Our 25th year completed!

1979 was picked to give us a big contrast from 1965, but I didn't really have much of a clue what I'd be getting - so how did it go?

Overall, I'd say it did pretty well - there was a decent amount of variety and quality across the year. There were quite a few highly regarded albums that I'd somehow avoided, so it was great to catch up on them - some of them I came to with low expectations which were comfortably exceeded. I'd actually only previously listened to a handful of the albums and can only claim to have owned two - Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell and a home-taped version of The Police's Reggatta de Blanc. Where the year wasn't great was in terms of gender equality, with only seven of the albums featuring a significant female presence - but I guess you can't have everything and it's very much par for the course for this era when compared with what we've seen so far.

Having said that, looking at the best selling albums of the year, we have a strong female presence at the top with Blondie's Parallel Lines taking the crown - it was released in September '78 but hit #1 in February '79 and didn't leave the chart until July '80. The next three are all somewhat of a surprise to me because I was aware that ELO, Leo Sayer (his best-of) and Supertramp (which never got to #1) were all popular, but not that popular - whereas I was fully aware that ABBA at #5 were global superstars at this point and they're at #8 as well with one of their best-ofs.

Other artists with multiple entries on the list are Blondie (#1, #21), ELO (#2, #26), The Police (#9, #14), Rod Stewart (#11, #48), Gary Numan (#16 as Tubeway Army, #34 solo), Earth, Wind & Fire (#17, #32) and Ian Dury (#24 solo, #27 with The Blockheads). Looking randomly across the list, other surprising (for me) entries are James Last (#12 - why were people listening to this?), Elvis Costello (#13 - I'm pleased this did this well), Art Garfunkel (#31- this was dreadful) and Boney M (#41 - ditto). There were also three instrumental albums in the top 50, being John Williams' Bridges (#46 - we were supposed to listen to this one but I couldn't find it), Sky (#44) and a Shadows best-of (#38) - there were also quite a few other best-ofs including Barbra Streisand (#6), Barry Manilow (#10), Rod Stewart (#11), Diana Ross (#28), Earth, Wind & Fire (#32), The Three Degrees (#41 - seriously?) and Wings (#43 - ditto).

Looking at the albums we saw, let's start with any that feature some ladies - it's not going to take long. Particularly looking at the female solo artists, because it's Kate Bush with her surprisingly normal album - and that's your lot! Looking at bands featuring women, Blondie comfortably exceeded expectations, ABBA squarely met them, Boney M exceeded them on one album and just about met them on the other and Wings miserably failed to meet already low expectations. I think the only other albums which featured women doing anything more than providing some backing woo-woos were Meat Loaf (with a BIG shout out to Ellen Foley) and Stevie Wonder - whatever my expectations might have been there, I wasn't expecting him to do that!

Which takes us nicely on to the solo blokes, where we have two solo-in-name-only albums from guys who also put in an appearance in the group category as well - and they both did a pretty good job. Gary Numan appeared first in Tubeway Army and then solo (with the same musicians) whereas Ian Dury was solo first and later joined by The Blockheads. Billy Joel was probably the most immediate of the "proper" solo offerings with David Bowie feeling like it would need quite a few listens to get into properly, but of course they're both backed up by a load of other fantastically talented musicians.

And, much as it pains me, I have to admit that Cliff Richard is probably next on the list because it really does have some decent tracks on it with David Essex and Neil Diamond also being surprisingly decent - we also have to include Elton John in this section because whilst it's not his best album, an average Elton John album is still worth a listen. The only other offerings are from Gerry Rafferty (which is fine but nothing more), Bob Dylan (whose voice is just too annoying at this time), Barry Manilow (cheese, but well-done cheese), Rod Stewart (not great, but could have been so much worse), Jean-Michel Jarre (boring) and Art Garfunkel (which is just plain bad).

Which pretty much only leaves us with blokes in bands - and they vaguely split into veterans and newbies. The best album from the veterans for me came from Supertramp - I wasn't expecting to like this but I thought it was great (and I might even listen to it again!). Of the other veteran offerings, I'd say Average White Band and Bad Company produced decent offerings which were not my thing, The Stranglers (just sneaking into the veteran catagory) was an enjoyably odd experience whilst Showaddywaddy, Thin Lizzy, Bee Gees, Status Quo, Chic and Earth, Wind & Fire and Queen at least met my (often quite low) expectations with Fleetwood Mac, ELO, Eagles, Led Zeppelin and Roxy Music being somewhat underwhelming.

Looking at the newbies, they were mostly pretty decent, with my favourites being Dire Straits' debut offering (their follow-up was very disappointing), The Police's second offering (their debut was OK, but not as good) and Elvis Costello & The Attractions (this was a very decent album that deserves more listens). Madness and The Specials were released on the same day and provide a nice snapshot of the time, as do The Jam, whereas Sky very much don't provide a snapshot of the time and The Boomtown Rats do their own thing, twice - with our second visit being the most enjoyable for me.

All of which leaves us with two albums that might well have been skipped over, but The Best Disco Album In The World was included because it was #1 for six weeks (and was indeed a fine disco album) and the Grease OST was included because it has some bangin' tunes on it. I'm also going to give Luther Vandross a quick namecheck here because he appeared on three of the albums as a backing singer - the curious mix of Roxy Music, Chic and Average White Band.

Looking over the full year, we saw twenty different albums at #1 (up from seventeen in '77) with TBDAITW being up there the longest with six weeks and Rod Stewart's best-of and ELO managing five weeks. Compilations did well this year claiming twenty-one weeks in total at the top - we ignored some very curious collections which did phenomenally well throughout the year. We only had four albums debut at #1 all year (up from one in '77) being the somewhat curious collection of Led Zeppelin, Boney M, Gary Numan and The Police. It was also an (I think) unique year, featuring 53 charts because they changed the sales count from being a week behind to being "real time", so they added in an extra chart on October 10.

The most read post was The Police's Reggatta De Blanc, which isn't a major surprise because it was the first post - but it was closely followed by Wings' Back To The Egg, which is more surprising because it was in the middle of the year and it's an absolutely dreadful album. The least read posts were the Grease OST and Ian Dury's New Boots And Panties!!, both of which are far better albums but they did come towards the end of the year, so I'm sure people are just saving them to read them at the right time.

The generally accepted (by the internet or me!) best albums from the year that we never got close to seeing are Talking Heads' Fear Of Music (#33), AC/DC's Highway To Hell (#8 - they were unlucky), Public Image Limited's Metal Box (#18), Sparks' No. 1 In Heaven (#73), The Cure's Three Imaginary Boys (#44 - their debut), The B-52's eponymous debut (#22), Siouxsie & The Banshees' Join Hands (#13), Brian Eno's Music For Airports (never charted), XTC's Drums And Wires (#34) and Joe Jackson's Look Sharp! (#40). That's not as many as we usually have, but there were quite a few that we'd already met on Rolling Stone's list. 

And with that, we're done! I liked 1979 because it wasn't a year that I knew an awful lot about - there were a few albums I definitely should have caught up with beforehand but just hadn't and a few I'd avoided but shouldn't have. Picking my favourites, I have to include Meat Loaf (if only for "Paradise By The Dashboard Light") and the Grease soundtrack (for the decent half) but, picking first visits from the year, I'm going for Supertramp, Billy Joel, Dire Straits (how had I not listened to that before?) and Elvis Costello, all of which are very decent albums that I will make an effort to revisit.

So - where next? Well, being literal, I'm off to Montenegro so I'm going to take a week off (yeah, I know - slacker) but after that we have a choice of '81 and '88 - and '81 feels too close to '79, so '88 it is. And I'm expecting it to be mostly absolute dross with the odd moments of quality to alleviate the torture, so let's hope I'm pleasantly surprised. 

07/01/79 - Pretty forgettable
25/12/88 - Enjoyable, yet terrible