You’re my number one, too

A month or so into the existence of this blog, way back in the summer of 2017, I started an ongoing feature where every No.1 from my personal Top 40s (covering 1984-2010) would be posted, along with cover art, a bit of trivia and usually some background context to explain (or justify!) its exalted status as a single which topped my chart.

You’re my number one set the scene, and while progress has been less than speedy, the 147th of those No.1 singles was added to afdpj this month. Just the 400 or so left to do….

Now, for something new in 2023, we go back again as it’s the turn of my No.1 albums. I didn’t begin compiling an album chart until the release of…you’ve guessed it….Human’s Lib by Howard Jones (what else?!).

That was the week ending 17th March 1984, as far as official chartdom is concerned. However, using the colourful (NME) charts published at the back of Number One magazine each week, as well as listening to the Top 30 Albums countdown on Radio 1 of a weekday evening, I was able to start putting together an idea of the albums which most appealed to me and even retro-fitting my own attempt by a few weeks to mid-February.

By this stage I was familiar enough with the workings of the Top 40 (and my own tastes) to identify the artists and new releases that I should be looking out for. The reviews in Number One and Smash Hits also served a useful purpose in shaping the early years of my own album chart, augmented by Record Mirror and then Q magazine as the late 80s dawned.

It would still take a while for the credibility (or accuracy, if you wish) of my efforts to develop, as I began to hear (and buy) more LPs, cassettes and later Compact Discs, so that my own chart became as competitive and fast-moving as the real thing….and grew from a Top 30, to a 40, a 50, a 75 and by the early Noughties, a Top 100.

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