Best Song: Hot Chocolate - Put Your Love In Me
One of the eye openers when watching the Top of the Pops reruns was how many hits Hot Chocolate had. It was good to hear records by them that weren't the obvious ones. This was one of those records which really grabbed my attention. It's quite a haunting record and different, but definitely good in it's own way.
Worst Song: The Dooleys - Love Of My Life
The Dooleys were a family group who are best described as being cheesy pop. If you mixed Abba with The Nolans you'd get something like this. In a time when punk was supposed to have wiped out nonsense like this they were actually enjoying moderate chart success.
Top 40 Review
Despite the fact 1977 was the year where punk came to save the day, the 1977 Top 40 looked at for the best year search was only found to be half a point better than the 1976 one. 1978 proved to be much better, so will we see progress of this improvement or have the charts taken a nosedive for Christmas?
The Christmas number one would imply the latter with it being the Wings double a-side "Wings - Mull Of Kintyre/Girl's School". It's nearest rival was "Floral Dance" by Brighouse And Rastrick Brass Band, not the one with Terry Wogan but still bad enough.
There were additionally novelty records in the Top 40 from The Muppets and The Barron Knights, the latter of which is funny but I can't really give it any points.
Just the one Christmas record in there which was an old one with Bing Crosby charting for the first time with "White Christmas" which predated the UK charts originally.
What about punk then? Well just the 2 punk records. There's "Little Girl" by The Banned which is not bad and there's "Mary Of The Fourth Form" by The Boomtown Rats which is shit.
Bob Marley paid tribute to punk with the record "Punky Reggae Party" which was a double a-side with "Jamming". Both are decent records. There was also a punk/new wave and reggae crossover record in "Watching the Detective" by Elvis Costello which is alright. What's quite amusing with this chart is that Elvis Costello is one place below Elvis Presley with his version of "My Way". No points for that effort.
Disco still had a notable presence in the Top 40 and was a mixed bag from the decent "Dance Dance Dance" by Chic to the abysmal "Yes Sir I Can Boogie" by Baccara.
The ever reliable Electric Light Orchestra are in the Top 40 with "Turn To Stone" and was a strong contender for the best song. Also worth a shout is "Getting Ready For Love" by Diana Ross.
The reality is that much of the decent music in this chart could have just as easily been from 1976. No real signs of improvement as we only just scrape into double figures.
Score: 10
Table
Not only is the Christmas chart in 1977 worse than the best year chart, it's also worse than the 1976 Christmas chart:
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