The Ones (and other hits) that got away

Here's a list of songs which were hits during the TOTP strike period:

Number 1's:

Don McLean - Crying
We'd already seen the promo video a couple of times, and after three weeks of a song about suicide the Great British public chose three weeks of a song about crying. Britian was obviously a very miserable place.

ELO & Olivia Newton John - Xanadu
But enough moping already! Here's a shiny new Olivia and the fabulous Electric Light Orchestra from Brum who sadly didn't get the chance to show off their first and only time at the top spot on national television on a Thursday night. Travesty indeed. ELO also got to no. 20 with I'm Alive and to no. 11 with All Over the World, all by themselves.

Farrar, Newton-John, Lynn: The Xanadu team (pic.: donosdump.com/xanadu/)

Odyssey - Use It Up and Wear It Out
A chart-topping anomaly in these TOTP-less wilderness days perhaps. They knocked Olivia and pals off the top spot and stayed there for two weeks.

Abba - The Winner Takes It All
This one was however fully justified in making it to the top. More miserableness, true enough, but a classic heart-wrenching ballad about a post-split couple hurtling into a divorce. Bjorn says it was totally non-autobiographical and we totally believe that, don't we. Top promo video too, but I still can't bear to watch it when Agnetha looks into the camera and sings in trembling voice "Now I understand, you've come to shake my hand..". Their seventh UK no. 1 and the first to be shown in the new style Pops, coming up.



Other Big Ones

Kate Bush - Babooshka
Still one of her best known songs but as it peaked at no. 5 in the first week of August the classic promo-video never made it to the Pops.

Leo Sayer - More Than I Can Say
This one also peaked beginning of August, making it to no. 2. The permed-one never got to sing this smoochy classic on a TOTP stage (although a stand-in did for the nigh-legendary pilot show).

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Could You be Loved
Some cheery summer rasta sounds at last, peaking at no. 5. Marley would be dead within a year, although not even a posthumous release of No Woman No Cry managed to beat this chart-wise.

UB40 - My Way of Thinking
More summer reggae sounds man in this follow up to Food For Thought. Peaked at no. 6.

Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
It's still debatable as to whether this post-punk classic went Top 20 because of radio-play dominance through TOTP's non-showing or whether it would have been a hit anyway, following singer Ian Curtis' suicide at the end of May. But no matter, it's another classic and their one and only chart hit, which would re-surface again in 1983.

The Korgis - Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime
More sloppy gloomdom, although a bit more 'sound of the eighties' than most of this kind of stuff that was around. Sadly they never managed to make a decent follow up and the parent album Dumb Waiters (great cover) only made it to No. 40.

Splodgenessabounds - Two Pints of Lager and Packet of Crisps Please
Again we are left to wonder if this novelty-punk record would ever have got to the Top 10 or even onto Top of the Pops in a non-BBC-orchestra strike parallel universe. But it was a bit of a laugh, and we all know how us Brits like to have a laugh amid all the crying. Especially if it's about crisps and beer. Or a strike.

We're laughin'! (Official dispute pic.: overgrownpath.com 01.10.2010)