The five songs that spent more than five weeks at number one in the 1980s
Star athletes often get unfairly judged on how many trophies they’ve won, disregarding the limitations of their teammates or the excellence of their opponents at any given point in history, and the same flaws exist in how we sometimes assess pop stars, as number one singles and albums are routinely tabulated as some sort of statistical evidence of their greatness.
Setting aside the fact that the buying habits of the general populace might not be a great gauge of musical quality to begin with, a lot of chart success comes down to a matter of timing; releasing a single at just the right moment that it captures the zeitgeist, but perhaps more importantly, doesn’t have much stiff competition to deal with. ‘Wonderwall’ never reached number one in the UK, nor did ‘Mr Brightside’, ‘Fairytale of New York’, ‘Don’t Stop Believin’, or ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, meanwhile, ‘Mr Blobby’, ‘Crazy Frog’, ‘Barbie Girl’, and ‘Ice Ice Baby’ cruised to the top of the mountain, raising serious questions as to why we even bother keeping track of this stuff.
Maybe, if we acknowledge that any silly novelty song had the potential to sell a bunch of copies for a week or two, the better scientific approach would be to look at sustained success, a uniquely long run at the number one spot. Surely, only the best, culturally important hits would manage to keep the public’s focused attention for, say, a whole month and a half?
To test the theory, let’s travel back to the 1980s, when singles sales were still pretty easy to follow thanks to a lack of digital and streaming confusion. A weekly episode of Top of the Pops ensured that every household was made aware of which records were climbing and sinking, and every town had at least one record store in which you could discuss the newest releases with a friendly, or at least knowledgeable, clerk.
Over the course of ten years, you might imagine that quite a few big hits dominated the number spot for more than five weeks; these were the days of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince, after all. According to the official UK singles charts, though, only five songs stayed at number one for that long in the ‘80s, and there’s not an MJ, a ‘Purple One’, or a ‘Material Girl’ among them.
Top of the list with a remarkable nine-week run at the top spot was Frankie Goes to Hollywood, who pulled off the feat in 1984. That’s not a big surprise, maybe, but it’s a tad unexpected that the song in question wasn’t ‘Relax’, but the satirical anti-war anthem ‘Two Tribes’, the band’s second single. Considering that ‘Relax’ was held slightly in check by a BBC radio ban, it’s easy to imagine that Frankie might otherwise have owned the number-one spot for half the year.
Then again, competition was fairly tough in 1984. Two other singles released that year topped the charts for six straight weeks, and both were Motown tracks: Lionel Ritchie’s much-parodied ‘Hello’, and Stevie Wonder’s sappy ballad ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You.’
The other two ‘80s songs to spend more than five weeks at number one were club-related: Culture Club’s perfect pop nugget ‘Karma Chameleon’ and probably the most surprising entry on the list, Black Box’s 1989 single ‘Ride on Time’, an Italian house song that was part of that specific period in pop history when supermodels were hired to mime the vocal samples in dance songs on Top of the Pops.
So, did our experiment work? Did six weeks on top confirm these five singles as the best the 1980s had to offer? Maybe we should just say ‘sure’ and move on with our lives.
Five songsthat dominated the charts in the 1980s
- ‘Two Tribes’ – Frankie Goes to Hollywood
- ‘Hello’ – Lionel Ritchie
- ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ – Stevie Wonder
- ‘Karma Chameleon’ – Culture Club
- ‘Ride on Time’ – Black Box
