number one singles

470. ‘Super Trouper’, by ABBA

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I had no idea, when I wrote this post on ABBA’s final UK #1, that I would be publishing it the day after ABBA returned triumphantly to the top of the charts with their comeback album. It’s a nice bit of symmetry…

Super Trouper, by ABBA (their 9th and final #1)

3 weeks, 23rd November – 14th December 1980

In my eight earlier posts on ABBA, I believe I’ve given very short shrift to those among us that dislike Sweden’s greatest gift to the world (sorry IKEA, sorry Vikings…) Until now, that is. For I do kind of understand why ‘Super Trouper’ might get on your nerves.

That’s not to suggest anything but love for this, their final UK #1. Ask twelve-year-old me, and he’d probably name ‘Super Trouper’ as his favourite ABBA song. The chorus is pitched perfectly at a kid’s ears: the soopapa troopapa backing vocals, the computer game synths… But the chorus, unexpectedly, is the worst part of this song.

One of the reasons I loved this song as a child is that it name checks Scotland’s biggest city in its opening lines: I was sick and tired of everything, When I called you last night from Glasgow… (Glasgow! My gran and grandpa live in Glasgow!) Childhood associations aside, that line is pure ABBA. Then they go and rhyme it with ‘last show’. Most bands using English as a first language would have tossed it out with the first draft. Besides, Glasgow is hardly the first place you’d think of to encapsulate the life of a world-famous pop star…

Or maybe that’s the point. Because ‘Super Trouper’ is all about the drudgery of pop stardom. All I do is eat and sleep and sing, Wishing every show was the last show… (A super trouper is a stage light, whose beams might indeed blind those on stage.) ABBA weren’t the first, nor the last, band to write a song about how terrible it is being famous. But somehow they manage to do it without the message grating. It’s a gift, definitely, to be able to wrap lines bemoaning a success that never ends in glossy pop chords, and getting away with it.

This record might not hit the heights of some of the band’s earlier hits, but there’s still one moment of pure ABBA Gold. Frida’s vocals in the bridge: So I’ll be there, When you arrive… In ABBA’s final number one, it’s the last of many moments of pop perfection. From ‘Waterloo’s glam-rock pre-chorus, to this. Thank you, as they themselves would say, for the music. Just in case anyone’s interested, I would rank ABBA’s nine #1s thusly:

‘Fernando’ > ‘The Name of the Game’ > ‘Take a Chance On Me’ > ‘Super Trouper’ > ‘Mamma Mia’ > ‘Waterloo’ > ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ > ‘Dancing Queen’ > ‘The Winner Takes It All’

That list only tells half the story, though, as many of the band’s classics, and some of my favourites, never got to number one. I will do a ‘Best of the Rest’ soon, and I can’t wait. Following this final chart-topper, they would have just two more Top 10s, releasing what many think is their best album, before finally fizzling out in 1982.

I don’t know quite how true it is, but popular knowledge would have it that ABBA were done and dusted, the carpet pulled over them like an embarrassing stain, by the late eighties. My parents liked them, though they are definitely not representative of society as a whole. But then the ‘90s brought ‘ABBA Gold’, Erasure’s covers, and ‘Mamma Mia’. By the time the stage-show had been made into a movie, everyone loved ABBA again. Unless you’ve already moved to your doomsday bunker in the woods, you’ll have heard that they reformed earlier this year, and have released said #1 album, their first in forty years. Who knows, there may still yet be time for them to add to their tally of #1s…?

469. ‘The Tide Is High’, by Blondie

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I spoke of the variety that 1980 has offered us in my last post, and talking of variety… For their 3rd #1 of the year, Blondie go reggae.

The Tide Is High, by Blondie (their 5th of six #1s)

2 weeks, 9th – 23rd November 1980

It’s a huge departure from their two quick-fire, pounding, disco-rock chart toppers – ‘Atomic’ and ‘Call Me’ – from earlier in the year. I love those two hits and have to admit that, although this is catchy pop, it’s not in the same league. The tide is high, But I’m holding on… coos Debbie Harry, whose voice has lost much of the bite it had in those earlier hits… I’m gonna be your number one…

There are still good things to make a note of. The way Harry flirts with the I’m not the kinda girl, Who gives up just like that… line, for a start. And the extra snarl she gives the hi-igh in the closing lines. Plus there’s a cool drum intro on the album version. But overall, it’s quite sedate, quite pleasant. Quite nice. But I’d say it was the band’s huge fame that took this to the top of the charts, rather than any real ‘wow’ factor that this new single had.

‘The Tide Is High’ is a cover, originally recorded by Jamaican group The Paragons in 1967. Their version has a nice, homely charm to it. Blondie took it, changed the pronouns, and scored a #1 on either side of the Atlantic ahead of their new album. They also made a video for the song: a classic example of the low-budget, pre-MTV age. A flooded apartment, a rocket launch, Darth Vader… What’s not to love?

I’ve recently been listening to all of Blondie’s studio albums and, ‘Parallel Lines’ aside, they definitely come across more as a singles band. That’s not to say the rest is all filler – their first album has some great moments, for example – but the singles they released were consistently outstanding. Few bands can match Blondie’s run of hits between 1976 and 1980.

In conclusion, then… I do like this song. If it were by a lesser band, a one-hit wonder perhaps, then I might be singing its praises. But I expect a little more from Blondie. For this to be their swan-song at the top of the charts feels like a bit of a damp squib. After this came ‘Rapture’ – the first rap #1 on the Billboard charts – and one more studio album, but drugs and in-fighting meant they called it a day in 1982. Then… oh yeah. Forget that stuff about this being a swan-song. Then they reformed, nearly twenty years later, and scored a sensational middle-aged comeback #1, that you’ll be able to read all about if/when I manage to crawl my way to 1999…

468. ‘Woman in Love’, by Barbra Streisand

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Is there a softer-rock intro than that of this next #1? Woozy guitars, soaring strings, a gentle riff…

Woman in Love, by Barbra Streisand (her 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, 19th October – 9th November 1980

We came through the plodding soft-rock of the mid-to-late seventies – the David Souls, the Commodores, ‘If You Leave Me Now’ and more – and made it to the promised land of New-Wave. But any fears I have that this record might be the start of another soggy patch of MOR balladry are banished pretty quickly. Yes, this is glossy, and soppy, but if it isn’t a bit of an earworm too…

Life is a moment in space, When the dream is gone, It’s a lonelier place… OK, the lyrics are the usual love-song piffle: grand imagery that actually means very little. But Barbra Streisand sells it, cooing the verses and belting the chorus… It’s a right I defend…! she hollers. The right to be a woman in love. It’s hard to dislike any song when the singer goes for it as she does.

Also on this record’s side is the fact that it was written by two out of the three Bee Gees, who had spent the last couple of years ruling the charts (in the US in particular.) Pair the Gibb brothers’ pop nous with Streisand’s vocal chops and you’re on to a winner. Sometimes, yes, the Broadway-ness of ‘Woman In Love’ gets a little too much. It’s not subtle but, if you’re in the mood for it, perhaps three or four glasses of wine deep into a karaoke evening, then it’s a classic.

Streisand was of course already a huge star by this point in her career. ‘Woman In Love’, and the album it came from – ‘Guilty’, which features her and Barry Gibb clinching on the cover – was definitely the peak of her pop chart powers, in the UK at least. (In the US she had been charting since the mid-sixties, and had scored four chart-toppers before this, her last.)

While you could, and I did, draw a line from this back to seventies soft-rock, I feel like this is a different proposition from David Soul or Leo Sayer. Bigger, bolder, more muscular. Aggressive soft-rock? Can that be a thing? It’s definitely a window into what awaits later in this decade. In my post on David Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes’, I wrote that that record was the most ‘eighties’ moment yet at the top of the charts. I’d add ‘Woman in Love’ here – for completely different reasons. In fact, this is something of a template, a ‘Women Singing Power Ballads 101’, that will last on through Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera, well into the next century.

Not only has 1980 had a lot of #1 singles, it’s had a wide variety too. Ska-punk from The Specials, TV-show weirdness from M*A*S*H, pop-perfection from ABBA… now this. Is it too early, ten months in, to name 1980 as the best year of the entire decade…??

467. ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’, by The Police

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You’ve probably noticed that we’re taking our time to meander through 1980. The #1 records in this year didn’t hang around long at the top, with lots of one or two-week stays. But here comes the longest-lodging chart-topper of the year, the lead single from The Police’s brand-new album, entering at the top, for a whole month.

Don’t Stand So Close to Me, by The Police (their 3rd of five #1s)

4 weeks, 21st September – 19th October 1980

Ominous synths, and some guitar noodling. Not the blockbuster kick-off you might have hoped for. But if The Police’s last #1, ‘Walking on the Moon’, taught me anything it’s that this is a band who don’t mind dragging things out. Then in comes a familiar reggae-rhythm, and in that moment you know exactly who you are listening to.

Young teacher, The subject, Of schoolgirl fantasy… I have a few issues with this record, this eighties reboot of ‘Young Girl’, but first off I do like the short, sharp, tabloidy snippets that make up the lyrics. She wants him, So badly, Knows what she wants to be… Though, the tone is so fraught, the synths so ominous, that I think it would be better suited to an even more serious subject. A killer on the loose, Jack the Ripper, something like that…

As with the band’s first chart-topper, ‘Message in a Bottle’, I’m waiting for something to grab me. Luckily, like ‘Message…’ this record has another great chorus. It whacks the song right into life: Don’t stand, Don’t stand so, Don’t stand so close to me… It’s driving, and catchy, and I wish more Police singles could have kept this sort of pace up throughout.

‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’ is based on Sting’s own experiences – he was an English teacher before the band took off – and here is where my concerns creep in. ‘Creep’ being the key term. In it the teacher offers the girl a ride, we can assume he sleeps with her, and word travels around… Then we arrive at what is either one of the best or one of the worst rhyming couplets ever to feature in a chart-topping single: It’s no use, He sees her, He starts to shake and cough… Just like the, Old man in, That book by Nabokov… One things for sure: any English teacher worth their salt knows the name of that book!

There is no evidence that Mr Sumners ever had his wicked way with one of his young charges. Though he has gone on record to say that the temptation was real: “I don’t know how I managed to keep my hands off them,” he revealed, in an interview the following year. I mean… I think it might be the modern-day, slightly pretentious, Tantric-sex version of Sting that makes this sit so uncomfortably. Plus, the song comes across as a bit of a humble-brag: oh how awful it was having teenagers throwing themselves at me, so I became a rock star – a profession famous for its limited access to horny sixteen-year-olds…

Anyway. This is an enjoyable song, though I’m still finding it slightly irritating in the same vague and undefinable way that I’ve found all of The Police’s #1s so far. But, not only was it the longest-running #1 of 1980, it was also the year’s biggest selling single. The Police were huge in this moment, at the height of their fame. Four weeks was enough to make this the year’s longest-running, a run which in other years would have been completely average. 1980 will have a total of twenty-four #1s, tied with 1965 for the most up to then. It’s a figure that won’t be matched again until 1996, or beaten until 1998, when #1 turnover was about to reach its peak.

Remembering Lonnie Donegan

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Today we remember Britain’s very first rock star. Cliff? Tommy Steele? Marty Wilde? They were but cabaret entertainers giving rock ‘n’ roll a go. Lonnie Donegan? He rocked, well and truly.

I remember listening to his first number one single, and thinking woah. ‘Cumberland Gap’ came in in the spring of 1957, between Tab Hunter’s schmaltzy ‘Young Love’ and Guy Mitchell’s goofy ‘Rock-A-Billy’. It was a short, sharp slap round the face and you can read my original post here. (The live version below is even more ferocious). It’s a traditional American folk song, given the British skiffle treatment, and to my ears it is punk come twenty years early. It was also the first of many times that a Scot has topped the UK charts.

‘Cumberland Gap’ wasn’t Donegan’s breakthrough hit: he’d been scoring Top 10s since 1955, and would amass sixteen of them before his chart career was cut short by the Merseybeat explosion. (Ironically, many of those bands had been hugely influenced by Lonnie and his Skiffle Group. The Beatles began when Paul McCartney joined John Lennon’s skiffle band a few months after ‘Cumberland Gap’ had been at #1.) Here is his first hit: ‘Rock Island Line’, a #8 in the UK and, significantly, a Top 10 in America too.

Born in Glasgow, but raised in the east-end of London, Lonnie Donegan had a background in trad-jazz before moving into the new skiffle movement. His subsequent hits included his 2nd number one, a double-‘A’ side of ‘Gamblin’ Man’ and ‘Putting on the Style’, and the brilliantly named ‘Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight)?’. That hit veered towards the music hall, and it was the same style of hit that gave Donegan his third and final chart-topper, ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’. I don’t think I was as impressed by that record in my original review, as humour is a hard thing to get right in a record, and it doesn’t necessarily age well.

It’s tempting to blame Donegan’s shrinking chart fortunes on the song he released for the 1966 World Cup: ‘World Cup Willie’. (Willie was a lion, and the official mascot for the tournament.) It didn’t chart, but it perhaps spurred England on to their win. (Yes, England won the World Cup in 1966. They still mention it from time to time…) I had never heard it, and was ready to hate it, but it’s actually a bit of a trad-jazz foot-stomper. You can see, though, why skiffle hard-liners felt betrayed by Donegan’s move away from the genre in the sixties.

Despite the hits drying up, Donegan and his band continued to tour throughout the seventies and eighties. This was despite him suffering several heart attacks, one of which killed him on this day in 2002. The Beatles aside, his legacy also lives on through artists like Roger Daltrey, Mark Knopfler and Jack White.

Lonnie Donegan, 29th April 1931 – 3rd November 2002

466. ‘Feels Like I’m in Love’, by Kelly Marie

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Grab something tight, get the hairspray out, down your Lambrini… We’re off to the dancin’.

Feels Like I’m in Love, by Kelly Marie (her 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, 7th – 21st September 1980

This is a pure sugar-rush of a song, a blast of amyl in your nostrils. The beats-per-minute are up, the synths are heavy, the bass is funky… There are times when a track like this sounds cheap and tacky; but there are others when this might just sound like the best thing ever recorded.

It’s also a song that doesn’t waste any time in getting going. Quick crescendo, a glissando, then boom. My head is in a spin, My feet don’t touch the ground… Kelly Marie is in love: spinning head, shaking knees, heart beating like a drum. Well, she’s either in love, or off her tits on disco biscuits. Whatever. She’s having a great time, and that’s the main thing.

This is pure disco, in one sense, and it had been recorded at the genre’s peak, well over a year before becoming a hit. We have Kelly Marie’s homeland to thank for the song’s eventual success. She’s fae Paisley, and the record had been popular in Scottish clubs long before it took off nationally. (Dance music is, for whatever reason, always more popular on the Scottish charts, to this day.) Plus, somehow this sounds exactly like a disco record from Paisley should. And I mean that as a compliment. Probably. It feels like the dance music of the future, too, though: it’s got the pace of Hi-NRG, and the trashy aesthetic of the Stock Aitken Waterman to come.

I have to admit I love the kitschy little details here: the ‘aaahs’, the ‘ch-chs’ and, most of the all, the ‘pew-pew’ heartbeats, which are the tackiest sound effects to feature in a #1 single since Anita Ward’s bell. There are also horns, though only in one version, which I don’t think was the original. (I’ll link to it here, because as with The Jam’s ‘Start!’, the horns only improve things further.)

‘Feels Like I’m in Love’ has an interesting history to it. It was written by Ray Dorset, the lead singer-songwriter of Mungo Jerry. They recorded it in 1977, but it was only ever released as the ‘B’-side to a Belgian single. Theirs is a much more sedate version, lacking in sound effects, and if you struggle to imagine Mungo Jerry performing this song, then get your head around that fact that Dorset wanted to pitch it to Elvis! I’d pay good money to hear that. Sadly, the King died before he could get round to it. Happily, some genius on YouTube has recorded his take on what it may have sounded like, and it is… something.

Kelly Marie also had a long route to the top, where her stay was brief. She’d had a few hits in Europe, including a #1 in France, and would have a few smaller hits after this. Her biggest hit was remixed and re-released in 1990, but that version has had something sapped out of it. The original ‘Feels Like I’m in Love’ is her legacy to the world and, to be fair, there are far worse legacies to leave than this fun slice of Paisley-disco.

465. ‘Start!’, by The Jam

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The Jam make a quick return to top spot, with a very famous bass-line. One that you may have heard before…

Start!, by The Jam (their 2nd of four #1s)

1 week, 31st August – 7th September 1980

‘Start!’ is notoriously indebted to The Beatles’ ‘Taxman’ – there’s no avoiding the fact that the bass riff is pretty much a note for note copy – but while the former has a hash-haze to it, the latter is a squeaky-tight, short and sharp blast of punk-funk. That’s right. I’m inventing new genres as I go along…

It’s a song about a one-night stand… It’s not important for me to know your name… Or some kind of fleeting encounter… If we communicate for two minutes only it will be e-nough… At first glance it’s less of a war cry, compared to the band’s first chart-topper, but it’s actually just as cynical. Knowing that someone in this life, Loves with a passion called hate…

I’m really not sure if Paul Weller is grateful for their two-minute connection, or if he’s glad about never, ever seeing this person again. What I am sure about is that this is a great pop song: minimalist, with razor-sharp guitars and cool drum-fills. It’s as natty as The Jam’s mod-suits and shades combo in the video.

Speaking of the video, the single release of ‘Start!’ shaves fifteen seconds off the album version, trimming the gritty solo and losing the horns that play out over the closing refrain. For me the horns add to the funk here, placing the record firmly in the early-eighties, so if you were choosing between the versions I’d go album every time.

Without wanting to disrespect what I think is a great record, I think a sharp-blasting, one-week #1 like this needs only a sharp blast of a blog post on it. ‘Start!’ probably gets lost among The Jam’s better-known hits, ‘Going Underground’ before it and ‘That’s Entertainment’ after (which charted at #21 by selling only imported copies – a sign of the band’s popularity in 1980). It was also the only one of their four chart-toppers not to enter at the top. But it’s good one, and if this post has just turned you onto the song’s quality, then that will be a start!

464. ‘Ashes to Ashes’, by David Bowie

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Hot on ABBA’s heels, here’s another triumphant return to the top of the charts for a seventies icon.

Ashes to Ashes, by David Bowie (his 2nd of five #1s)

2 weeks, 17th – 31st August 1980

Unlike ABBA, however, this is only David Bowie’s second visit to the #1 spot, and his first with a new song (his earlier chart-topper being a re-release of his debut hit ‘Space Oddity’). It seems that Bowie could score his very biggest hits only if he was singing about Major Tom.

Do you remember a guy that’s been, In such an early song…? The fourth wall is broken in the first lines, while a woozy, harsh riff plays out on an instrument I am completely unable to name. It’s very new, quite avant-garde, the most eighties moment yet in this countdown. There’s also a reggae-ish feel to it, in the beat, and in the singer’s delivery.

It’s a bit of a hotch-potch, really. As with a lot of Bowie’s work, I wish I liked it more than I do. The verses are where my attention wanders the most. The lyrics and the beat trip over one another, and you’re left a bit lost. For the most part, though, I come down on the side of not caring if music is a bit beyond me, as long as it’s catchy. Luckily, this record has a killer chorus.

Ashes to ashes, Fun to funky, We know Major Tom’s a junkie… Is David Bowie Major Tom, and this record a look back at his struggles with drugs in the late seventies? Is he the Starman turned addict? Is Major Tom actually heroin…? The repeated closing lines… My mama said, To get things done, You better not mess with Major Tom… would perhaps bear this out.

The sinister music video – the most expensive ever made at this point in time – does little to clarify: it features Bowie in a clown suit, being followed by a bulldozer, releasing doves and rocking in a padded cell. (But I did find a great story from the making this video… On location, an elderly dog-walker refused to get out of one shot, and when the director asked if he knew who this man – pointing at the David Bowie – was, the old bloke replied: ‘Yeah, it’s some cunt in a clown suit.’ Bowie wore the insult with pride, apparently, for years after.)

I had a friend growing up who was obsessed with David Bowie, and with this song in particular. He was a bit of a pretentious arse, and perhaps I’ve always unfairly associated ‘Ashes to Ashes’ with him. Except… listening to it properly now, over and over, I’m not sure I wasn’t right all along. It is arty, and clever, and perhaps pretentious. Though both feature Major Tom, the shift from ‘Space Oddity’ to this is huge: perhaps the biggest change in sound between chart-toppers by any act so far. Which is fine. Good, even. Some people have to push the envelope, and Bowie did it better than anybody else, but sometimes it’s beyond me.

That doesn’t mean I don’t love a lot of his music. It’s just frustrating that the Bowie I enjoy most never made the top of the charts. Of his five #1s, four are from the eighties, while the seventies’ #1 was actually from the sixties. Hey ho. It’s becoming apparent that very few acts are best represented by their chart-toppers. At least he won’t have as long to wait for his next one…

463. ‘The Winner Takes It All’, by ABBA

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In which ABBA return, triumphant, to the top of the charts, with their best song. Shortest post ever…

The Winner Takes It All, by ABBA (their 8th of nine #1s)

2 weeks, from 3rd – 17th August 1980

OK, fine. I should write a bit more. For a song to be ABBA’s best, it has to be a pretty good song. But why is ‘The Winner Takes It All’ so good? I’m no musicologist – if indeed that’s an actual job – and so cannot talk about chord progressions, keys, and melodic shifts (though I’m sure this record is brimming with them). I’m not sure I can look at this record objectively at all. I grew up with this song. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know this song.

It’s a song full of moments. From the opening piano line – confident, stately – which announces that yes, this is ABBA and yes, something great is coming. The moment right at the start of the second verse, when the beat kicks in. The But tell me does she kiss… start to the third verse. The spoken but you see… The fade-out, when the vocals shift to the background and the trademark piano takes over again. It’s long for a pop song, but it’s exactly as long as it needs to be. Everything that’s there – pianos, guitars, strings, synths, backing vocals – is essential. There’s nothing extravagant about it (which isn’t something you can always say about ABBA songs).

A song about love as a game, with lovers holding cards, and the Gods throwing dice. It could come across as a bit silly. A bit flowery. But it doesn’t, because Agnetha sells it. She sells it, and then some, from the opening I don’t wanna talk… line through to the closing The winner takes it all… that she belts out in a manner unlike any ABBA single before. This is pop as a stage show, as opera. It’s melodramatic, and unrepentantly sad. There’s no sign of her moving on, of a brighter tomorrow. She’s having a good old wallow. She may even be enjoying this wallow, in a self-indulgent way. Why should she complain? Yet she still does. She doesn’t want to talk… but then she sings a full-blown song about it.

It’s been well-documented that, by this stage in ABBA’s career, the personal relationships between the members of the band had collapsed. It feels lazy to suggest that that’s what makes this song so powerful. But just imagine: Bjorn writes a song – while drunk apparently – about his recent divorce. Then hands it to his ex-wife to sing! She’s the ‘bad guy’ that she’s singing about! (Although Bjorn has denied that it’s specifically about their own divorce.) Still, that’s not your usual husband-wife, singer-songwriter dynamic. You can really hear the pain in her voice, in the lines before the final, earth-shattering chorus: And I understand, You’ve come to shake my hand…

I know people who don’t like ABBA. They’re a dying breed, thankfully, as the band has long since shaken off the cheesy, gay-bar reputation they had when I was growing up. But they still walk among us, the weirdos. The lady next to you on the bus, the guy that just served you in Starbucks… might not like ABBA. It’s best not to think about it. I can’t understand how you could listen to ‘The Winner Takes It All’ and not like it, not get it, not see it for the five minutes of genius that it is. Anyway. ABBA are back at the top of the charts, after what feels like ages. But, alas, they have just one more #1 to come…

462. ‘Use It Up and Wear It Out’, by Odyssey

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One thing that’s surprised me about the charts in the first six months of the ‘80s: nobody seems to have told the record-buying public that disco is dead. They clearly missed the ‘disco sucks’ memo…

Use It Up and Wear It Out, by Odyssey (their 1st and only #1) 

2 weeks, 20th July – 3rd August 1980

Here come Odyssey then, with another body-shaking anthem (it does actually include the line shake your body down to the ground) that demands a dancefloor to be filled. This is one of those songs that come along every so often in this countdown, where I go ‘Oh, so it’s this song…’ A song you’ve been hearing in the background for your entire life without ever wondering what it is or who it’s by.

But on further inspection, this is a song I should have been paying attention to. It’s a great slice of disco-funk, with some calypso thrown in for good measure. Like the other disco-influenced #1s of 1980, there’s a lot more going on than just ‘disco’: see either of Blondie’s hits, Fern Kinney, the Detroit Spinners, or our previous chart-topper ‘Xanadu’.

Here’s a question: can a song be simultaneously cheesy and cool? If it can, then this might be the very song. In the ‘cheesy’ corner: the slide whistles and the 1… 2… 3… Shake your body down… chorus. In the ‘cool’ corner: the funky bass and the dod-d-d-dododo scatting at the end. It’s not a particularly verse-bridge-chorus kind of song, meaning that it can be chopped up and remixed in various different ways – as all the best disco records can.

Gonna use it up, Gonna wear it out, Ain’t nothin’ left in this whole world I care about… Actually, the lyrics here are a bit depressive, a bit cynical, for a disco record. The singer is dancing because that’s all there’s left to do. She’s going to dance herself to death, perhaps (or at least into a sweaty, dripping mess.) Add it to your ‘end of the world’ playlist now!

Odyssey were a New York based band, who have had a revolving cast of members, but who were a trio at the time of their sole #1 hit. They are still performing to this day. ‘Use It Up and Wear It Out’ was their second of five Top 10 hits in the UK between 1977 and 1982, a much better return than they ever managed in their native US. Disco really was dead over there…