Chart dates 30 October – 5 November
If you’ll recall the closing few sentences from last month, then you’ll know that the first week of November was likely to have some decent stuff kicking around the charts, with The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees and New Order still hanging around the Top 20, while PiL, Joy Division and Bauhaus were all a bit further down. On the flip side of things, Billy Joel, Lionel Ritchie and Culture Club were still dominating the very top-end of things
It was also a week in which loads of new singles became eligible for a chart placing – 15 songs appeared for the first time in the Top 75 (20% of the total), although most of them were utter pish and/or unrecallable. Here’s the full list of new entries
#75: Brian May and Friends – Starfleet
#73: The Danse Society – Heaven Is Waiting
#66: Imagination – New Dimension
#65: David Bowie – White Light/White Heat
#63: Major Harris – All My Life
#61: Aztec Camera – Oblivious
#47: Marilyn – Calling Your Name
#45: Eurythmics – Right By Your Side
#43: Rainbow – Can’t Let You Go
#34: Limahl – Only For Love
#26: The Police – Syncronicity II
#25: ABC – That Was Then, This Is Now
#24: Status Quo – A Mess Of Blues
#21: Madness – The Sun and The Rain
#19: Shakin Stevens – Cry Just A Little Bit
The Danse Society, one of the many goth-rock bands who were suddenly finding success )of sorts), were on a roll as Heaven Was Waiting was the second 45 of theirs to crack the Top 75 in 1983. It would actually make it as high as #60, while the parent album of the same name, released just in time for the Xmas market in December 83, got to #40. Wiki offers the reminder that the album wasn’t well by professional critics, with reviews such as “further plodding nonsense” and “Heavy on gloomy atmosphere […] but short on memorable songs.” The fact I can’t recall anything of them maybe bears that out.
David Bowie was having a stellar year in 1983, sales wise at least, thanks to Let’s Dance selling in millions and all his other albums enjoying resurgent sales (in July 83, ten Bowie albums could be found in the Top 100). This live cover version of the Velvet Underground staple had been released as a single to promote a live album, Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture, which was hitting the screens that very month.
Aztec Camera had moved from Postcard to Rough Trade to Warner Brothers, and the promotional efforts of the major took them into the charts with the first ever time with a re-release of an old song. Oblivious is a great pop song, and while I’m not normally a fan of re-releases, it was good to see this going on to do so well, eventually climbing up to #18 before the year was out, the first of what proved to be eight Top 40 hits for Roddy & co.
The Eurythmics might have burst onto the scene earlier in the year with the majestic Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) but the release of new album Touch, had seen the adopt a more commercial and mainstream pop sound that brought huge success all over the world. Not a sound, however, that I recall with much love or fondness.
Talking of changing style and sound, ABC had gone down a different road from that taken with debut album The Lexicon Of Love. It didn’t go down well with critics or fans but the first single from what turned out to be The Beauty Stab, did eventually reach #18. It proved to be their last ever Top 20 hit single. They had just one further top 20 hit, courtesy of When Smokey Sings, in 1987 (and thanks to the observant readers who spotted this error!)
Madness were enjoying their 17th successive Top 20 single. The quite excellent The Sun and The Rain would eventually get as high as #5 which actually turned out to be the very final time they would make the Top 10.*
*in the 80’s, I should have added. A re-released It Must Be Love was a hit in 1992, while a much later single, Lovestruck, reached #10 in 1999. Again, my thanks to the ever-helpful readers…..)
Chart dates 6-12 November
It was inevitable after the previous week’s glut of new entries that things would slow down a bit. The highest new entry came from the Rolling Stones, offering up something that was a bit more funk/dance orientated than much of their previous material. Undercover of The Night came in at #21 and later climbed to #11. Who would ever have imagined back then that 40 years on, they’d still be going strong and having hit singles?
Some notes of interest from further down.
mp3: The Assembly – Never Never (#36)
It proved to a one-off collaboration between Vince Clarke and Feargal Sharkey, and this electronic ballad soon took off in popular fashion, hitting #4 just two weeks later.
mp3: Care – Flaming Sword (#58)
One of the great long-lost bands who really should have been much bigger than things turned out. This was their second single, but the only one that cracked the charts. Main songwriter, Ian Broudie, would have to wait a few years with The Lightning Seeds to enjoy commercial success.
Oh, and I almost forgot about this one.
mp3: The Smiths – This Charming Man (#55)
It would spend 12 weeks in the Top 75 all the way through to February 1984, peaking at #25 in early December 83. It was the first of what proved to be sixteen singles from The Smiths that would crack the charts over the next four years, only two of which reached the Top 10 (and both peaked at that particular number). Have a think and see if you can remember….the answer will be given as a PS at the foot of the post.
Chart dates 13-19 November
Fourth single of the year and a forth chart hit. It was only a year since The Jam had split up, but Paul Weller was proving to be every bit as popular as ever.
mp3: The Style Council – A Solid Bond In Your Heart (#12)
I remember at the time being a bit let down by this one. It certainly didn’t seem up to the standards of the previous three singles, but in some ways it was just a minor bumop in the road as the imperious pop phase of TSC was just around the corner. Oh, and a couple of years later, we would learn that Solid Bond had been demoed while The Jam were still going, so it could very well have come out as one of their later singles if they hadn’t disbanded.
mp3: Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel – White Lines (Don’t Do It) (#60)
One of the very best of the early rap singles, it sneaked into the bottom end of the charts in November 83 and then disappeared, only to re-emerge in the following February from where it would spend 37 successive weeks in the Top 75, the first 18 of which were outside the Top 40, before really being picked up on by the general public and hitting the #7 for two weeks in July/August 1984. It was inevitable after the previous week’s glut of new entries that things would slow down a bit. It’s the full 12″ on offer today, as that’s the one I have in the collection.
mp3: Julian Cope – Sunshine Playroom (#64)
I’d totally forgotten that this had been released as a single. It was actually the first time that Julian Cope had taken solo material into the Top 75. Again, it’s a quiz question with the answer at the bottom. How many JC singles went into the Top 75 between 1983 and 1996?
Don’t be fooled into thinking that all was sweetness and light in the singles chart some 40 years ago. The top 4 consisted of Billy Joel, Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson, Shakin Stevens and Lionel Ritchie. Some of new entries and highest climbers this week included Paul Young, Genesis, Tina Turner, Nik Kershaw, and Roland Rat Superstar – a grim reminder that the British public have always been suckers for novelty records.
Chart dates 20-26 November
A couple of the new entries were Christamas-related and readying themselves for all-out assaults in the month of December. Yup, I’m looking at you The Pretenders and The Flying Pickets…..
There were some things worthy of attention.
mp3: Simple Minds – Waterfront (#25)
It was booming, bombastic and anthemic, and it was the beginning of the end of the cutting-edge Simple Minds. But it was a song totally inspired by home city of Glasgow, and in pulling together the promo video for the single, the band hit upon the idea of opening up and using the Barrowland Ballroom for a live performance. A huge debt is owed to them for that…..
mp3: Blancmange – That’s Love, That It Is (#43)
The duo had enjoyed a great 12 months, with the previous three singles (Living On The Ceiling, Waves and Blind Vision) all going Top 20, as indeed would their next again single (Don’t Tell Me) in April 1984. This is the one nobody remembers as it got stuck at #33 in mid-December among all the stuff that tends to dominate the charts in the month of the year. Maybe, in hindsight, it should have been held back six or eight weeks.
mp3: Yello – Lost Again (#73)
This has long been a favourite of mine and I was disappointeed that it flopped so miserably. The record buying public were seemingly far from convinced by the merits of off-centre electronica musicians from Switzerland.
And finally this month.
mp3: Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Relax (#67)
For the next six weeks, this single hung around the lower end of the charts, making its way up to #46 with steady but unspectacular sales.
It then eventually reached #35 in the first week of January 1984 which led to an appearance on Top Of The Pops….it wasn’t their first UK TV apppearance as they had already been on The Tube, broadcast on Channel 4, on a number of occasions. The TOTP appearance resulted in huge sales the follwowing week and it went all the way to #6.
A this point in time, long after the horse had bolted, Radio 1 DJ Mike Read announced he wasn’t going to play the record due to the suggestive nature of the lyrics. He also felt the record sleeve was disgusting and amoral. The BBC then decided Relax should be banned from any daytime play, but this didn’t stop the likes of David ‘Kid’ Jensen and John Peel having a bit of fun and airing the song in their evening shows. The ban was extended to include Top of The Pops.
All this only prompted a bit of mania among the record-buying public, and Relax initally went to #2 in the wake of the ban and then spent five weeks at the #1 slot through to the end of February 84, going on to spend 48 succesive weeks in the Top 75, including a rise back up to #2 when FGTH’s follow-up single, Two Tribes, went massive.
The BBC eventually relented and dropped the ban -it had become a joke in as much that the commercial radio stations and the non-BBC TV channels were more than happy to play the song or have it performed on programmes.
Who ever said there was no such thing as bad publicity was certainly right on this occasion.
One more month in the series to go. It’ll appear sometime in late-December.
JC
PS (1): The two singles by The Smiths to hit the Top 10 were Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now and Sheila Take A Bow.
PS (2): Julian Cope had 16 singles reach the Top 75 between 1983 and 1996. Seven of them actually cracked the Top 40, with World Shut Your Mouth being the best-achieving of them all, hitting #19.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 