ‘Thinking of you’ from the Sister Sledge album may well be my favourite desert island song for its optimism and lightness.

1979 was indeed a wondeful year. 15-3 for me. And to add just a few of my favourite non-Number 1 singles to Mike’s list:

– Lene Lovich “Lucky Number”
– Squeeze “Cool For Cats”
– OMD “Electricity”
– Roxy Music “Dance Away”
– Roxy Music “Angel Eyes”
– EWF “After The Love Has Gone”
– Madness “The Prince”
– Ian Dury “Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 3)”
– Patrick Hernandez “Born To Be Alive”
– Dollar “Who Were You With In The Moonlight” (did OMD listen to the intro to this before composing “Messages”?)
– Skids “Charade” (er, did OMD listen to the intro to this before composing “Messages”?)
– Carrie Lucas “Dance With You”
– XTC “Making Plans For Nigel”
– Dave Edmunds “Girls Talk”
– Three Degrees “The Runner”
– Frantique “Strut Your Funky Stuff”

Truly, a vintage year.

Oh – and great call on “The Boss” Mike, how did that only reach Number 40?

9-9 for me too. I love the personal Top 20s above, it really was a great year even if it did provide airspace for BA Robertson.

Two songs which figure very highly in my Most Sensuous Songs Ever list date from ’79: Fleetwood Mac’s Sara (all time no.1) and Judie Tzuke’s Stay With Me Til Dawn. The Bee Gees’ Until (from Spirits Having Flown) would make the list, too, but is trumped by their ’74 single Charade.

I was tempted to add Chas & Dave’s Gertcha for a minute.

Looking at the lists over at Every Hit I thought I could make the argument that 1980 was a better year, there are some cracking Number Ones that year but I’ll have to admit nothing that can match the long-term impact of ‘Rhythm Stick’ or ‘Heart of Glass’

I forgot ‘Transmission’ came out that year too. What a great time to be 17.

The (rather superb) NME critics’ poll for 1979;

1. Eton rifles – The Jam
2. Gangsters – The Specials
3. London Calling -The Clash
4. I will survive – Gloria Gaynor
5. Strange town – The Jam
6. Message in a bottle – The Police
7. Oliver’s army – Elvis Costello
8. Spacer – Sheila B Devotion
9. Shake your body – The Jacksons
10. Memories – Public Image Ltd.
11. Death disco – Public Image Ltd.
12. My feet keep dancing – Chic
13. Rock lobster – The B52’s
14. Don’t stop ’til you get enough – Michael Jackson
15. Making plans for nigel – XTC
16. Queen of hearts – Dave Edmunds
17. The pictures on the wall – Echo & The Bunnymen
18. Life during wartime – Talking Heads
19. She’s beyond good & evil – The Pop Group
20. Boogie wonderland – Earth Wind & Fire
21. Rowche rumble – The Fall
22. Living on the front line – Eddie Grant
23. The prince – Madness
24. Boys don’t cry – The Cure
25. Touch – Lori & The Chameleons
26. Transmission – Joy Division
27. Get over you – The Undertones
28. Memphis tennessee – Silicone Teens
29. On my radio – The Selecter
30. Pop music – M
31. Girls talk – Dave Edmunds
32. Heart of glass – Blondie
33. We are family – Sister Sledge
34. Stop your sobbing – Pretenders
35. Where’s Bill Grundy now – TV Personalities
36. Saturday night beneath the plastic palms – Leighton Buzzards
37. Time goes by so slow – Distractions
38. Protection – Graham Parker
39. A message to you rudi – The Specials
40. Electricity – Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

There’s nothing on that NME list that I’d rate less than 6 out of 10. (Lori and the Chameleons! The Distractions! Television Personalities! The Pop Group! “Rowche Rumble”!)

One amazing thing about the NME list – which I agree is terrific – is quite how many of those were big hits: the music press really aligned with the charts in a way that I guess presaged their continuing engagement w/”new pop”.

(And even the hits that weren’t big were often by groups who then went on to have hits, like Talking Heads) (Though not all – sorry Leighton Buzzards :(:()

I was just about to say that. Funny how the memory plays trick on you, I always thought ‘Saturday Night…’ had been a hit. Did I just imagine seeing them on TOTP then?

It’s almost certainly because the Leyton Buzzards had just won a Radio One “battle of the bands” competition, which came with the prize of a record deal with Chrysalis. “Saturday Night…” was their first single with the label.

Surprisingly, I only ticked six – but I can see another five that might conceivably have got 6s, so if I’d been generous, I could have ticked 11. The first part of the year is particularly stellar for me, but it could have been much better if Chic had hit the top a few times – there are 4 or 5 Chic singles I’d give 10 to.

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!!

And it would be 20 years before we could talk about the decade without people laughing and making jokes about flares.

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.

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.

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.

Quality namedrop there Conrad!

Thanks Erithian – there aren’t many websites where that would be considered a namedrop!

You’ll get some of Tom’s attention with comments like that

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.

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!

How was “The Boss” not a bigger hit???

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

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.