UK Charts: 1978-1979

1978

The first surprise of 1978 is the return of reggae as a chart force to be reckoned with. Although this may have been less of a surprise for the punks. The scene had boiled over so fast that it had achieved critical mass before most of the bands involved had record deals, leaving clubs with little to put on their turntables when there wasn't a live act on stage.

They turned to reggae, especially the heavy dub sound which had emerged by the mid-'70s. This was outsider music. Johnny Rotten and Clash bassist Paul Simonon fell in love with it, and the Clash found themselves messing around with a version of Junior Murvin's "Police And Thieves" in the studio. This was not a thing they felt entirely comfortable with; we've seen dire attempts at "white man reggae" in these charts and the Clash were very aware of them. So they decided to cover the song, but rather than end up with a half-hearted pastiche went at it with ideas like, "play it like Hawkwind".

(Which may sound nonsensical, but then listen to the bass of what ended up on their 1977 self-titled album and tell me you don't hear at least some "Mountain Grill"-era Hawkwind influence in there!)

Bob Marley took note, and appreciated what they'd done with it - taking the feeling rather than making a poor copy of what they thought was the sound. "Jamming" got a double A-side with "Punky Reggae Party", his musings on the phenomenon. It went to #9 in January '78.

At #1 was Althia & Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking", with the two singers sticking their own lyrics over the top of one of the instrumental versions that typically graced the B-side of reggae records, in this case Trinity's "Three Piece Suit". It was supposed to be a little record industry in-joke, but John Peel ended up playing it, getting asked to play it again, and this happening often enough that enough copies of the one-off joke got pressed to stay in the Top 40 for eleven weeks.

Tolerably decent disco number "Native New Yorker" by Odyssey made it to #5. It's a welcome change from what had become a parade of seemingly identikit records by 1977. Just that extra little bit of effort and detail makes all the difference, right?

And then we have the return of "The Floral Dance" in the version which really gets held up as a totem of '70s naffness; that of Terry Wogan. Again, I can't join in with that metaphorical kicking. You know it's a joke, right? Wogan would sing along to the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band version on the radio, and someone at Philips thought this was worth capturing as a bit of fun for posterity. The strange part is it's not done with any silliness; it's a straight-up performance of an old standard, all quite competent, and if you didn't know any of the story you'd think it was just a recording of some people in a village hall or something.

Plus it was never one of those chart-dominating monsters which squeeze out everything else and spawn a trail of gradually more painful imitators; it only ever peaked at #21, about where you'd expect for a souvenir of a little bit of fun.

Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keely's "If I Had Words" hit #3 in February with a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach; cod-reggae instrumental backing, a full choir, strings, church bells... play it 50% faster and a bit less po-faced and you'd probably have the makings of a Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich number there.

Bill Withers' "Lovely Day" made it to #7 at the end of January, soft R&B with gentle electric piano. Probably also more enduring than anything I've mentioned for quite some time, although that may be down to the number of re-releases it's had.

Every time I see a Brotherhood of Man record here I find myself reaching to check that year's Eurovision entries, and while February #1 "Figaro" is not that, you'd understand my instinct on listening to it. The unit-shifting European-tinged pop got them written off as a supermarket own-brand version of ABBA, and appropriately enough it got knocked off #1 the next week by "Take A Chance On Me".

Hearing them both back-to-back, I can see what the critics are about. They're both of their time; laid-back, disco influenced but not outright disco records with the kind of midrange-heavy sound which works well on large, insensitive speakers driven by a not very good amplifier. But there's a reason that in our day and age, "Figaro" has 400,000 streams and "Take A Chance On Me" has... er... nearly 400 million. ABBA do more; they try more things, they put more musical depth in the record, they have all these unusual little pieces which you don't notice because they fit in so well, but each one adds to the record, gives it a freshness even as it sounds very late '70s on the surface. Listen deeper to "Figaro" and you start to notice how much of it is still using techniques from the mid-'60s and turn of the decade, with trumpets that wouldn't sound out of place backing Tony Christie.

There's more somewhat homemade-feeling disco from Baccara, with "Sorry I'm A Lady" reaching #8 in February. It's objectively not good and if I'm going to pan things for feeling dated then I should be doing it here, but it does make me smile.

At #6 we have Electric Light Orchestra with "Mr. Blue Sky". If ELO's mission had been to merge the worlds of classical and pop while continuing the work the Beatles could no longer do, this is a blatant statement of it. Start counting Beatles references and you'll run out of numbers and have to invent new ones to tally them all. Guitar tones, pieces of vocal harmony, nearly all of "A Day In The Life" dismantled, reconfigured and shoved in there in some way - it's a wonder they had space left to play with the vocoder.

The Sweet are somehow still present, with "Love Is Like Oxygen" making a February #9. It's a different sound for the band, heavier and more progressive-tinged, but still with an underlying sense of fun.

Taking over from Mud in bringing old-fashioned rock'n'roll to the charts are Darts, whose novelty version of "Daddy Cool" I already spoke of, but "Come Back My Love" (#2 February '78) shows they're going to mine that for all the hits they can get. It really is a bit tired by now, though, and perhaps the idea should have ended when Les Gray stopped doing it, even if ex-Muddist Rob Davis did join the band in the '80s.

Instantly recognisable Bee Gees disco anthem "Stayin' Alive" enters the charts at the end of January, although its #4 peak suggests more than a few people already own the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. It was at that point the best-selling album of all time until Michael Jackson upset things in the early '80s.

Saturday Night Fever occupies an odd place in the history of disco. John Travolta's leisure suit and open collar are the iconic image of the genre, one that's been used a thousand times to mock its world of flimsy excess and man-made fibres. But I find it hard to agree that it "popularised" disco; the genre has been around on the charts for nearly four years at this point, and while still strongly associated with black and gay communities was by now mainstream enough for straight white artists to co-opt in search of a hit single. (No doubt without the Clash's agonising over whether they should cover reggae records, and if so in what form). Indeed, the soundtrack was released in the UK several months before the film, which didn't come to cinemas until March 1978.

However peak disco, the point at which it became so inescapable it was bound to collapse, would not happen until 1979. Even this as a single seismic event was largely confined to the US; it was a different story in Europe, where disco evolved rather than died. So Saturday Night Fever can be neither a marker of the beginning nor the end. Instead, I think of it as an accelerant; a reaction to the popularity of disco which fed back into it by codifying the image, the lifestyle and the fashions.

So anyway, "Wuthering Heights" is #1 in March '78. So strange it stands apart, hard to pin down as coming from a particular time, although perhaps listen to some of that ELO stuff again and see that there's some grounding of this around the end of the '70s. Kate Bush wrote the song in a few hours after watching a TV adaptation of its namesake book, gave it some of the oddest vocals outside of a Cocteau Twins record, and earned herself a regular placing near the top of "greatest songs of the '70s" lists for ever after.

Below it by the end of March, Blondie with "Denis". A cover of a 1963 top ten "Denise", the band took a French spelling of the name and Debbie Harry improvised a verse in that language for the original single release. It was their breakthrough moment in the UK, starting a string of success for the American new wave band.

For the week ending 26th March 1978 positions 1, 2 and 3 are all classics, with Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" taking that third slot. The record that showed the sax could do more than just bomp along in the background of rock'n'roll pastiches. No, it wasn't played by Bob Holness, a story that started in a section of the NME devoted to made-up facts which sound amusing.

Below it that week, climbing on the way to #1 in April was Brian & Michael's "Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs". These are busy charts, and yet we somehow find time for a folk revival, although possibly it's just hankering for more brass band action. For all the title, brass band and presence of the St. Winifred's School Choir suggest we're in for the kind of horror only the '70s could provide, this is unexpectedly good.

Another surprise is that iconic Hot Chocolate track "Every 1's A Winner" only broke #12. Maybe on listening to it there are a few too many slightly empty bits which feel like they're filling time, although that's still a killer riff.

Nick Lowe would be instrumental in codifying the sound of new wave in his work with Elvis Costello, and you can hear a lot of that on "I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass" (#7 March '78). Itchy guitars and interjecting sound effects bring to mind Talking Heads, whose debut "Talking Heads: 77" had come out on Sire a few months earlier, although they would not break through to the UK singles chart until the '80s.

Speaking of things which would happen in that decade, Genesis had started their journey away from keyboard nerds fascinated by odd time signatures and outlandish stage performances, to the pop phenomenon they would become. Peter Gabriel left after 1974 double album "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway", but the band were determined to show they could still cut rock of a most progressive nature until guitarist Steve Hackett left after 1977 EP "Spot The Pigeon".

"...And Then There Were Three" began the Phil Collins era, where he would write more of the songs, sing them, and the band would move to a more accessible, commercially friendly sound. The latter being something which did not go down well with the kind of progressive rock fans who believe inaccessibility is somewhat the point.

What's surprising about lead single "Follow You Follow Me" (#7 April '78) is how progressive it still sounds. Sure, it's not in a time signature that looks like the proof of a complex theorem and the lyrics are simple and not about wizards, but there's plenty of unexpected minor chords and the synth-heavy sound harks back to the Genesis of earlier in the decade. Compare it to Showaddywaddy's "I Wonder Why" at #2 and it may as well be the product of an advanced spacefaring civilisation.

Oh right, we had done some actual spacefaring by 1978. Everything past Del Shannon's "Runaway" is the product of a spacefaring civilisation. (and even that sounds more advanced than the retro pastiche of "I Wonder Why")

By the end of April Saturday Night Fever has reached UK cinemas and "Night Fever" has gone to #1. The Bee Gees offer a loungey, laid-back take on disco. Chic's "Everybody Dance" (#9 May '78) offers a similarly spare arrangement, putting Nile Rodgers' guitar in the spotlight. They're both a little too laid-back for me, records which feel like they want to shrink into the background while some other activity takes place.

Boney M were always up for injecting a bit more energy into a record, and "Rivers of Babylon"/"Brown Girl In The Ring" takes #1 in May '78. The A-side is an old Melodians song, although Farian and company were careful to excise any overtly Rastafarian references from the final mixes, mindful that the original had been banned in Jamaica until it was pointed out that the government were effectively trying to ban Psalm 137. They also more unfortunately excised Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton of the Melodians from the writing credits on earlier pressings.

Even the Stones supposedly went disco, although "Miss You" is only that in the loosest sense, and the main thing it inherits from contemporary disco is a lack of direction and the feeling a record should have more going on in it.

Darts are back with "The Boy From New York City" at #2 in May, the '70s determined to carry rock'n'roll revivalism all the way to the end of the decade. This one is a bit more welcome, the band switching focus to a 1964 doo-wop record produced by Lieber and Stoller rather than continuing to mine something Showaddywaddy have already reduced to the thinnest of scrapings.

But my May 1978 pay packet would have gone to the quite staggering assortment of punk and new wave making the charts.

Blondie's "(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear" at #10, a great piece of power pop. X-Ray Spex with uncompromisingly shouty "The Day The World Turned Day-Glo" at #23. Elvis Costello and the Attractions having the instantly recognisable riff of "Pump It Up" at #24. Sham 69, who took their name from a piece of graffiti they found in their home town of Hersham, have "Angels With Dirty Faces" at #19. It's simple, straightforward, and feels almost designed for the record to be overplayed and treated badly until it doesn't sound quite right any more.

Punk was now mature enough, or at least had been immature for long enough, that it could attract parodies and pastiches. Belgian producter Lou Deprijck and songwriter Yvan Lacomblez put together "Ça Plane Pour Moi" as a novelty B-side for Plastic Bertrand, treating it flippantly enough that Deprijck sang the vocals. Early success saw the sides switched, and it was the A-side by the time it hit #8 in June '78. Joke it may have been, but Joe Strummer suggested they'd made a better punk record than most of the people who were actually trying.

But these mid-ranking chart positions belie that the biggest thing in June 1978 was the past. Happy Days had been churning along bringing '50s nostalgia to the small screen since 1974, but the days of jukeboxes, greasers, and hot rods hit the cinema that month with Grease.

Stars of the film John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John went to #1 with "You're The One That I Want", a monster hit that stayed on the chart 20 weeks. The soundtrack album sold nearly as well as Saturday Night Fever, the movie set records, and Newton-John's career would no more be adequately summed up by a Eurovision entry and a quite good cover of "If Not For You".

The 1950s setting meant that Grease endured far better than Saturday Night Fever, which quickly became very much of its time. It saw regular revivals in popularity, with either the 1992 or 1994 release becoming so pervasive I became quite sick of it, surprising for a film that's basically about building a hot rod. Whatever. American Graffiti better captures the aimlessness and lack of direction of being a young adult with a car, and has by far the better soundtrack.

Perhaps this revivalism also unlocked some subconscious desire to bring back the Chipmunks, because I can't think of any other good reason for Father Abraham and the Smurfs' "The Smurf Song" to reach #2 in June and being one of the year's biggest-selling records; had it not been for Grease, we most likely would have had a #1 there.

Marshall Hain's "Dancing In The City" makes #3 in July '78, and would be forgettable were it not for the prominent electronic drums. These had been developed over the decade, with the Moody Blues using prototypes as far back as 1971. The Syndrum became the first commercial model to achieve prominence, coming out in 1977 and attracting attention for the unique descending tone each drum hit decayed with. "Baker Street" used them subtly, but disco would take the catchy 'booouwww' sound and use it until it became a cliché, much to the dismay of Syndrum creators Joe Pollard and Mark Barton.

1978 would see these early efforts followed by drum machines with a built-in sequencer such as the Roland CR-78, ushering in one of the most radical and sudden changes in the sound of pop music since Bill Haley and his Comets had sort of failed to chart for a year.

Drum sequencers would be one part of this, but another part would be the growing sophistication of new wave as it moved away from its punk contemporaries. The Motors had "Airport" at #4 in July, with its distant and alienating synths a stark contrast to bits of vocal harmony which wouldn't sound too out of place on a mid-'60s Beatles record.

Kate Bush followed up "Wuthering Heights" with "Man With The Child In His Eyes" (#6 July '78) which treads much of the same territory, although not quite as memorably or as oddly.

Listening to Boomtown Rats #6 "Like Clockwork" gives me more of the feeling that new wave was entering a restless quest for experimentation, to find some space it could occupy that was fully its own and not defined by the other genres around it.

Clout's "Substitute" made #2 at the end of July, another huge-selling record that was still unable to depose "You're The One That I Want" from the top of the charts. It's okay, although I get the feeling this could have happened at any point from 1969 and wouldn't have stood out as unusually not of its time.

A Taste Of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie" (#3 August '78) is very much of this time, and throws out that Syndrum sound within the first few seconds, although it's still relatively subtle and if anything a little underused.

Showaddywaddy commit horrific acts by trying to record "A Little Bit Of Soap" in a half-hearted pastiche of the Everly Brothers, and the results are not good. The Pioneers did it best, but even the original has a wit and charm which is lacking in this utterly unnecessary cover. That didn't stop enough people buying it to result in a #5 chart position.

1978 was the year the Sex Pistols fractured, starting with a disastrous US tour in January that was going wrong before it had even started thanks to Steve Jones having trouble getting a visa, and ended after seven shows with John Lydon walking off stage after a single-song encore and saying, "ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

The band ceasing to exist as a functional unit did not stop Malcolm McLaren from proceeding with an ill-advised mockumentary film and assigning the remnants to projects which seemed more about generating headlines than musical merit. So Cook and Jones were shipped off to Brazil to record a song with Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs on vocals, while Vicious recorded a sneering version of a Frank Sinatra classic over a backing track the other two had provided. The resulting "No One Is Innocent"/"My Way" went to #7 in July, although the self-congratulatory lyrics of the Biggs side give the feeling these existed purely in service of the film and keeping the Pistols brand controversial until it could be released.

That would not happen until 1980, and the big musical media event of 1978 (other than Grease) was Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. This double LP originally came with a lavishly illustrated 16-page booklet with scenes from the story, and seeemed to be not so much sold as issued to all British homes as standard equipment.

I'm sure there are counter-examples, but I cannot find someone of my generation who doesn't remember this from long car journeys, school lessons, or just investigating a cupboard and finding this cardboard sleeve with a cool-looking alien on the front of it. If nothing else, that opening "dum-dum-DUMM" of strings is a meme etched permanently into millions of 1980s brains.

It is also quite fantastically disco in places. I know the progressive rockists have claimed it as one of their own, and it draws heavily from that too, but there's a lot of straightforward, driving beat, funk guitar, and a certain way with strings. More than once I've seen it categorised under "space disco" and I wouldn't disagree with that.

For such a great record, original copies can be had for an unfairly cheap price, in perfect condition complete with booklet. That will be the whole "standard issue in every British house of the 1980s" thing affecting the supply side, but it still seems insulting to be finding this in the same bargain bin as the compilations of favourite showtunes and Cliff Richard albums.

If you did, you might find a hype sticker announcing that it features the single "Forever Autumn", credited to Justin Hayward for its #5 peak in August '78. This is one of the proggiest and also folkiest movements on the album, although get two minutes in and that disco drum beat starts up. Even with those more energetic passages it's a beautiful song, and I'm going to say that 1978 is making a good case for the charts as a melting pot of ideas.

Cerrone's "Supernature" (#8 August '78) may be from an album that's a favourite of bad cover art compilations, but the music is on point. It's a meaner and darker evolution of disco, pushing at the boundary where plastic disposability becomes dystopia. This is part of the branching off that would lead to disco surviving in Europe and evolving into forms like Italo Disco, because it wasn't allowed to get stale and repetitive. Well, any more repetitive than necessary to elicit a feeling of dystopian unease.

The song which was finally big enough to knock Grease from the top of the charts was the Commodores' "Three Times A Lady", a soporifically dull waltz that never feels anything but painfully slow even as the strings swell.

Far better to look down the charts to #4, where Graham Fellows in his alter ego of Jilted John sits with "Jilted John", another song taking aim at the affectations of punk rock. It's deliberately dumb and there are a few dated slurs sitting in there, but there's something which reminds me a little of early Sweet.

10cc's "Dreadlock Holiday" is the next #1 in September, a compendium of stories about holidays in Barbados and Jamaica. It spent 11 weeks in the Top 40. A couple of positions down at #3 is David Essex with a weird and squelchy version of "Oh What A Circus". He'd done a decent turn on Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, and was interested in performing on stage. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber offered him the part of Che in their theatrical production of Evita, and Mike Batt brought his brand of pop sensibility to the recording, a new number for the stage version.

Hi Tension's odd funk brought them a #8 with "British Hustle", although even the 3-minute single version goes on a bit too long so I feel sorry for anyone who had to contend with the album version.

Grease landed another hit, with Frankie Valli's title song "Grease" going to #3 in September. As Bob Stanley points out the lyrics are complete nonsense, but somehow it all hangs together long enough to suspend disbelief.

Lesser-known ABBA single "Summer Night City" hits #5 for the beginning of October, but there's a good reason it's lesser-known. It's a not entirely successful tilt at high energy disco, and feels a bit underbaked.

By the time it hits that position, the Grease juggernaut has delivered another massive #1, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John with "Summer Nights". Other than inadvertently advertising German hair care products, it's a lightweight doo-wop pastiche that fits well enough in the film, but you know I'm thinking of Wolfman Jack announcing the genuine article as I write this.

Below it, Rose Royce's "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" (#2 October '78). Syndrum? Check! It feels too much like an intro for something that never gets going, though, all that moody atmosphere going nowhere.

Leo Sayer's "I Can't Stop Lovin' You" makes #6, simple but effective. We then have a rather confusing multiple-Jackson situation, with Mick Jackson's "Blame It On The Boogie" at #15 and then the Jacksons, also featuring a Michael Jackson, having "Blame It On The Boogie" at #8. Mick's is the original, and that makes this no less hard to navigate.

They're both near identical, the multiple-Jackson version being somewhat more polished, and it's so endlessly parodiable you've probably heard it again through the medium of some comedian or other seeing the amusement potential in that "I just can't control my feet" line.

With Grease hogging the top of the charts, big-selling records that would be a #1 any other year have to content themselves with a #2 peak, such as Boney M's "Rasputin". It is gloriously silly, taking any amusing rumour it can find and treating it as fact to make the lyrics something dangerous to listen to closely with a hot beverage on the go.

Of course, Grease couldn't let slip its grip on the charts and so it was deposed from #2 a fortnight later by John Travolta's "Sandy", and I'm going to dare venture that... the songs from Grease, they're not great, are they? I mean, it's only one of the biggest-selling musicals ever in both record and film form, but I feel like these were carried heavily by the story, the choreography and the feel-good '50s nostalgia because the convictionless vocals don't do it for me.

Perhaps the public finally thought so because Olivia Newton John's "Hopelessly Devoted To You" was beaten to #1 in November '78 by the Boomtown Rats with "Rat Trap". Deservedly so, because that is a fantastic record. Keeping you on the edge of your seat with its stop/go dynamics and a story more relevant to 1978 than rose-tinted '50s Americana, the band added to it with a raucous Top of the Pops appearance that included tearing up pictures of the Grease leads to celebrate the end of their reign.

("Greased Lightnin'" scored a #11 at the end of the year, but that was the end of the number ones)

John Lydon's escape from the Sex Pistols resulted in an "anti-rock" project along with Keith Levine, Jah Wobble and Jim Walker. Public Image Limited's first single "Public Image" went to #9 at the end of October, with a more sophisticated sound that stuck the band firmly amongst the post-punks.

Post-punk being a temporally inappropriate term of course, with the Jam's "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" reaching #15 in the same week, along with Sham 69's "Hurry Up Harry" at #10. Buzzcocks classic "Ever Fallen In Love" is there at #12.

The mass of things described as either new-wave or post-punk would fracture into a diaspora of musical movements by the early '80s, and The Cars seemed determined to embody most of them. "My Best Friend's Girl" (#3 November '78) marries the staccato rhythms of straight-up new wave with prominent synthesisers and the kind of Duane Eddy guitar stylings that would be a key part of the rockabilly revival due to happen... it's late 1978, so right about now.

Blondie's second single from Parallel Lines, "Hanging On The Telephone", goes to #5 in November. It's energetic and poppy, although I think I prefer "Picture This" (#12 September '78)

Queen return to the charts with double A-side "Bicycle Race"/"Fat Bottomed Girls" (#11 November '78). "Bicycle Race" packs a lot into three minutes, although Brian May later pointed out Freddie Mercury quite liked Star Wars and wasn't really much of a cyclist. A promotional video featured naked women riding bicycles around Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium, an edifice I fondly remember from childhood and now sadly demolished. We didn't watch naked bicycle races, we watched stock cars.

Going into December we're reminded this is still the era of disco, even though it is not as all-pervasive as it was in the US. Chic's "Le Freak" peaks at #7, and 2001-referencing "I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper" from Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip is at #6 going into December.

But by far the worst thing disco has done to us this month is rob us of the last of those good memories of the unspecified-size Faces, with Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" going to #1 at the end of November. There's a mismatch here between singer and subject, which overshadows that it's not a particularly bad track as these things go. Different lyrics or a different face in mind when you hear those lyrics and this would have been fine. Just about.

It's dropped from #1 a week later by Boney M with "Mary's Boy Child", holding the slot long enough to be 1978's Christmas chart-topper. I'm going to unironically say this is good enough that I've put it on more than one Christmas playlist, although that might be a warning that you don't want to spend Christmas at mine. (C'mon, we have an original 1963 copy of "A Christmas Gift For You From Philles Records"!)

Once Christmas is over, Boney M's #1 is taken over by Village People with "Y.M.C.A." While at face value this may seem like disco's shark-jumping moment, not long after Happy Days aired that phrase-coining episode in 1977, there's more beneath the surface. Village People were put together in part to appeal to disco's large gay community, and leaned into this from sneaking nudge-wink themes into their records to the band's name itself. They called their third album "Cruisin'", although singer Victor Willis strenuously denies this is one of the activities they were suggesting you could partake in at the Y and the "hanging out with all the boys" was entirely fraternal in nature.

The Barron Knights released a year-end comedy roundup medley "A Taste Of Aggro", mocking "Rivers of Babylon", the Smurfs and "Matchstalk Men" along with a dig of punks spray-painting civic infrastructure. It went to #3 in mid-December.

1979

"Y.M.C.A."'s chart-topping run was ended in mid January by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, whose "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" had spent most of December overshadowed by it. It sold frustratingly close to a million copies in its original run - Stiff claimed they'd delete the record after the millionth copy and send a prize to the record shop which ordered it, but only 979,000 people ended up wanting a copy.

Another December chart entry reaching its peak that week was Earth Wind & Fire's "September" at #3, a record you may have to listen to before going, "oh yes, it's that one".

Elton John's "Song For Guy" reached #4 earlier in January, an instrumental whose odd metronome-like percussion is one of those Roland CR-78s I was talking about earlier.

There's a #9 for Funkadelic with "One Nation Under A Groove", George Clinton's collective (also encompassing Parliament) turning down the rock and stepping into pure funk. We're off to a good start for '79 keeping up the sheer diversity of things in the chart.

At #12 going into February is Billy Joel with "My Life". I used to subscribe to the popular notion that teenyboppers and novelty acts killed the singles charts, with them finally keeling over during the terrible barren stretch of 1976, but on the strength of what I've been reviewing between 1977 and now I'd say they recovered quite well. This is a great single.

There's still room for some oddities, with a live Shadows recording of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" taking #5 that same first week of February. It's a weird thing with the clean acoustic guitar, extra strings and very contemporary late '70s production up against Hank Marvin sounding exactly as he would have been recorded in 1958.

Your #1 for the period is Blondie's "Heart Of Glass", reaching that position the previous week and keeping it until March. The Roland CR-78 was central to the song, with the trigger pulse that was supposed to manage other sequencers being fed into a synthesiser and used as an instrument in its own right. Despite this, the synthesised drums were doubled (and drowned out by) real drumming, intended to give the song a feeling of hybridisation between mechanised dance records and the theoretically more human sound of a rock band.

ABBA give us "Chiquitita" (#2 February '79), a welcome return to form. The band's melancholy period is feeling yet closer, the oompah chorus a thin veneer over a body of keening vocals and hard questions. Chiquitita, tell me the truth - the melancholy period was always there right from the start, wasn't it? (Should we listen to "Waterloo" again, and pay attention to the lyrics this time, feeling like I win when I lose and all?)

New punk bands are still filtering in, with "The Sound Of The Suburbs" from Members hitting #12 in February. And yet 1979 finds time to add even more genres to the mix. The hard and fast playing of the punks had filtered through to heavy metal bands, with some musicians even swapping between scenes. This cross-pollination would become known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, an early sign of which was Judas Priest putting "Take On The World" at #14 in February. They'd been going since 1974, but it was the aggressive, leather-clad image and uncompromisingly hard rock they cultivated from 1978 that set both band and nascent genre on the map.

The other direction for hard rock to go was theatrical. Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf took a while to find a record label, with a perception that Steinman's writing went too many places too unexpectedly and was impossible to make a catchy three-minute single out of. In that there was some truth, as the 7" edit of "Bat out Of Hell" (#15 February '79) clocks in at 4:53 and requires some pretty rough cuts to get it there from an album track that's over nine minutes, or exactly the length of my walk to school as I found once I owned a Walkman.

The story of the year, though, was the lead up to Peak Disco. "Tragedy" hits #1 for the Bee Gees at the end of February. Lyrically we've got the melancholy of ABBA, but without the glassy production; this is intense and, dare I say it, floor-filling.

Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" takes over the top slot in March, and between this and "Tragedy" I'd say it sounds like if disco is going out, it's going out on a high. By '78 so much of the genre had become indistinguishable 4/4 wallpaper, but the new crop of chart-topping hits has a deftness of production and willingness to grab your attention that's been lacking for a while.

Perhaps the picture in the UK was better because new wave and punk provided so much competition for the upper reaches of the chart, meaning the tedious stuff didn't get a look in. Lene Lovich's "Lucky Number" made #3 in March, with typical restless itchiness.

At #2 in the same month are Elvis Costello & The Attractions with "Oliver's Army", their commentary on the Troubles in Northern Ireland. A familiar visitor to lists of greatest singles of all time, the pop production did result in a few people turning up to gigs and being puzzled by the band's far less penetrable new wave material.

The situation in Northern Ireland and the casualties tending to fall on the working class also inspired Skids singer Richard Jobson to write "Into The Valley", going to #10 in March '79. I've got a Virgin pressing off this with an off-centre hole, lending it some rather interesting variations in tone to go with the near-indecipherable lyrics.

Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" (#9 March '79) feels rather out of place against all this, the band at the tail end of their insistence on being a "proper" rock band with no artificial instruments and "No Synthesisers!" proudly emblazoned on the liner notes of their record.

Given the Sex Pistols represented one of the few feuds Queen had within the music industry, they may have drawn some satisfaction that they continued bringing ballet to the masses long after the Pistols were reduced to a mere brand for whatever odds and ends Malcolm McLaren could sweep off the floor. The death of Sid Vicious in February 1979 (or Simon Ferocious, as Mercury dubbed him to his apparent dislike) didn't stop a release of double A-side "Something Else"/"Friggin' In The Riggin'", reaching #3 in March.

By this point the records were clearly stunt releases of limited musical merit, with this one having a controversy-bating picture sleeve of Vicious displaying a prominent swastika and an utterly filthy version of old navy drinking song "Good Ship Venus" backing that inconsequential Eddie Cochran cover. I'll give it its dues, "Friggin'" is pretty funny, barring the painfully '70s casual racism which pops up in one line.

With only a few months left of the decade, we're starting to see more signs of the musical direction of the '80s creep in, with Toto's "Hold The Line" at #14 in March. Transitional hard rock, with one foot firmly in the '70s and the likes of Boston, and the other in the high-gloss world of '80s yuppie rock.

The iconic yuppie rock band would of course be Dire Straits, and they enter the Top 40 for the first time in March '79, going to #8 in April. The record is "Sultans Of Swing". Improbably smooth, long for a single at nearly six minutes, and overturning the ethos of punk for a world where the guitarist and their skill were to be revered as the most important part of a band. If I had a criticism it's that some of this does feel like little more than a vehicle to deliver licks and solos, although some of that is Dire Straits still being an art rock band who considered 14 minutes a reasonable sort of length for an album track.

"In The Navy" took Village People to #2 at the end of March, a deliberate attempt to write a recruiting song for that organisation instead of an accidental one as was the case for "Y.M.C.A." Despite this the song was full of innuendo with only the tiniest layer of disguise over it, and perhaps this contributed to the US Navy passing over the video they'd let the band shoot on USS Reasoner in favour of traditional fight song "Anchors Aweigh". "What am I going to do on a submarine?", indeed.

It was dropped from #2 the following week by Squeeze with "Cool for Cats". This paean to young life in the late '70s memorably ended up as a soundtrack to some of the later Milk Marketing Board commercials, perhaps missing that the "Cool for Cats" in the title was a reference to an old rock'n'roll television show.

Above it at #1 was Art Garfunkel's "Bright Eyes", from everyone's favourite childhood traumatic "it's about cartoon rabbits, right?" film, Watership Down. Even the picture sleeve has an apocalyptic-looking silhouette of a rabbit crying out in pain. Mike Batt wrote and produced the song, no doubt a factor in it becoming the UK's biggest-selling single of 1979.

Further down the chart at #6 are yet more Sex Pistols dregs, "Silly Thing"/"Who Killed Bambi?" with Ed Tudor-Pole singing on the novelty side. The UK single features a slightly different version of the sensible side to that featured on The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle, but who cares by this point? These singles were little more than toys, with their double-sided picture sleeves in thick cardboard.

It's all very dated with Supertramp's "The Logical Song" a position below at #7.

Another record with an unusual prescience for the now-imminent 1980s was "Pop Muzik" (#2 May '79), credited to Robin Scott project M. It's hard not to think of Ray Parker Jr's Ghostbusters theme on listening to it. The influence of the strange things being done to disco in France and beyond is clear. Odd to think this started as an idea without a single synthesiser on it.

Boney M reach #3 with "Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday", seemingly skipping the '80s entirely and presaging the Vengaboys, who would use that same "holi-holiday" phrasing on "Uncle John From Jamaica".

Endearingly silly TV theme cover "Banana Splits" by The Dickies got to #7, the band having been signed to A&M as a more manageable replacement for the Sex Pistols. Also one that didn't fall apart within barely more than a single year; indeed, their career has lasted for over 40 of the things.

At #8, a record existing in service to the guitarist more than even anything Dire Straits ever did - Gary Moore's "Parisienne Walkways". Despite fellow Thin Lizzy member Phil Lynott co-writing the song and providing vocals, this is really only there for the extended guitar solos. We're still just about on the right side of listenability, but this is a veneration of the guitarist beyond anything the days of Hendrix and Beck would ever produce. It would culminate in a genre of mostly old white men you'd go to see not because the songs were any good, but because they were doing something technically very difficult, although I don't think it's fair to pin that on Moore. It's still a good record, even if it is mostly guitar.

Roxy Music skewed hard to the commercial side for "Dance Away", #2 in May and starting to feel very '80s with the drum sequencer and the high-gloss production. Yet there's also something which feels rather wistful and decade-ending in this. We're saying goodbye to the '70s and we're doing it with a fantastic singles chart.

ABBA's "Does Your Mother Know" is at #4, sounding more like Roxy Music than Roxy Music just did! Despite the occasional mean-toned synthesiser part it veers harder and harder into straight-up glam rock, even adding in a sax part that Wizzard wouldn't have kicked off a record.

The Police re-released 1978 non-charting single "Roxanne" off the back of US chart success, and this time went to #12 with it. While I can't see any reason this shouldn't have done well in '78, and contemporary music critics certainly thought so, maybe the timing was better. "Bright Eyes" was finally displaced from #1 at the end of May by another new wave effort, Blondie's "Sunday Girl".

It featured a confusing mess of B-sides, with multiple different songs and even a version of "Sunday Girl" with French lyrics. That version then produced a bizarre edit which cut between the English and French language versions verse by verse, which also turned up in some variants as a A-side in its own right. They're all good, whichever one you find yourself listening to.

The Shadows pipped John C. Williams into the charts with their cover of "Theme From The Deer Hunter (Cavatina)", reaching #9 at the end of May. Williams' version, titled simply "Cavatina", eventually went to #13 in mid-June. I think I prefer the latter with its softer and sparser arrangement, although I can see why the Shadows were the bigger hit.

June sees the #1 spot change hands a couple of times. First is Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell" which dives straight in with the Syndrums and has already hit the point of "a bit too much of that" by 30 seconds in.

Taking over from it later in the month are Tubeway Army with "Are 'Friends' Electric?" Oddly for something so abrasively modern there's nothing here that couldn't have been done in 1975 had someone put their mind to it; the synth is a mid-'70s Polymoog and the rest is all conventional instrumentation of the type Queen would be satisfied with.

Squeeze sit just below that at #2 going into July with "Up The Junction", a new wave bedsit drama that I first heard in a school drama lesson intended to teach us about working-class storytelling. I missed most of that as I was sent into the cupboard for saying "Squeeeeeze" in a silly voice and disrupting everyone's learning, but I still liked the song.

A week later Janet Kay's reggae number "Silly Games" is at #2. It's a fine slice of lovers rock, a subgenre heavily associated with London where it would be played late at night in clubs and on sound systems as an antidote to the often politically charged Rastafarian reggae popular in Jamaica.

Not that London was short on politically-charged music, with reggae punks The Ruts taking "Babylon's Burning" to #7 in July. It shared chart space with overwrought home-grown ABBA imitation "Wanted" from The Dooleys (#3 July '79), another inconsequential Sex Pistols remnant of the cutting room floor, Supertramp's odd, stuttering and rather striking "Breakfast In America" (#9 July '79) and Chic's "Good Times" (#5 July '79).

That record will come up again later in the year, although for now I'll leave it here as a fine piece of funky disco.

In the US this was the last of an unbroken row of disco #1s. The record which broke the combo was The Knack's "My Sharona", celebrated as the saviour of music and its rightful return to rock over there but a mere routine #6 over here where our charts had been more varied and we realised the way to save ourselves from disco was to give it to the French to make interesting.

July 12th 1979 was Disco Demolition Night, a baseball promotion held by the Chicago White Sox which saw them forfeit the second game of the evening due to a failure to provide acceptable field conditions.

While the event may have been planned as a bit of fun with some explosions to get bums on seats for a team whose games were a bit on the uninspiring side at the time, it soon attracted an unsavoury element which resulted in stadium security turning most of their attention to the gates to prevent people getting in, failing to supervise those that already had.

The problem for American society was that the metropolitan world of New York where so much of the disco sat was a world away from the country's large conservative belt, where people made things out of metal - or rather didn't any more, which was part of the problem. It was a bastion of rock, which liked its music unpretentious, played in real life with real instruments, and ideally by those who were both white and straight. (Sentiments which are unfortunately rarely far from the surface in too many rock communities - see how many times you can mention openly gay Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford before getting the inevitable "well he's not so bad, he's one of us, but the rest of them..." in certain traditionalist metal circles)

Disco came from the cities, it was black, and it was gay, sometimes all three of these at once. Acts openly celebrated these parts of their audience. Village People dressed as gay fantasy icons. "Disco sucks" movements didn't just want to recapture the charts for rock, they wanted to recapture what they saw as a lost society of the 1950s - a prosperous, easy-going time whose disappearance was definitely down to lack of respect for traditional conservative values and not awkward things like external economic factors and corporate greed.

People walked into Disco Demolition Night not only with disco records, but with soul records from the 1960s that had nothing to do with the genre other than unwittingly lending it an influence or two. It didn't matter; the faces on the front were black. The night became a riot, with ballpark security realising too late that the problem wasn't just the gates, it was people swarming the field, setting fires and destroying or stealing baseball-related infrastructure.

Whatever the intentions (event runner Steve Dahl maintains that the original expectation was for a bit of between-game fun and it got out of hand thanks to audiences doing harder drugs than the regulation ballgame beer) the night ended with the riot police turning up and became infamous as the marker point of a nation deciding that disco's time was finally up.

America would embrace new wave as its replacement, a confusing chronology as we'd already thoroughly embraced it on these shores, Boomtown Rats single "I Don't Like Mondays" going almost inevitably to #1 less than two weeks after that disco-fuelled ballpark riot. It was inspired by the remorseless perpetrator of a school shooting, who could offer no explanation other than the titular dislike of Mondays.

It was followed in the #1 spot by Cliff Richard with "We Don't Talk Anymore" in August, which serves as good evidence why we don't talk any more. Maybe that's a little unfair; it's competent and far less tragic than Rod Stewart's disco experimentation, I just still find it lacking in conviction and upsettingly perky for what's supposed to be a sad song.

That last sentence would be a perfect segue into almost any ABBA song other than double A-side "Angeleyes"/"Voulez-Vous", both somewhat filler-y tracks that nevertheless went to #3 in August. The latter is an attempt to copy the kind of funk-infused disco Chic were coming out with, but it adds to my feeling that ABBA in 1979 were trying to put out too many singles from an album that simply didn't have enough good material on it.

Earth, Wind & Fire put slow number "After The Love Has Gone" on the #4 spot in August, but there's no number of dramatic key changes which can save this from being a soporific affair. Sham 69's "Hersham Boys" at #6 on the same chart is messy and a little dated-sounding by this point, but at least there's some life to it.

Somehow Showaddywaddy are still around, with "Sweet Little Rock'n'Roller" at #15.

BA Robertson's "Bang Bang" went to #2 at the start of September. A satirical spoken-word observation of things going wrong for famous couples, there are moments which feel like early '80s indie rock in the vein of the Television Personalities and the like.

Reggae's interaction with punk finally spawned a genre of its own, with The Special AKA taking "Gangsters" to #6 in August. This was a form of ska which would come to be known as 2 tone, named for the Coventry band's own record label through which they intended to showcase unsigned bands in the genre. Most of them fled the moment they saw success thanks to 2 tone's laissez-faire contracts, but the suited iconography and checkerboard graphics were a core part of the ska revivalist identity.

Somehow there's even space for a bit of country music here, with Bellamy Brothers record and infamously bad chat-up line "If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me" taking #3 in September. There's a nice, light and almost countrypolitan air to this.

Gary Numan has left Tubeway Army and his first solo chart outing is headed for #1, where he can lock all his doors in "Cars". I'm guessing he had a Granada or something with fancy central locking or that's a lot of contorting himself around the interior.

Electric Light Orchestra's "Don't Bring Me Down" is another September #3, a jam session based around a taped drum loop that turns into one of their heaviest singles.

With a mere three months to go until the decade is out, 1979 starts coming thick and fast with the landmark singles. Rainbow's "Since You Been Gone" (#6 October '79), Ritchie Blackmore's newly revamped band producing some instantly recognisable hard rock covering the three year old Argent song.

Madness debut "The Prince" may not be the biggest hit at #16, but they would become one of the biggest 2 tone acts of the next decade so I have to mention this and marvel at how much it sounds like a 1960s Jamaican record, before the band started refining their sound and making it a little more pop.

The Police have their first #1 in September with "Message In A Bottle", a hard-pounding reggae-influenced record which is now part of music's widely accepted core canon. But there's barely time to listen to it before we see Michael Jackson launch his solo career with album "Off The Wall" and single "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" (#3 October '79). What was that about disco being dead?

Status Quo's darling of Argos catalogue adverts "Whatever You Want" sneaks up to #4 for the end of September and takes an awfully long time to get to that point you associate with the new Winter edition being out now.

The Police get three weeks at #1 before it's time for them to don uniforms and investigate who killed the radio star. Video, as key witnesses The Buggles point out on "Video Killed The Radio Star". This got a bit of an unfair rep as an example of naff old records by the '90s, mostly because it dares to have a bit of fun while also being quite boundary-pushing for the time.

Where "Flowers In The Rain" heralded the start of a new mainstream radio era, this was the first record... er, video to be played on the next great public tastemaker, MTV. It's a strange piece of videography with badly-composited explosions, Geoff Downes trapped in a triangle of keyboards, Trevor Horn wandering around with those glasses and some of the most disinterested-looking instrument miming to ever appear on a band promo. You'd have been forgiven for watching the first three minutes of MTV and thinking, "well that's going to flop".

Thing is, while I might remember it being held up as a beacon of naffness, it was held up as a beacon of naffness for the early MTV era and that's a good two years after the record was first put to vinyl. This is such a forward-thinking record, and once you listen to the less over-familiar tracks on album "The Age Of Plastic" you realise how much the band's collective mind was already in the '80s.

If there's any doubt, the song was a collaboration with Bruce Woolley and his own band Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club recorded their own version, which is interesting in its way but you can see why it's the Buggles everyone remembers and mistakenly places in 1981.

And yet this futuristic piece was swept away the following week by Lena Martell's country ballad "One Day At A Time". Once more I shake my head at the overstuffed nature of a decade-ending chart. "One Day At A Time" was a big seller, but Dr. Hook's "When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman" was an even bigger one, taking over the #1 in November as part of its 14 weeks on the chart.

Fleetwood Mac's pointedly odd "Tusk" was #6 in November. Recorded in a brand-new digital studio, the band were trying to chase the kind of things Talking Heads were doing. This resulted in a very well-recorded commercial flop, although that lead single isn't in a bad position and would turn up on later greatest hits compilations.

XTC's "Making Plans For Nigel" at #17 suggests they weren't that far off the mark in terms of sound, it's just people maybe didn't expect it from Fleetwood Mac. While we're exploring the lower reaches of the charts, the title track from "The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle" makes a mere #21 in October, double A-sided with a cover of "Rock Around The Clock" featuring Ed Tudor-Pole again. The film of the self-penned McLaren myth would finally make it to cinemas in 1980, but the lyrics here let you know what it's going to be and why John Lydon called it "a pile of rubbish".

Queen had indeed outlasted them and decided to bring rockabilly to the masses with "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (#2 November '79). Freddy Mercury played rhythm guitar while Brian May put aside his homemade Red Special for a more '50s-appropriate Fender Esquire to do the solo. It's more rockabilly-via-Queen than the genuine article, but I guess that's rather the point, the band providing some fixed points of reference through all their genre-hopping.

More 2 tone with Selecter's "On My Radio" (#8 November '79) and you can hear the sound of the genre starting to come through on this one, making it something distinct and UK-specific. It's followed not long after by Madness with "One Step Beyond" (#7 in late November) at which point all the pieces are in place.

Herb Alpert has somehow inexplicably made a funk record on "Rise" (#13 November '79), although it does calm down and get a little less funky once the trumpet comes in. "Diamond Smiles" is great but there's only enough space here for the Boomtown Rats to be at #13.

Matchbox give us some proper rockabilly rather than rockabilly-via, with "Rockabilly Rebel" at #18 in November. Allow me to take a moment to marvel at how great these Sunday chart countdowns must have sounded on Radio 1 as they went through the full Top 40. After this on the 25th November you'd have heard The Specials doing "A Message To You Rudy", an old Dandy Livingston number they made their own. After that you've got Lena Martell on her way back down from number 1. Pop out for an errand and you might come back to "Diamond Smiles" or The Jam with "The Eton Rifles" at #9. Gary Numan follow-up "Complex" is sitting at #6 just above Madness.

Listen in from earlier and you'd have heard Thin Lizzy's "Sarah" at #24 and even, in fine 1970s re-release tradition, the Moody Blues with "Nights In White Satin" a position above it. Blondie's "Union City Blue" was at #21, one of my favourite tracks of theirs. What I'm getting at is this is an incredible chart, you could probably package it up as a two-disc "Best of the '70s" compilation and nobody would question your choices.

Down the bottom of it but climbing rapidly are some giant December hits. The Police grab #1 first with moody yelped-vocal number "Walking On The Moon". It seems wild after the slow-moving and sludgy, glam-focused nature of the early '70s that there could be a mere five years between Mungo Jerry being in the charts and this. Even more so given we wasted one of those years on the directionless nothing charts of 1976.

It's kicked off the top spot the following week by Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall", corresponding to part 2 of 4 from the double LP. A little odd as it comes part way through the story of the album's protagonist, but I guess those tales of no dark sarcasm in the classroom appealed to people who did not have fond memories of the British schooling system of the 1960s and thereabouts.

At #3 is a record you've heard before, or maybe not. "Rapper's Delight" takes Chic's "Good Times" (re-recording the instrumental rather than sampling it) and adds The Sugarhill Gang rapping over the top. Nile Rodgers was not amused, although after he was credited on the record softened his opinion and ended up thinking the band had done great things with it. (Sampling and interpolation were a bit of a Wild West until 1991, when Grand Upright Music vs. Warner Bros Records ruled that they did indeed represent copyright infringement).

It sounds endearingly primitive to modern ears, the lyrics doing little more than explaining rapping and how a crew is supposed to work, although hip-hop's fascination with wealth and material possessions is present even here at its dawn, with boasts of Cadillacs and a colour TV. Despite this, it is perhaps the most portentous single of anything here. Mere weeks from the end of the decade, 1979 throws in what would become possibly the most important genre in the development of popular music since rock'n'roll.

Pink Floyd would see out the decade on #1, therefore also giving us the year's Christmas chart-topper, but below them at #2 are ABBA with "I Have A Dream", one of the better picks from Voulez-Vous. That's a damnation with faint praise, although the electric sitar adds a welcome bit of texture.

And with that we finally run out of decade, barring a couple of December chart entries which achieved their highest positions in 1980.