It’s Steve Wright – yes it is! You can tell because he’s wearing a huge badge bearing the slogan “YES IT IS”, dating this edition to somewhere in the brief period when he was trying ever so hard to popularise … read more
It’s 1981 on this week’s Off The Chart as Steve and Julian play some of the week’s forgotten hits, three tracks from a featured album and the top five in full. Just how many terrible medley singles are there in … read more
We’re 21 today! On the twenty-first edition of Off The Chart we look at the chart of 20 August 1988. Steve and Julian play some of the hits you don’t often hear, three tracks from the album of the week … read more
If you had fond memories of late April and early May 1981 and were looking forward to reliving those memories via the BBC Four reruns of Top of the Pops, you’re probably feeling pretty short changed by now. What with … read more
By this stage of the BBC Four reruns the audience has formed itself into two distinct groups. One one hand there’s the casual viewer who isn’t really following the timeline but will greet every deviation from the norm – anything … read more
Just when you thought everyone over the age of 30 had stopped releasing singles, the Pet Shop Boys are back with The Pop Kids out today on CD and download, including two new B-side tracks In Bits and One-Hit Wonder, … read more
So it seems Richard Skinner wasn’t in Scotland all week with the other Radio 1 DJs, as the Radio Times seems to suggest. Although his evening show was billed as including sessions from Scottish bands, he must have been in … read more
Up next on BBC1, another edition of Let’s Pretend Nothing’s Wrong And This Is Just A Normal Edition Of Top Of The Pops Even Though It’s Painfully Obvious That There’s Another Strike On And We’re Desperately Stringing Pre-Recorded Clips Together … read more
Never let it be said that this site doesn’t get results. After carping on for weeks about how this new look Top of the Pops needs an opening sequence instead of just crashing straight into the grinning host over the … read more
1987 saw the proper arrival of house music in the UK, with Steve “Silk” Hurley’s Jack Your Body topping the chart in January and M/A/R/R/S blithely sampling every record they could get their hands on and reaching number 1 with … read more
Something seemed to have shifted in 1986. Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club and Frankie Goes To Hollywood all returned from their mid-decade break to lesser acclaim, failing to score a top three hit between them. Wham! called it a … read more
1981 had been something of a transitional year. The past had been condensed into a series of bite-sized chunks thanks to a slew of medley singles – the works of the Beatles (Stars On 45), ABBA (Stars On 45 2), … read more
