A look at the top 40 charts in Christmas week throughout the ’80s. You may remember the Christmas number ones, but what competition were they up against?

Off The Chart: 28 December 1980

Off The Chart: 28 December 1980

After the excitement of Christmas we’re back to normal on this week’s Off The Chart and, inconveniently, we’ve landed on 1980 where there was no chart published at all in the week after Christmas. Nevertheless we can still bring you two hours of obscure, forgotten and half-remembered hits, plus three of the week’s big albums, a look at what was happening away from the chart, a hit from New Zealand where they seem to still be counting, and the top five singles in full.

  • Whose second hit on the singles chart was absolutely not a single?
  • Which ’70s hitmaker scored their only UK hit album this week?
  • And whose first top 40 hit spent five consecutive weeks at number 33?

Tune in and find out!


Listen to Off The Chart on Noisebox Radio at 9pm every Tuesday! You can stream Noisebox Radio via their website, their apps for iOS or Android, or through TuneIn and MyTuner, or ask your smart speaker to “play Noisebox Radio” – and don’t forget to tweet along using the hashtag #OffTheChart. If you’re not around, you can hear the show again on Noisebox Radio at 10am on Friday, or catch up on Mixcloud after that.

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Spotify playlists

If you’ve missed a previous edition they’re all on our Mixcloud page, or for a taster of the music we play, listen to our Spotify playlist Way Off The Chart including one track from each show!

We also have a Spotify playlist for our #ICEOTWF feature, including all (well, most) of the international hits we’ve played since the feature began in March 2017. There are all sorts of oddities in here, all of which were hits somewhere in the world but not in the UK!

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