When it came to Slade, the last thing you looked for was something slow, sensitive and sentimental. Especially after they spent Christmas 1973 at the top of the charts with the raucous Merry Christmas Everybody. But a few months later along came this elegiac piano ballad.
I had never thought to look up the pop chart on the day I was born. Until now. So it is with great joy that I discover the best-selling single as I was popping out in a hospital in Newtownards, County Down, was Great Balls Of Fire. (more…)
This sentimental morality tale has stuck in my head for nearly half a century and still exerts a powerful pull on my emotions. (more…)
Terry Jacks’ chart-topping translation of a Jacques Brel song made the top three tunes all ‘death discs’ in April 1974. (more…)
This unashamed tearjerker is one of my favourite songs of all time,. It’s also one of the saddest – a devastating tale of first love, broken dreams, depression and suicide. (more…)
Disco before disco was invented… It’s a fair bet that a few babies born at Christmas 1974 were conceived with this tune playing on the bedroom Stereogram.
Eric Clapton once said that the first note of The Air That I Breathe had more soul than anything he’d ever heard. I know exactly what he means.
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The Bowieverse seems divided on the merits of Rebel Rebel, with some finding it a bit of a throwaway single, but I’ve always loved it. (more…)
Lulu bounced back into the charts after a five-year gap in 1974 with her cover of an old David Bowie song – thanks to some help from the man and his band. (more…)
They might have been in the Second Division of Glam but Mud came close to earning promotion with their first chart topper at the start of 1974.