It’s taken 12 weeks but we finally have our first No 1 single to sell over 100,000 a week in 1984, and that belongs to Lionel Richie’s “Hello” which sailed past the mark to eventually sell 103,000 copies as the song seemed to take off. The memorable video still has its detractors but it’s done the trick as Richie can this week celebrate the double with “Can’t Slow Down” jumping 6-1 to regain the position it last held 20 weeks ago.
Richie was unassailable last week but he might face a bigger challenge this week as sales of the album eat into the success of “Hello” along with some fast rising tracks behind him, namely the Weather Girls who jump 5-2 (53,000) and Bananarama 8-3 (48,000), for the latter group they now have their biggest hit on their hands.
If none of those succeed then how about Culture Club? The group are just off on tour in the US where they recently scored their first No 1 with “Karma Chameleon”, back in the UK the third single from their second album “Colour By Numbers” entitled "It's A Miracle" leaps 14-4 (46,000). It was originally titled “It’s America” before the re-write and it becomes the band’s sixth straight top 5 single to cement their status as perhaps only second to Duran Duran in terms of the biggest UK acts on the world stage at present.
For all that the press are concerned with Duran Duran and Culture Club at present, those two acts are actually placed at No 19 and No 7 in the list of biggest selling singles acts of the 80s so far, way behind Shakin’ Stevens who currently sits at No 2 behind only Madness in both terms of sales and in most top 10 hits in the 80s. Incidentally Madness’ last single “Michael Caine” peaked agonisingly at No 11 breaking a run of 6 consecutive top 10 hits, only the third time one of their releases has missed the mark, the last time it happened they hit No 1 with the follow up- watch this space. Anyway Shaky is back in the top 10 again this week with “A Love Worth Waiting For”- his 11th top 10 single of the decade compared to Madness’ tally of 14, it’s also an original composition and is the fourth release from his album “The Bop Don’t Stop”- the first time he has scored four top 10 singles from one album, despite that the album has disappointed getting no higher than No 21. The video incidentally features Shaky’s son.
Depeche Mode are currently recording their fourth album due in the autumn but the first single is already tearing up the charts, “People Are People” arrives this week 29-9 (33,000) to become the band’s fourth top 10 single. It comes with a few remixes (nothing unusual there) but what is unusual is that the band have released two different videos for the mixes.
Numbers 2-6 are all climbing this week, in addition to those tracks already mentioned Phil Fearon & Galaxy progress 7-5 (42,000) and Sade glide 9-6 (40,000), to make way Nena drop out of the top 10 from No 2 and Break Machine topple 3-8 (34,000) with Kool & The Gang following suit 4-10 (31,000).
https://forum.popjustice.com/thread...-by-week-1984-1985.38232/page-11#post-3576181