The singles chart of the final week of April 1983 was slightly less poptastic than the previous month.
Quite a few of those featured last time around were still in the Top 40 – David Bowie (#6), New Order (#23), JoBoxers (#19), Duran Duran (#27), Big Country (#29), Dexy’s Midnight Runners (#32), Eurythmics (#33) and The Style Council (#36).
The #1 slot was occupied by Spandau Ballet with True, an MOR-ballad that in later years would be revealed had been written a Gary Kemp who was infatuated at the time by Clare Grogan.
The Top 10 was actually a bit ‘meh’, but there were a couple of very decent electronic-pop tunes floating around
mp3: Human League – (Keep Feeling) Fascination (#4)
mp3: Eurythmics – Love Is A Stranger (#7)
Yup. The record company had made a quick cash-in . Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) might have fallen to #33 after 11 weeks in the Top 40, but the re-release of an earlier single from November 1982 kept Annie and Dave’s profile very high.
Sitting at #14 was another electro-group, with the song that would eventually climb to #2 and thus provide their biggest hit.
Two of the highest new entries are very much worthy of mentions.
mp3: Tears For Fears – Pale Shelter (#22)
mp3: Fun Boy Three – Our Lips Are Sealed (#31)
I’ve a feeling Tears For Fears snagged themselves a Top of The Pops appearance that week as Pale Shelter went up to #5 the following week, which was where it peaked. Fun Boy Three took a more leisurely meander up the charts, taking a further three weeks to hit its high spot of #7.
Goth, of sorts, was also in the singles charts this particular week.
mp3: Bauhaus – She’s In Parties (#28)
mp3: The Creatures – Miss The Girl (#37)
She’s In Parties had fallen two places from the previous week with what proved to be Bauhaus‘s biggest hit single that wasn’t a cover. Miss The Girl would eventually reach #21 and was the first of two hit singles for The Creatures in 1983.
One final song to highlight this week, for what proved to be a one-hit wonder.
mp3: Kissing The Pink – The Last Film (#24)
Kissing The Pink were a new wave/synth band from London. They released three albums between 1983 and 1986, with later releases in 1993, 2015 and 2016. The Last Film was the only time any single troubled the charts and it enjoyed a remarkably long stay that wouldn’t really be possible today. It had crept into the Top 75 at the end of February 1983, and ten weeks later it got to #19 where it stalled for three successive weeks. It eventually fell out of the Top 75 in mid-June.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Can’t go too far wrong with Temptation or Fascination. Same goes for TFF and FB3.
I liked those two Eurythmic singles and nothing else that came after unfortunately.
I’m long inclined to think that True, and in particular it’s huge success, along with Elvis Costello’s Everyday I Write The Book , was somewhere in Weller’s mind when he wrote You’re The Best Thing.
I feel like I say this every time, but your top40 was so much more fun than ours in the States. This is an actual good time. Ours was (still is) just the sound of corps cashing checks.
What can I say? I own each and every one of those featured songs. Favorite one? “Love Is A Stranger,” perhaps. It has a poise I love that stretches for miles. It’s fun to sing. But the freshest song here would have to be “The Last Film.” It was a few years later when I finally got hip to Kissing The Pink, after they surfaced in The States on their third album as the less controversially-named KTP, and now I try to get my hands on everything.
“[Keep Feeling] Fascination” was the last imperial period Human League single, before the wheels came off, but we hardly knew it at the time! It astonishes me that H17 hit #2 twice, with the same song, a decade apart. And if you ask me, the 1993 remix bucked the post-modern remix trend to be my favorite of the two. That rarely happened. But this was a snapshot of a healthy British Top 40 before the Mid-80s Malaise™ struck. Bowie was typically first there, as usual, with the hollow, mediocre “Let’s Dance.”
Comparatively, the US top40 for that week had only three songs, I can be said to love: “Little Red Corvette” at #10, and shockingly, “Hungry Like the Wolf” dropping at 16 while “Rio” was rising at #17! Durandemonium was spreading… and that was a good thing. At least until their next album happened. Most of everything else charting over here was Michael Jackson or MOR [same thing, really]. And Thomas Dolby’s ultimately tragic “She Blinded Me With Science.”