Col1967

'I Wanna be a Winner' by Brown Sauce isn't available :(

The chorus just sounds very mid 80s to me. I'm racking my brains to remember what song in particular it reminds me of....

On first listen I rather like 'We are Young' it's good but nothing more. Some tracks do take a while to 'grow' though. For example when I first heard 'Paradise' I didn't think much of it, considering it very dull. But then I grew to love it :)

She looks anorexic to me.

I wouldn't count it. To me a protest/political song has to be concerning a specific event/cause rather than merely being about something like nuclear war as 99 red balloons was and Two Tribes as has previously been mentioned. Paul Hardcastle's '19' is a stronger case because it deals with the shabby treatment the vets received when they returned home, rather than generally about the war itself. That said, I'm not sure just how much of a genuine 'protest' this was, coming from a British musician commenting on a war waged by a foreign power some 8 to 10 years previously.

I thought the iTunes thread was going weekly and a new thread would be started on Sunday.

In a Moves Like Jagger type fasion, then? So now you'll know what it's like to have your favourite track stalled at no.2, thwarted week after week by a series of one-week non-entities :) Edit - page 51 and the world hasn't ended!

Well I was living in Leeds during the 80s which was certainly considered a big target.

In theory the chart could go down low enough to reflect all the tracks that are available to download and there must be several million of them. But in practice most of these won't be downloaded at all in any given week so you'd be looking at the number of tracks that have sold at least one copy. I'd guess that might well be around no.10,000.

'One in Ten' actually reached no.7.

I wouldn't count it as a protest/political song per se. I don't think it was written as a reaction to any particular event, or in support of any particular cause. Naturally, it is always associated with the 1981 riots, but that was because it happened to be in the charts at the time, rather than the riots having been the reason for it's release.

Same here. I'm very scared of nuclear bombs.

I find it quite shocking that you hadn't heard of him in 1984, given that you were 19. He was a very well known 'cause celebre' of the anti-apartheid movement for some time before that, didn't you have any interest in current affairs at that time? Anyway, here's another South Africa related one, 'Biko' by Peter Gabriel'. Not a massive hit, but reached no. 38 in 1980. And no.49 in 1987 apparently, as I found out when I checked it's original peak on Chartstats.

Agreed. Like you, I don't download enough to make such a subscription worthwhile. There will always be a means for the casual music buyer to obtain individual tracks. If subscription really does take off this will be seen like a 'pay as you go' mobile service. There will always be a market for it.

I've always wondered that. If you reply to this, then somebody can start the new thread! It seems to mean so much to certain people.

I like climbers and a degree of stability at the top of the charts, with tracks that sell a decent amount. For me, that makes for a more 'deserving' no.1, something that has genuine popularity and not just been held back for weeks and has massive pent up demand for just one week, before rapidly disappearing. The charts are more interesting as a result. But everybody is different as regards how they think the charts should look, mine is just an opinion of course and you know what they say about opinions :)

I've no problem with tracks making no.1 for just a week per se, it's just these one-week no 1s tend to be the highly front loaded tracks that crash in at no.1 and then plummet, sell 200-250k overall and come nowhere near the year end top 40. They are soon relitively forgotten and make something of a mockery of the no.1 slot.

I was just thinking that the way these tracks are racing upwards that there could be an all-new top 4, though there will be varying degrees of front-loading so that's hardly a done deal yet. Gotye will still be selling around 65k so that would be excellent sales for no.5 assuming it gets knocked down to that position.

Must be an extremely boring video then.

Towards the end of the run though sales were woeful, even by the standards of the day.

It would be OK if the artist concerned identified with and considered themselves to be a 'pikey'. As others have said it's all about context and who is using the the word, rather than the word itself.

Those who bought it do not consider it 'wasted' though. What a strange thing to say. I 'wasted' 99p on it quite a few weeks ago now, best waste of money I've ever spent :)

The vote is about where you *think* it will chart, not where you'd *want* it to chart.

I've never quite undersood the hatred for this track, to me it'd just rather dull & uninteresting. Certainly not worthy of the no.1 position though. The only track here I would put in the 'hate' category is Adrian Gurvitz - Classic. 'Gonna write a classic, gonna write it in the attic', wish it had bloody stayed there! I don't think this is a particulary good chart by early 80s standards, I would have just 3 in my 'love' category, ABC - Poison Arrow, The Jam -Town Called Malice and The Stranglers - Golden brown.

I'm trying to guess which one you really hate. The obvious answer would be The Goombay Dance Band as this track seems to be almost universally loathed.