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Off The Chart: 9 February 1981

Off The Chart: 9 February 1981

Brace yourselves, Barnsley, we’re heading back to this day in 1981 for another edition of Off The Chart! As usual we’ve got two hours of obscure and forgotten hits, plus the day’s eye-watering news headlines, three of the week’s new albums, a quick look at the Canadian chart and the UK’s top five in full.

  • Who covered one of Stevie Wonder’s biggest hits before it was a hit?
  • Who took the Sam Fox route backwards and became a pin-up model after her pop career?
  • And who was behind the musical revue “Restless Underwear”?

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.

Get the Extended Mix!

If you enjoy Off The Chart but find it’s just not long enough, why not join us on Patreon or Mixcloud Select? For a small monthly subscription you get access to the exclusive Extended Mix of the show every week with bonus 12″ mixes, additional chatter and the week’s top ten singles in full!

Our subscribers also get access to exclusive shows including Further Off The Chart in which we play some of the records that come up in conversation on the regular shows. You can even download shows to listen offline in the Mixcloud app! Please consider backing us – we really appreciate it and your subscription allows us to keep producing a new episode every single week.

There’s a podcast too!

For those of you who enjoy the nonsense we talk but don’t have time to listen to the music, we’ve put the talky bits together with some exclusive extras to make a podcast! This week the #32 comedy podcast in Kenya uncovers a plan to swamp Barnsley with sex emporia. It’ll all make sense if you listen.

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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!

β€œImaginary playing heavy riffs, no diminisheds or fancy fifths” – Top of the Pops, 29 January 1981

Susan Fassbender

Week two of the new supercharged BBC Four repeat run and it’s the end of January already; in all probability the 8 January show will have been the last time we weren’t way ahead of ourselves. Your host this week … read more