I reckon you all know the drill by now.
I thought August 1979 had proven to be a bumper month for hit singles – and going by the comments last time around, many of you were in agreement. Will September hold up?
The Top 20 of the first chart of the new month was playing host to Gary Numan, Roxy Music, The Specials, The Stranglers, Joe Jackson, The Jam, and Ian Dury & The Blockheads, and here’s a handful of new entries quite a bit further down.
mp3: The Ruts – Something That I Said (#45)
The quickly-released follow-up to the hit single Babylon’s Burning was another belter of a number, and while it didn’t quite match the sucess of its predecessor in that it peaked at #29 and spent just five weeks in the chart, it helped build a strong foundation for the soon to be released debut album, The Crack, which went Top 20.
mp3: Squeeze – Slap and Tickle (#53)
Their third hit single in the space of six months, but it would come nowhere close to the Top 3 success of Cool For Cats and Up The Junction. It’s a bit of a strange one in that it’s reliant on synths, and Glen Tilbrook has cited Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder as influencing what he was trying to do, but it kind of sounds a bit primitive. It did eventually reach #24 which was a more than decent showing given it had been taken from an album released five months earlier.
mp3: The Jags – Back Of My Hand (#70)
A power-pop classic from a band formed in the costal town of Scarborough in north England. Tailor-made for radio, it sold in increasing numbers of a couple of months, eventually peaking at #17 in late October. It was The Jags one and only brush with fame in terms of chart success, and after some more flop singles and two albums that failed to dent the Top 100, they were dropped by Island Records after which they called it a day.
mp3: The Ramones – Rock ‘n Roll High School (#71)
A blink and you’ll miss it, minor hit. In at 71, up to 67 the next week, after which it disappeared.
mp3: The Tourists – The Loneliest Man In The World (#72)
As I mentioned back in June, The Tourists is where it all began for Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, who would conquer the planet in the mid-80s as the driving force behind Eurythmics. This was their second hit of the year, taken from their eponymous debut album that had been released in June 1979. It would go on to spend seven weeks in the chart, peaking at #29 in mid-October, by which point the band had already finished work on their second LP…..of which there will be further mention when November comes around.
The chart of 9-15 September 1979 had just two new entries in the Top 40, both of which were a bit on the unusual side as one was Since You’ve Been Gone, the first ever hit 45 by hard rockers Rainbow (who like many others in the genre normally ignored the singles market) with the other being a live EP from Kate Bush (live music was never aired on daytime radio back in the late 70s). In saying that about hard-rockers and chart singles, AC/DC were also in the Top 75 with Highway To Hell.
Coming in at #51 was a bona-fide disco classic from someone who was, at the time, just seen as perhaps the most-talented of his musical family, but not thought to be someone who would, in time, become arguably the most-famous pop star of his generation.
mp3: Michael Jackson – Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough
This would spend more than three months in the Top 75, peaking at #3. This is another example of how things were done differently back in 1979. ‘Dont Stop…’ had been released as a single in America back in July. It took until early September for it to be issued in that way in the UK, and even then it was merely a piece of marketing to highlight that Michael Jackson‘s solo album, Off The Wall, was due for release in mid-late September. Nobody, and I don’t care what anyone will say with the benefit of hindsight, anticipated it would sell 20 million copies worldwide, of which almost 2 million were in the UK, leading to an initial 61-week stay in the album charts, and an incredible 225 weeks all told over the subsequent years and decades.
There’s nothing else worth homing in on across the rest of the new entries, so I’ll quickly move on to 16-22 September.
Cars by Gary Numan went to #1, replacing Cliff Richard, whose We Don’t Talk Anymore had been holding down the top spot for the previous four weeks. Gary’s stay at the top only proved to be very brief. The song which landed at #8 this week would soon hit the top.
mp3: The Police – Message In A Bottle
It really was quite the remarkable turn-around. A year earlier, nobody in the UK had been interested in Sting, Stewart and Andy. Three flop singles and an album that was in the bargain bins by Xmas. But they did a bit better in America, and early-mid 1979 brought hits via re-releases. The question was whether the new material would sustain the interest. Message In A Bottle more than did that. As I said, in at #8 prior to a three-week stay at #1, while the album from which it was taken, Regatta de Blanc, came straight in at #1 in early October. It was the start of a genuinely remarkable run of success.
Nobody would have realised it at the time, but the single which would eventually replace Message In A Bottle at #1 also entered the charts this week
mp3: Buggles – Video Killed The Radio Star (#57)
There’s really not much to write about this song that hasn’t already been written. It was slightly a slow-burner, in at 57 and taking four more weeks to reach #1 (where it stayed for just one week – I would have sworn it was at the top for a good deal longer). Maybe it was just down to it never seeming to be off the radio for about the next five years.
mp3: XTC – Making Plans For Nigel (#63)
Life Begins At The Hop had given XTC a minor hit a few months earlier. Making Plans for Nigel wasn’t a follow-up, but instead was issued to further support Drums and Wires, the band’s third studio album that had come in to the charts a few weeks earlier at #43. It proved to be an inspired move, raising the band’s profile immensely and taking them firmly out of cult status into bona fide pop stars. Not that it sat comfortably with them……
Nigel would, in due course reach #17, a position that band would better just twice in the coming years.
mp3: The Headboys – The Shape Of Things To Come (#68)
As featured in the long-running Scottish Songs on Saturdays series, away back in August 2018. I mentioned that the Edinburgh-based power-pop outfit had been signed by RSO Records, one of the biggest labels in the world at the time, primarily on the back of the success of Saturday Night Fever by The Bee Gees. Such connections got The Headboys a slot on Top of The Pops despite the single not being in the Top 40; indeed, it never got higher than #45 in a eight-week stay in the lower reaches of the chart and proved to be the only hit of any sort the band would enjoy.
And so, to the final week of September 1979.
mp3: Blondie – Dreaming (#7)
The album Plastic Letters had taken Blondie to the summit of the pop world, and all concerned were determined to remain there. Dreaming was the first new song in some 18 months, and it was given a rapturous welcome. This was an era when new singles entering anywhere in the Top 10 was seen as a triumph, and in many cases, it led to it hitting #1 the week after. Blondie’s previous two singles – Heart of Glass and Sunday Girl – had been #1s. Dreaming failed to match it, stalling at #2, unable to dislodge Message In A Bottle. It was perhaps a sign that the baton in the race to be the world’s most popular group was being handed over from America to England.
As if to illustrate how hard it was in those days to have a high new entry in the singles chart, the second highest of the week came in at #45
mp3: The Skids – Charade
The third hit of the year for The Skids. This one didn’t go Top 20 in the same fashion as Into The Valley and Masquerade, peaking at #31; remarkably, the band would enjoy a fourth hist single before the new decade dawned on us. Come back in November for more.
Here’s some more proof as to why 1979 is, in my opinion, the greatest year of all for chart singles
mp3: Siouxsie & The Banshees – Mittageisen (#58)
Metal Postcard (Mittageisen) was one of the standout tracks on the 1978 debut album The Scream. A year later, the album Join Hands had been issued, with its lead single Playground Twist charting at #28. Meanwhile, over in West Germany, Metal Postcard had been re-recorded with the lyrics sung in German, and had become a hit single. Polydor Records, noticing that fans were purchasing it on expensive import, decided to release it in the UK. It proved to be a short stay in the chart of just three weeks, and it peaked at #47, but it was previously unthinkable that a German-language new-wave song by an English group would remotely be a commercial success.
Those of you who read Part 2 of this monthly feature, in which I highlight singles that didn’t make the Top 75, may recall me that back in May I made reference to Gotta Getaway, a quite brilliant 45 by Stiff Little Fingers that had been issued on Rough Trade. A few months later, and after signing to Chrysalis, the boys from Belfast finally made the charts, coming in at #59.
mp3: Stiff Little Fingers – Straw Dogs
This move to a major would lead to more chart success in 1980 and help pave the way for the band to build up such a decent-sized fanbase that they are still very much a going concern in 2024
Talking of Part 2 of this series, I hope you’ll all drop in a few weeks time as there are some genuine classics, from really well-known groups, that have stood the test of time.
JC
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 