Gezza

51. BILLY JOEL (2,071,300) 8 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: UPTOWN GIRL (827,000) Singer songwriter who of course is most famous for “Uptown Girl” here which remains his best seller, but his best compositions are probably from the 70s (“Piano Man”, “She’s Always A Woman” and “Just The Way You Are” among a few of the finest). However his biggest hit was actually inspired by an occasion when Joel was in the company of Christine Brinkley, Whitney Houston, and Elle McPherson (his girlfriend at the time), but by the time it was completed he had swapped McPherson for Brinkley who appeared in the promo.

52. BLONDIE (2,058,800) 6 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: THE TIDE IS HIGH (619,000) Flipping from punk to a more commercial sound was just the ticket for these guys to hit it big in the late 70s with classics “Heart Of Glass” and “Sunday Girl”. By the time the 80s came around the group was at its biggest scoring a hat-trick of No 1 singles in 1980, “Rapture” in 1981 proved to be their final top 10 hit of the 80s (and arguably the first US No 1 single to feature rapping) and they split by 1982 which makes their position here all the more impressive.

Tomorrow, a recap of the bottom 50!

53. RICK ASTLEY (2,032,100) 7 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP (774,000) BEST SELLING ACT OF 1987 From very popular to uncool and back again, Astley has proved surprisingly resilient in the fickle world of pop. His first hit remains his biggest seller and signature track, but he fell out with S/A/W in 1988, a situation which probably cost him a place in the top 50 ultimately.

54. HOWARD JONES (2,012,900) 10 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: NEW SONG (395,000) Synth pop alert! One of the charts most reliable provider of hits between 83 and 85, he was famed (at the start of his career) for using a mime artist called Jeb on his early performances and led to him getting signed. He appeared at Live Aid but it was pretty much downhill for him after that commercial wise.

55. SHALAMAR (2,006,200) 9 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (369,000) Early 80s outfit that were influential in introducing body popping to the UK as well as pretty much inventing the moonwalk when group member Jeffrey Daniel did both on TOTP! Daniel was already known to Jackson through being a dancer on the “Soul Train” programme in the US and teamed up with him in the 80s to do choreography on some of Jackson’s promo’s.

56. ERASURE (2,002,100) 10 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: CRACKERS INTERNATIONAL EP (473,000) Vince Clark’s second appearance on the rundown isn’t even his highest, but we move over the 2 million mark with this longest surviving act. By 1986 the duo had broke the charts and they strung 10 top 15 singles together before the decade ended- an impressive stat complimented by a couple of chart topping albums, they inched over the 2 million mark at the death of the decade!

57. U2 (1,984,400) 12 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: PRIDE (IN THE NAME OF LOVE) (363,000) OK so who thought these would be higher? In truth always more of an albums act, they did have 9 consecutive top 10 hits (if you exclude an import single) but tended to debut high and drop quickly. Their performance at Live Aid is credited with transforming the band into a major stadium rock act for the rest of the 80s and well into the 10s though they haven’t troubled the top 40 in well over 15 years.

58. THE SPECIALS (1,984,300) 7 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: GHOST TOWN (605,000) Spearheading the brief 2Tone craze of 1980-81, this group of course famously topped the charts with “Ghost Town” during the urban riots of July 1981 in a rare moment of zeitgeist with social history and the charts. It was the peak before the very quick decline of the genre from the charts with three members breaking away from the group in the immediate aftermath of the single to for Fun Boy Three. The rest limped on as “The Specials AKA” but only one more top 20 hit followed (sales for both are combined here).

We finally hit the 2 million sales mark tomorrow!

59. IMAGINATION (1,970,300) 9 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: JUST AN ILLUSION (437,000) More trio’s here with a group that took their name from the John Lennon single in homage to his (then) recent death. They persuaded producers Jolley & Swain to produce their first single “Body Talk” and landed them all a hit which helped the producers become the most sought after of the early to mid 80s and launched the group into the charts. They became famed for their TOTP performances which were increasingly exotic and flamboyant (certainly for the time).

60. THOMPSON TWINS (1,966,300) 10 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: HOLD ME NOW (417,000) Everything this trio touched between 1982 and 1985 turned to gold as they even cracked the US thanks to MTV. Two members of the band married each other (Bailey and Currie) and went on to write Debbie Harry’s 1989 hit “I Want That Man”.

61. FIVE STAR (1,938,800) 15 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: RAIN OR SHINE (367,000) Britain’s answer to the Jacksons strung 9 top 20 hits back to back in just 2 years as they made hay when the sun shone. Being the 80s they invested in a recording studio under their mansion and sports cars just as the hits stopped happening resulting in bankruptcy and a rather spectacular fall from grace which the press lapped up.

Only "Arms of Orion" is Included as she had a named credit on that one

62. SHEENA EASTON (1,922,700) 10 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: 9 TO 5 (544,000) Back when reality TV was somewhat less of a thing, Easton rose to fame after being featured on the Esther Ransen TV programme “The Big Time” which followed the singer’s attempt to break the big time. She ended up the 6th highest placed female soloist of the decade moving more than a million in 1980 alone, she also became just the 4th UK Female solo act to make No 1 in the US following Petula Clark, Lulu, and Olivia Newton-John (depending on how you view her).

63. BILLY OCEAN (1,909,700) 8 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE TOUGH GET GOING (561,000) Like Odyssey, Ocean found fame in the 70s but his career looked over by the time the 80s came round, that was until his 1984 hit “Caribbean Queen” set him off on a train of hits for the rest of the decade. He was more successful in the US where he scored a hat-trick of No 1’s, and interestingly the aforementioned “Caribbean Queen” was released alternatively as European Queen” and African Queen” depending on the territory- cleaver marketing!

64. ODYSSEY (1,879,900) 5 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: USE IT UP AND WEAR IT OUT (464,000) Another act that you probably wouldn’t have predicted would be in the countdown. Having first hit our charts in 1977 (“Native New Yorker”, #5) they were absent thereafter until 1980 when they scored a chart topper with “Use It Up, Wear It Out”. Another 3 top 10 singles followed by 1982 before we moved on.

65. THE NOLANS (1,867,600) 6 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: I’M IN THE MOOD FOR DANCING (446,000) The original Irish girl group? Certainly this sister act graduated from light entertainment TV in the 70s to fully fledged popstars by 1980. The vast majority of these sales were accumulated between 1980 and 1982 whereafter the hits stopped though the sisters did appear on The Crowd’s “You’ll Never walk alone” and Ferry Aid’s “Let It Be” so arguably did play a part in a few chart toppers.

66. TINA TURNER (1,859,900) 10 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (412,000) Surely one of the most instantly recognisable pop stars ever let alone the 80s should be higher than No 66? But alas she only scored five top 10 hits throughout the decade but did shift more albums than singles in her defence. Strange to think now that it wasn’t until her 1984 album “Private Dancer” that her solo career really got into top gear but she was an established solo star by the end of the 80s.

67. EDDY GRANT (1,851,300) 6 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: I DON’T WANNA DANCE (720,000) Grant of course was one of the vocalists of 60s group The Equals who hit No 1 in 1968 with “Baby Come Back” but had left the outfit by the early 70s and by the early 80s started to become a semi chart regular. He’s certainly the highest placed Guyanese on this list and was last seen in litigation with Trump over the latter’s use of “Electric Avenue” in his 2020 election campaign without consent.

68. NEW ORDER (1,800,900) 13 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: BLUE MONDAY (772,000) And talking of groups rising from the ashes of other groups here’s New Order who of course were, in the main, Joy Division prior to Ian Curtis’ death. Hailed as one of the most influential indie bands of the decade they are of course most recalled for the best selling 12” single of all time “Blue Monday” which was a hit twice over within the 80s.

69. STYLE COUNCIL (1,788,700) 15 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: A PARIS (261,000) Weller will of course be back later in the countdown but here’s his second most successful outfit of the 80s, trivia wise they never had a single climb for 2 weeks in a row- an unusual pattern in the 80s. That was to some extent due to their tendency to debut inside the top 20 thanks to an established fanbase post Jam, despite the fact that the outfit was formed by Weller to explore a different musical direction. The hits had dried up by 1987 and the pair parted ways before the 80s was out.

70. ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA (1,788,100) 9 TOP 40 HITS BIGGEST SELLER: XANADU (397,000) And they keep coming, although the ELO’s biggest hit did at least come in the 80s when they hit the top with “Xanadu”, which despite the film itself getting universally panned, spawned a very successful soundtrack. A few more hits followed before the inevitable split in 1986 but not before they’d stacked up the sales.

Starting on June 13th.......

Yes it's back, the title says it all, a thread designed to "best guess" the sales week by week for 1998. We'll count down all the sounds of the year and hopefully generate a few "almost forgotten gems" along the way. As always thanks go to MFR, Vas tariner, Youtube, Wikipedia, MW, popscene, James Masterton, Discogs, and a few other sources who have helped over the years. The format will be the same every week with TOTP performances where available for those songs new to the top 10. So sit back and enjoy every top 10 hit of the 90s (eventually) because in this year it was just like that!