Tag Archives: Matchbox

Off The Chart: 1 February 1981

Off The Chart: 1 February 1981

White rabbits! No Jefferson Airplane or Chas & Dave on this first of the month Off The Chart, but we are going back to brutally dissect the UK singles chart from this day in 1981. We’ll have the usual brace of neglected and forgotten hits, plus tracks from three of the week’s new albums, a round-up of the day’s goings-on, a hit from the Israeli chart and the top five singles in full.

  • Whose debut solo single immediately became a much bigger hit than his band ever had?
  • What was the first rap record to reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100?
  • And which single was a bigger hit in the UK before it was released here than afterwards?

Tune in and find out!


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

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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.

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!

Off The Chart: 20 April 1981

Off The Chart: 20 April 1981

It’s another weird time travel experience on Off The Chart this week, as we go back exactly forty years and find that it’s Easter Monday. Join us for two hours of forgotten and obscure hits from that week’s chart, as … read more

Off The Chart: 27 October 1980

Off The Chart: 27 October 1980

Buckle up, we’re going back a full four decades on this week’s Off The Chart to stick exploratory needles in this day in 1980! As always we’ll have a load of hits you might not remember, plus three of the … read more

Off The Chart: 12 November 1980

Off The Chart: 12 November 1980

We’re going all the way back to today in 1980 on this week’s Off The Chart for another two hours of hits you’ve forgotten about – or never heard in the first place – plus the usual look at the … read more

Off The Chart: 17 February 1980

Off The Chart: 17 February 1980

We’re going so far back on this week’s Off The Chart we’re practically in the ’70s! Join Steve and Julian for two hours of hits, half-hits, headlines and hysteria from way back in February 1980. There’s three tracks from the … read more

“Look at it from my angle” – Top of the Pops, 23 April 1981

Level 42

There’s an almighty gap in the BBC Four reruns here as we skip three whole episodes, starting with this Dave Lee Travis-fronted edition. No doubt the Daily Mail would be disgusted to realise that people ever watched it on its … read more

“Who made the zombies all tap their feet?” – Top of the Pops, 8 January 1981

Racey

Here we go then with the first proper Top of the Pops of 1981, and after last week’s review of the dregs of 1980 that didn’t make it onto the Christmas Day show, BBC Four’s usual Story of 1981 documentary … read more

1980 Christmas Top 40

John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Christmas 1980 was something of a subdued affair. Chartwise there was a fairly standard mix of Christmas songs, novelty records and songs that had been hanging around for a while and just happened to be caught up in the festive … read more