70's US & UK Charts.

Thought it might be nice to have a look at some of these old charts. It's surprising how many of those old singles you forget! The U.S. chart below is from late 1973, I'd assume. Early '74 at the latest. Shame there's no date on it. How many of the singles do you recall, and how many of these albums do you own?



I have 11 of the albums. A low number for me. Not all bought at the time, I might add...

@Thom Is this a bit early for your input?!

 

Of the singles, there are 17 songs I remember or still hear on the radio (Smooth FM for instance - the #1 is on there almost each time someone within earshot tunes in!) They are 1/2/3/5/8/9/10//15/19/20/24/28/31/32/43/48/50. If anyone can be bothered to compare, I have quite a lot of those on the albums from this chart that I own. I'm sure I'd recognise a lot more than I can see at first glance, but not bad considering I was just a tad too young to notice or care about the charts - by '77; I vaguely remember the hearing The Commodores and The Stranglers in there together. But we're talking about the UK Top 40 there, of course.


I've got 9 albums:

GBYBR
Ringo
Quadrophenia
Carps' singles
Mind Games
Goat's Head Soup
Innervisions
Dark Side OTM
Led Zep HOTH

Plus a lot from artists that appear but I have others by them... quite a few in there I really should have. I'm sure I'll get round to it...

 

Looking at that singles chart, a fair few of those weren't hits here. Or if they were they were minor hits at best. Nice to see Olivia on her way to the top 10 at #31 with 'Let Me Be There'. A total failure in the UK.

I have 4 of the same albums as you. I think pretty much every home in the UK had 'The Singles 1969-1973'.

This chart has to be late '73 as it doesn't look like 'Band On The Run' has come out yet, though 'Helen Wheels' is climbing the top 30.

 

There's usually a good reason why you forget them, though.
I've only got four of the albums (including 'Hat Trick' by AMERICAN), though I have other albums (mostly comps) by a lot of those artists in the album chart. Maybe about 10 of the singles dotted around various albums.

 

Sometimes they genuinely slip your mind and you get a nice surprise when you see them again. It's not in the above chart, but Brian Protheroe's 'Pinball' from 1974 was one such case for me.

 

I own 25 albums and there are abou 10 songs I don't recall , the rest is all familiar

 

@JohnnyQuest I know you're only about 11, but I'm guessing you have 9 of those albums?

 

I have 41 of these albums. This was a great time for music for me.

 

That's pretty good.

 

I have 9 albums and 6 songs from the singles charts. I probably know 2 or 3 more songs.

That's not much but at the time I was 6 years old and living on another continent.

 

Good lord.

Did you buy them all at the time or have you accumulated them over the years?

 

It took me a while to get them. I was 14/15 during this era, so my means were limited. These were some of the first albums I ever bought with my own money!

 

Wow, that is an amazing chart. Not only is it packed full of quality, it is also so diverse.

It is interesting to see Led Zeppelin on the singles charts with D'yer Mak'er; did they release it as a single?

I own over 50% of the singles and about 40% of the albums.

 

Same with me. I bought far more albums in the 80's because I was working then and didn't have to beg my parents for cash.

 

I was surprised to see Led Zep too... I always thought they didn't have any hit singles...

It's a great chart. I'll post more soon including some UK ones.

At this time, our charts were full of Slade, Gary Glitter, the Sweet and Wizzard.

 

Let's put up a chart of today's music and compare.

 

Do they still have charts now?

 

Btw, at one time or another I've owned 8 of those albums, and I'm familiar with about two-thirds of the singles.

 

Hey @Bobby Morrow, did you catch Olivia presenting 1980 TOTP on BBC4 last week?

 

This is a from a few months later. I'm 99% sure @theMess will own the #1 single and album.

Olivia obviously loved 'Let Me Be There' so much she recorded it again and called it 'If You Love Me (Let Me Know)'!

Good to see Billy Joel sneaking into the album chart with 'Piano Man' at #49. I predict big things for that boy.

 

I've got The Singles 1974-1978 as well... don't see that as often but it's a great companion so you have Vols 1&2.

Found the date! Not as easy to locate as I'd have thought, don't know why that would be...

December the 15th, 1973. http://hitsofalldecades.com/chart_hits/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2043&Itemid=52


GBYBR, Carps' Singles, GHS and the fourth you have either must be Mind Games, Ringo or Innervisions? Can't see it being the others.

 

I did, yes. I actually remembered it from 1980, but I didn't have a video so couldn't tape it then.

The Olivia show was weird.. No live bands or studio audience!

 

Whoops, I've actually got 5. I have 'Mind Games' and 'Innervisions' as well as the other 3 you said. You know me too well.

 

Great chart! '73 is definitely a favorite music year for me. I have a lot of these albums.

I love the font they used for "singles" and "albums".

 

Interesting that in the first post there's a comedy album(Cheech & Chong) and in Post #20 is a Steely Dan & a Herbie Hancock. For singles on Post #20 is a ragtime tune, 'The Entertainer', popularized by the movie 'The Sting'. The composer (Scott Joplin) was not very popular in his time, but he told a friend that he would be popular in 50 years. It was almost exactly 50 years after Joplin's death that 'The Sting' opened!

Charts from then give you a general idea of what was selling well then, but they're not very accurate at all. When Soundscan was introduced, we found that the biggest sales of a recording were in the first week of release and usually declined after that. The old myth of a release 'climbing the charts' was a fiction. There was also rampant payola, etc.