Y’all ready for this?
From the UK singles Top 10 of the last week of March 1993.
mp3: The Style Council – Speak Like A Child (#4)
mp3: Altered Images – Don’t Talk To Me About Love (#7)
mp3: Orange Juice – Rip It Up (#8)
Oh, and Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by the Eurythmics was at #5, well on its way to what would be six weeks in the Top 10.
There were also some other great pop tunes at the higher end of the charts….not all of which will be to everyone’s taste, but can offer an illustration that we were truly enjoying a golden age of memorable 45s:-
mp3: Duran Duran – Is There Something I Should Know (#1)
mp3: David Bowie – Let’s Dance (#2)
mp3: Jo Boxers – Boxerbeat (#6)
mp3: Bananarama – Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye (#9)
The other two places in the Top 10 were taken up by Bonnie Tyler and Forrest (no, me neither!!!)
Do you fancy looking a bit further down the Top 40?
mp3: Big Country – Fields Of Fire (400 Miles) (#13)
mp3: New Order – Blue Monday (#17)
mp3: Blancmange – Waves (#25)
mp3: Dexy’s Midnight Runners – The Celtic Soul Brothers (#36)
mp3: Wah! – Hope (I Wish You’d Believe Me) (#37)
Some facts and stats.
The debut single by The Style Council was the first of what would be four chart hits in 1983.
Altered Images and Orange Juice had both appeared on Top of The Pops the previous week on a show presented by John Peel and David ‘Kid’ Jensen, with both singles going up in the charts immediately after.
Is There Something I Should Know? was the first ever #1 for Duran Duran. It had entered the charts at that position the previous week.
David Bowie would, the following week, supplant Duran Duran from the #1 spot, and Let’s Dance would spend three weeks at the top.
The debut single by Jo Boxers would eventually climb to #3. It was the first of three chart singles for the group in 1983. They never troubled the charts in any other year.
Bananarama‘s single would reach #5 the following week. The group would, all told, enjoy 25 hit singles in their career.
Fields of Fire had been at #31 when Big Country had appeared on the same TOTP show presented by Peel and Jensen. A rise of 18 places in one week after appearing on the television was impressive.
Blue Monday was in the third week of what proved to be an incredible 38-week unbroken stay in the Top 100. It initially peaked at #12 in mid-April and eventually fell to #82 in mid-July, at which point it was discovered for the first time by large numbers of holidaymakers descending on the clubs in sunnier climes. By mid-October, it had climbed all the way back up to #9.
Blancmange were enjoying a second successive hit after Living On The Ceiling had gone top 10 in late 1982. Waves would spend a couple of weeks in the Top 20, peaking at #19.
The success of The Celtic Soul Brothers was a cash-in from the record company. It had touched the outer fringes of the charts in March 1982, but its follow-up, Come On Eileen, had captured the hearts of the UK record-buying public. It was re-released in March 1983, going on to spend five weeks in the charts and reaching #20.
Hope (I Wish You’d Believe Me) was the follow-up to Story Of The Blues. It wasn’t anything like as successful and spent just one week inside the Top 40.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
If I had to choose 3 favourites then…
Bowie
Blancmange
Sweet Dreams
If I had to choose 3 favourites today…
Blancmange
New Order
Sweet Dreams
Let’s Dance; my favorite Bowie single. Sounds great whenever and wherever it’s played.
Speak Like a Child; what a debut. Full of joy. I loved The Jam but when this came out I thought yeah I can, ahem, dig the new breed.
It took me longer than it should to realise how brilliant Rip Ut Up was/is but I got there in the end. If there’s ever an 80s ICA this will be the opener.
Duran Duran; what a shame – I liked the first album. All the hype about Duranmania around this time. I was going out with one of their biggest fans at this point. I was terrified of her. What a relief it was when her mate rang to say it was all off but we’d still be friends.
Hah, what a year that was shaping up to be.
That was a good chart week….!
Superb!!!
SC
” Big Country, the band that put the ‘tree’ back into ‘country’.”
What a great top ten. In 1983 I would still have been taping the best bits of the Charts on a Sunday evening before moving to taping the John Peel show the following year.
Forrest “Rock the Boat” is a catchy little cover that used to get played to death at our village discos – I’m imaging some kind of dance went along with it.
Further down the charts this week, but heading top ten, providing a link between The Jam (who I loved) and The Style Council, is Tracie and “The House that Jack Built”. Tracie providing backing vocals on Beat Surrender and Speak Like a Child and joined them for the appearances on Top of the Pops.
WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE! The fact that there was a time that two of the greatest ever Scottish singles were next to each other in the top ten just shows the youngsters today what they are missing… I was only 14 – wish I’d been 4/5 years older TBH..
A fun time in music and a fun time in my life. The soundtrack to the second half of my sophomore year at college (uni).
Great stuff for a Monday morning (I can do without Duran Duran but that’s just me). Speak Like A Child is as good as anything the Jam did. Don’t @ me.
Oh, and Jo- Boxers were the first band I ever saw play live, supporting Madness at the Apollo, same year, 83.
oh boy I look on this list (warts and all) with such envy. I just checked the Bilboard Hot 100 to see what we were subject too in the same week. There is some fun poking through (largely due to Mtv) but mostly it is…. rough.
https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1983-03-26/