In three previous essays, I presented the top singles, albums and artists of the Second British Invasion (“SBI”), which I posit ran from September 26, 1981 to December 22, 1984. These singles and albums were released by 94 unique musical artists, counting “Adam and the Ants” and “Adam Ant” as a single artist. A total of 58 artists had at least one charting single and at least one charting album – five artists only charted on the Billboard Hot 100 (singles), while 31 only charted on the Billboard Top 200 (albums).
In this essay, I present the first half of the history of the SBI as told by the weekly Billboard charts.
***********
AUGUST 1981 TO DECEMBER 1982: MTV CHANGES EVERYTHING
The earliest skirmishes in the “invasion” arguably came in 1979, when Joe Jackson and The Police reached the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Is She Really Going Out With Him” and the rereleased “Roxanne,” respectively, while Robin Scott’s synthpop collective M hit #1 with “Pop Musik” and The Buggles hit #40 with “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Jackson (Look Sharp, I’m the Man) and The Police (Outlandos D’Amour, Regatta De Blanc) reached the top 30 of the Billboard Top 200 with their first two albums, while Elvis Costello & the Attractions reached #10 with Armed Forces, reaching #11 with Get Happy!! one year later. In 1980, meanwhile, Gary Numan’s “Cars” reached the top 10, while The Pretenders’ “Brass in Pocket” and The Clash’s “Train in Vain” reached the top 30. The Pretenders cracked the top 10, and albums by Numan (The Pleasure Principle) and The Clash (London Calling) reached the top 30. At the end of 1980, The Police’s Zenyatta Mondatta hit #5, spawning two top 10 singles in the first half of 1981: “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” and “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.”
Other than Pretenders II reaching the top 10 in September 1981 and The Clash’s Sandinista! reaching the top 30 earlier in the year, though, this was the extent of the “invasion.” Then, on August 1, 1981, MTV debuted, and network executives began to hunt anywhere and everywhere for videos to fill 24 hours of airtime every day. Figure 1 summarizes what happened next.
Figure 1:
The Police break through. On September 26, 1981, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” the first single from The Police’s Ghost In the Machine, entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #66. It reached #8 on November 21, 1981, making it the third single by The Police to reach the top 10 that year. “Every Little Thing” stayed in the top 10 for four weeks, peaking at #3 for two weeks. On October 24, 1981, meanwhile, Ghost In the Machine entered the Billboard Top 200 at #16, reaching #7 the following week, making The Police the first British artist in a (very) broad “new wave/post punk/synthpop” category to reach the top 10 of both Billboard charts with consecutive releases.
Three albums by similar British artists also entered the chart on October 24, 1981. Two – by Gary Numan and Ultravox – made little impact. The third was Don’t Stop, the debut EP from former Generation X front-man Billy Idol. It, too, made little impact…then.
Over the next two months, albums from Adam and the Ants (Prince Charming), Elvis Costello & the Attractions (Almost Blue) and U2 (October) entered the chart, peaking at #94, #50 and #104, respectively, while albums from Bow Wow Wow, The Jam and Depeche Mode topped out at #176. No other SBI singles entered the chart. Thus, on January 16, 1982, when the second single from Ghost In the Machine – “Spirits In the Material World” – entered at #76, The Police were starting to look like a fluke.
Also entering that week (#90), though, was a breathy synthpop cover of “Tainted Love,” first released by Gloria Jones in 1965. The duo recording the remake were called Soft Cell, and their debut album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, entered the album chart at #121 on January 30, 1982. Just over one month later, on March 6, 1982, the propulsive synthpop single “Don’t You Want Me,” by a revamped punk group called Human League, entered at #86. One week later, “Spirits in the Material World” reached #11, where it spent two weeks. “Tainted Love,” which had peaked at #64 on February 20 then fallen to #100 for two weeks, was rising again. Human League’s Dare, meanwhile, had entered the album chart at #193 on February 27, following albums by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Teardrop Explodes and Gang of Four, none of which topped #156.
Reinforcements Arrive. On May 15, 1982, a catchy single by oh-so-clean-cut Haircut 100 called “Love Plus One” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #89; that same week, the third and final single from Ghost In the Machine, “Secret Journey,” reached #46, where it spent two weeks before dropping. “Tainted Love” and “Don’t You Want Me” were at #43 and #16, respectively. The following week, Kim Wilde’s infectious synthpop single “Kids In America” – with its odd take on American geography (East California?) – entered at #88. One week later, Bow Wow Wow’s cover of The Strangeloves’ 1965 “I Want Candy” entered at #85. Fronted by Burmese 13-year-old Annabella Lwin, the band had been assembled by Malcolm McLaren from former members of Adam and the Ants. What all three songs had in common was a video in heavy rotation on MTV, increasingly appearing in American homes, including my own suburban Philadelphia bedroom.
The first parent album to chart was Haircut 100’s Pelican West, entering at #188 on April 24. Bow Wow Wow’s The Last of the Mohicans entered at #118 on May 15, followed by Kim Wilde at #168 on June 5. In the interim, albums by Chaz Jankel, XTC, The Jam, The Buggles, Split Enz and Graham Parker entered the chart. Four of these albums reached the top 100, almost certainly on the strength of oft-aired videos: XTC’s English Settlement (#48; “Senses Working Overtime”), The Jam’s The Gift (#82; “A Town Called Malice”), Split Enz’s Time and Tide (#58; “Dirty Creature,” “Six Months in a Leaky Boat”) and Parker’s Another Grey Area (#51, “Temporary Beauty”).[1]
The next wave of related singles came in a three-week stretch beginning July 3, the weeks “Don’t You Want Me” spent at #1: Idol’s “Hot in the City” (#77), Men At Work’s “Who Can It Be Now?” (#83), A Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran (So Far Away)” (#86) and The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” (#92). And while “I Want Candy” had peaked at #62 for one week, “Love Plus One” and “Kids in America” had breached the top 40, while “Tainted Love” had peaked at #8.
A Flock of Seagulls entered the album chart at #141 on May 22, followed one week later by Squeeze’s Sweets From a Stranger (#107), which eventually peaked at #32 on the strength of the video for the non-charting “Black Coffee in Bed.” On June 12, The Clash’s Combat Rock entered at #99. Two weeks later, albums by Pete Shelley, former lead singer of seminal punk band The Buzzcocks, Thompson Twins and Gang of Four entered the album chart, though none peaked higher than #121. And on July 3, the debut album by Australia’s Men At Work – Business as Usual – entered at #179. In the interim, a five-member band from Birmingham (England, not Alabama) called Duran Duran released their second album, Rio. In entered the Billboard Top 200 on June 5, 1982 at #164, then languished in the bottom half of the chart for the next six months.
On May 1, meanwhile, Ghost In the Machine dropped out of the top 10 after spending 23 non-consecutive weeks there. Three weeks later, Dare entered the top 10 at #7, making it the second newly-released SBI album to do so. In the interim, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret had peaked at #27 for two weeks starting May 1, dropped to #46, then began to climb again on May 29, eventually peaking at #22 on August 7.
In the middle of July, albums from artists with prior American chart success joined The Clash. Joe Jackson’s Night and Day entered at #172 on July 17, with “Steppin’ Out” – driven by a genuinely charming video – entering the singles chart at #88 on August 21. Elvis Costello & the Attractions’ Imperial Bedroom entered at #100 on July 24; there was no single or video from this album. Finally, Billy Idol entered at #153 on July 31. Another slow burner, it dropped off the album chart after 23 weeks, only to return – as did Don’t Stop – the following year.
At the beginning of September, “Don’t You Want Me” and “Tainted Love” had fallen out of the top 10, while “Who Can It Be Now?” had climbed to #15. The latter entered the top 10 on September 25, followed by “I Ran (So Far Away)” on October 9. “Kids in America” spent its fourth and final week at #25 on September 4, while “Hot In the City” reached its peak of #23 for the first of four weeks on September 11.
Artists…assemble. Dare was out of the top 10 by July 31, but over the next two months – when Pelican West (#31)[2] and Imperial Bedroom (#30) reached their peaks – three albums climbed steadily towards the top 10: Business as Usual, A Flock of Seagulls and Combat Rock. September saw the first dance remix/repackage albums entering the chart, as Bow Wow Wow, Human League and Soft Cell sought to milk their hits. Duran Duran followed suit with Carnival on October 2. The highest position reached for these four albums was #57 for Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing. In the interim, though, two new artists joined the “invasion,” as ABC’s The Lexicon of Love (#92) on September 24 and Yazoo’s Upstairs at Eric (#143; Yaz in the US) entered the album chart on September 25 and October 2, respectively. Talk Talk’s debut The Party’s Over (#189) entered on September 25, followed by Icehouse’s Primitive Man (#185) on October 9, though neither topped #126.
As was becoming the norm, the former two albums were driven by a video: ABC’s “The Look of Love (Part 1)” and Yaz’s “Situation.”[3] The former entered the singles chart at #77 on September 11, peaking at #18 for three weeks, followed by the latter two weeks later at #90; “Situation” only reached #73, and its parent album only #92, although the latter remained on the chart for 31 weeks. Also driven by a video was the second single from Combat Rock – “Rock the Casbah” – which entered the chart at #90 on October 2. “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” had peaked at #45 on September 25; it reentered the singles chart on February 19, 1983, reaching #50 in a second 10-week run. At the top of the charts, meanwhile, “Who Can It Be Now?” entered the top 10 (#7) that same week, reaching #1 on October 30. “I Ran” joined it in the top 10 on October 9, spending four weeks there, two at #9. On November 20, the last week in the top 10 for “Who Can It Be Now?,” “Steppin’ Out” reached #9 then spent seven weeks in the top 10, three at #6. These singles’ parent albums also reached the top 10, as Business as Usual (#9) and A Flock of Seagulls (#10) entered on October 23, followed by Night and Day (#6) on November 20 and Combat Rock (#10) on December 18.
Looking toward 1983, finally, the first two weeks of November saw three albums by returning artists – Adam Ant’s Friend or Foe (#189), The English Beat’s Special Beat Service (#152) and The Psychedelic Furs’ Forever Now (#125) – enter the chart.[4] They were joined by Shuttered Room (#193), the debut album by The Fixx, on November 13. Each had a video receiving at least moderate MTV airplay: “Goody Two Shoes,” “Save It For Later,” “Love My Way” and “Stand or Fall,” respectively. While all are iconic today, only the first and third reached the top half of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #12 and #44, respectively; “Stand or Fall” topped out at #76, while “Save It For Later” never charted.[5]
Meanwhile, “Down Under,” the second single from Business as Usual – which reached #1 on November 13 – entered at #79 on November 6, reaching the top 20 on December 4 and the top 10 on December 25. This made Men At Work the first SBI band to debut during this period to achieve the same chart success as The Police. Combat Rock entered the top 10 on December 18, the same week “Rock the Casbah” reached #17.
Thus, on the last week of 1982, “Down Under” and “Steppin’ Out” were in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, with “Rock the Casbah,” “The Look of Love (Part 1),” “Goody Two Shoes” and “Space Age Love Song” – the second single from A Flock of Seagulls, which had entered at #83 on November 13 – elsewhere in the top 40. At #1 for the seventh consecutive week was Business as Usual, with Night and Day and Combat Rock also in the top 10. Still rising were The Lexicon of Love (#30), Friend or Foe (#37), Special Beat Service (#56), Forever Now (#85) and, in a sign of the imminent bursting of the barricades, Rio (#95), which had finally cracked the top 100.
***********
JANUARY TO JUNE 1983: CULTURE CLUB, DURAN DURAN AND THE ONE-HITTERS
Through most of 1982, it was not apparent an “invasion” was underway: Adam Ant, The Police, Joe Jackson and The Clash had prior success on the Billboard singles and album charts. It was easy to regard A Flock of Seagulls, Human League, Soft Cell and Kim Wilde as synthpop one-offs in the mold of M and Numan. Sure, the first two had put albums into the top 10, and “Space Age Love Song” was in the top 40, but Human League, Soft Cell and Kim Wilde had not put a second single on the chart. It was too soon to tell about bands like ABC, The Fixx and Haircut 100. Men At Work was the one new artist that appeared poised for further chart success.
But then two singles – and their iconic videos – hit the airwaves at the end of 1982, and, as Figure 2 shows, the invasion hit its first peak.
Figure 2:
Two singles lead the charge. As December 1982 became January 1983, something was clearly shifting at the top of the Billboard charts. In part, this was because MTV finally began to air videos by artists of color like Michael Jackson, Prince…and Musical Youth, whose pop-reggae earworm “Pass the Dutchie” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #80 on December 11. One week later, the poignant “Back on the Chain Gang,” a standalone single mourning the deaths of The Pretenders members James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon, entered at #76. The videos for both songs soon became ubiquitous on MTV.
The video for “Pass the Dutchie” mostly takes place in a British courtroom. Also taking place in a British courtroom was the video for a lilting pop gem called “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” At its core, this video is lead singer Boy George (aka George O’Dowd) telling the world, “I’m here. I’m queer. Deal with it.” The band behind the song was a mixed-race-and-ethnicity foursome from London called Culture Club, and the single entered the chart at #80 on December 4.
Three weeks later, a very different song entered at #77. Rio had languished in the lower half of the Billboard Top 200 for half a year, neither catching on nor fading away. Then came “Hungry Like the Wolf.” The impossibly-photogenic members of Duran Duran were made for MTV, as their gorgeously erotic video showed.
Not to be outdone, though, Joe Jackson rejoined the party on January 15 – the week “Down Under” became Men At Work’s second #1 single – with Night and Day’s second single, the haunting “Breaking Us In Two” (#73). Two weeks later, as “The Look of Love (Part 1)” dropped from #18, the second single from The Lexicon of Love, “Poison Arrow,” entered at #72. In between, on January 22, a relentlessly upbeat single from Ireland’s Dexy’s Midnight Runners called “Come On Eileen” entered at #79, one slot ahead of Thompson Twins’ “Lies.” The latter would eventually peak at #30 for three weeks, while the former fared just a bit better.
While this action was taking place on the singles chart, very little was happening at the top of the album chart. Business As Usual remained at #1 until February 19, Night and Day dropped out of the top 10 on January 8, and Combat Rock reached #7 for the first of five weeks on January 22. The rest of the album chart was a different story, though. Propelled by “Hungry Like the Wolf,” Rio reached #28 on January 29, entering the top 10 at #7 on February 26. Moving in tandem, as the two artists would for the next two years, Culture Club’s debut album Kissing To Be Clever entered on January 8 (#141), reaching #20 on March 5. Musical Youth’s The Youth of Today (#119) also entered on January 8, eventually peaking at #23 for four weeks. The third entry that week was the Squeeze greatest hits album Singles 45s and Under (#122); it peaked at #47 for three weeks. On January 29, The Lexicon of Love began a 10-week run at #24. One week later, Friend or Foe reached #21, where it spent four weeks before climbing to #16 for three weeks.[6]
Over the previous year-plus, meanwhile, a bespectacled synthesizer maven named Thomas Dolby (born Thomas Morgan Robertson) had been releasing quirky story-singles to little attention – especially in the United States. In 1982, these were collected into an album called The Golden Age of Wireless. Early in 1983, Dolby recorded a five-song EP called Blinded by Science consisting of dance remixes of four songs from The Golden Age of Wireless – and a new song called “She Blinded Me With Science.” On February 5, Blinded By Science entered the album chart at #159, with the single – promoted by a memorable video featuring British scientist Dr. Magnus Pyke – entering at #77 two weeks later.
All you need is one. With this single, those by Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Musical Youth and an English-language cover of Falco’s German-language “Der Kommissar” by After the Fire (#75, February 12) – we enter the “one-hit-wonder” phase of the Second British Invasion. Driven by these singles, Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ Too-Rye-Ay entered the album chart at #93 on February 12, followed by After the Fire’s Atf on March 12 (#159) and The Golden Age of Wireless one week later (#141). In the interim, Duran Duran rereleased their self-titled first album in the United States (February 19, #179), adding a new song to which we will return. One week later, Thompson Twins’ album Quick Step and Side Kick, released in the United States and Canada as Side Kicks, entered at #97, nine slots ahead of Soft Cell’s second studio album The Art of Falling Apart; the latter peaked at #84 for four weeks.In the interim, three albums entered the chart which received significant attention from rapidly-appearing “Rock of the 80s” stations, but only reached the middle of the top 100: Heaven 17, Simple Minds’ New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84 and Ultravox’s Quartet.[7]
Back on January 15, meanwhile, “Rock the Casbah” entered the top 10 at #9, then spent four weeks at #8. On February 12, “Goody Two Shoes” reached #12, where it spent three weeks, and “Space Age Love Song” reached #30, where it spent two weeks. Two weeks later, “Pass the Dutchie” reached #10, where it stayed two weeks, with “Back on the Chain Gang” at #11 the first week and #9 the second week. On February 19, finally, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” and “Hungry Like the Wolf” entered the top 10 at #8 and #9, respectively. Thus, on February 26, 1983, the week Rio entered the top 10 and Business as Usual dropped from #1 to #4, singles by Culture Club (#5), Duran Duran (#6), Men At Work (#8), Musical Youth (#10), The Pretenders (#11) and Adam Ant (#12) occupied half of the top 12 slots on the chart. Three additional singles – “Breaking Us in Two” (#23), “Come On Eileen” (#31) and “Poison Arrow” (#39) – were also in the top 40. That same week, “Only You,” the second single from Upstairs at Eric’s debuted at #90; it quickly peaked at #67 for three weeks.
On March 19 – the week The Golden Age of Wireless entered the album chart – three other albums debuted as well: U2’s War (#91), INXS’ Shabooh Shoobah (#190), the first American release by the Australian band, and Modern English’s After the Snow (#184).[8] All three albums were propelled by a video promoting a single in heavy rotation on MTV: “New Year’s Day,” “The One Thing” and “I’ll Melt With You,” respectively. The middle song entered at #90 on March 26, followed by the latter two (#90, #85) one week later; only “The One Thing” reached the top 40, peaking at #30 for two weeks starting May 28.[9] Also debuting on April 2 (#88) was Heaven 17’s “Let Me Go,” often played on Philadelphia’s I-92 “Rock of the 80s” but drawing little attention elsewhere; it peaked at #74 for two weeks in March. In previous weeks, finally, singles from The Psychedelic Furs (“Love My Way;” March 5, #73) and Adam Ant (“Desperate But Not Serious;” March 12, #86) entered the chart – as did an effervescent cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song “Always Something There to Remind Me” by a synthpop duo called Naked Eyes (March 12, #85). The first two peaked at #44 and #66, respectively; we soon return to the latter, whose parent album, Naked Eyes, entered at #137 on April 16.[10]
Still moving in tandem, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” and “Hungry Like the Wolf” reached their three-week peak of #2 and #3, respectively, on March 26, the week after “Back on the Chain Gang” reached its peak of #5. On April 9, when the latter song dropped out of the top 10, “Come On Eileen” took its place, jumping from #11 to #4. Two weeks later, it reached #1, where it stayed one week. The week before that, meanwhile, “Der Kommissar” entered the top 10 at #9, peaking at #5 (for two weeks) two weeks later. And on April 23, “She Blinded Me With Science” entered the top 10 at #10; three weeks later, it also peaked at #5, where it stayed three weeks.
Repeat performances. Through mid-April 1983, the only SBI artists with back-to-back top 10 singles were the Police and Men At Work (both #1), and only The Police had done so with back-to-back albums, each of which featured two top 11 singles. Then Men At Work’s “Overkill” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #28 on April 9, reaching #9 three weeks later. Its parent album, Cargo, followed a similar trajectory, entering the Billboard Top 200 at #11 on May 7, rising to #4 the following week – joining Business As Usual in its 30th and final week in the top 10 – before peaking at #3 for five weeks.
One week before “Overkill” debuted, Duran Duran’s “Rio” entered at #58. It too rose quickly, topping out at #14 for two weeks in mid-May. Not to be outdone, Culture Club released the non-album single “Time (Clock of the Heart),” which entered at #59 on April 16. Another rapid-riser, it replaced “Der Kommissar” at #10 on May 21. April 23, meanwhile, marked the sixth week Kissing to Be Clever was at its #14 peak (it was replaced by Too-Rye-Ay one week later); after dropping as low as #26, it returned to #14 on June 18 for four additional weeks. That same week, The Golden Age of Wireless reached its peak of #13 for the first of two weeks; Blinded By Science had dropped from its four-week high of #20 on April 30, meaning Dolby had two albums in the top 30 on April 30.
The same week Cargo entered the chart, Atf reached its peak of #25, where it spent three weeks, with Side Kicks having dropped from its three-week peak of #34 on April 23; the latter’s second single, “Love On Your Side,” peaked at #45 on June 4. Finally, War reached #12 for one week on May 7, part of an 11-week sojourn in the top 20.
Two more first-time artists entered the charts in mid-April, driven once again by a video in heavy rotation on MTV. Eddy Grant’s synth-reggae “Electric Avenue” entered at #85 on April 16, followed one week later by Grant’s Killer on the Rampage at #152. That same week, Kajagoogoo’s synthpop confection “Too Shy” entered at #81.[11] These were followed on May 7 and May 14, respectively by ska-pop Madness’ “Our House” (#76) and Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” (#90). The latter were yet another synthpop duo, proving that if you could play a synthesizer well enough, all you needed was a singer.
In the interim, two all-female bands released radically different singles: Total Coelo’s bizarre “I Eat Cannibals” (April 16; #80) and The Belle Stars’ upbeat, yet melancholic, “Sign of the Times” (May 7, #81); the former peaked at #66, the latter at #75, with its parent album peaking at #191 on June 4.
Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) entered the album chart at #189 on May 28, the same week as two follow-up albums – The Fixx’ Reach the Beach (#99) and A Flock of Seagulls’ Listen (#115) – and The Belle Stars (#195). The only charting single from Listen, the swirling synth-driven “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You),” had entered the singles chart at #83 two weeks earlier, while The Fixx’s haunting “Saved By Zero” debuted at #80 on May 28. Back on May 7, meanwhile, The Hurting, the debut album by a duo called Tears For Fears, entered at #184. One week later, the impeccably-dressed Spandau Ballet’s True entered at the same slot.
Except for Human League’s Fascination! (June 18, #175) – propelled by the clever video for “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” (May 28, #72) – June 1983 was a quiet month for new albums in this genre. Kajagoogoo’s White Feathers entered the album chart at #189 on June 11, peaking at #38 four weeks later. Heaven 17’s The Luxury Gap entered at #161 on June 4, peaking at #72 six weeks later. And debut albums from Ministry (With Sympathy; #138) and Shriekback (Care, #197) entered on June 25, quickly peaking at #96 and #188, respectively.
These albums reveal the limits of the Second British Invasion. While Human League were able to follow the top-five Dare with an album that reached #22 on the strength of two top 40 singles, Kajagoogoo could not replicate the top-five success of “Too Shy,” as “Hang On Now” peaked at #79 on September 10. And as often as they were played on the likes of I-92, Heaven 17, Ministry and Shriekback never caught on in the United States.[12] After the Fire and Dexy’s Midnight Runners also could not duplicate the success of their top five singles as “Dancing in the Shadows” and “The Celtic Soul Brothers” peaked at #85 (June 4) and #86 (June 11), respectively; on July 2, Dolby’s poignant “Europa and the Pirate Twins” stalled at #67.
That same week, however, the second single from Kissing To Be Clever, “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya,” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #64. One month earlier, “Is There Something I Should Know?,” tacked onto Duran Duran for its American re-release, entered at #57. In between came Billy Idol’s “White Wedding (Part 1), which entered at #71 on May 21, prompting Billy Idol to reenter the album chart at #184 one week later (it peaked at #45 for one week) and Don’t Stop to reenter at #176 on September 10 (it peaked at #71 for one week). Roman Holliday’s quirky “Stand By” entered at #95 on June 18, quickly peaking at #54.
And, on June 4, “Every Breath You Take,” the first single from what turned out to be The Police’s final studio album, entered at #36.
To be continued…
Until then…if you like what you read on this website, please consider making a donation. Thank you.
[1] I had forgotten this song, having bought the album for the haunting “You Hit the Spot.”
[2] “Love Plus One” peaked at #37 for one week on August 7.
[3] Videos were made for all four albums, but no single from Primitive Man entered the Billboard Hot 100, even though “Street Café” earned enough airplay for me tape it from the radio, while “Talk Talk” peaked at #75 on November 6.
[4] Albums by Kate Bush, The Jam and Depeche Mode followed through December 4, though none peaked higher than #135.
[5] The Fixx’s “Red Skies” and The English Beat’s “I Confess” failed to chart as follow-up singles despite consistent airplay on emerging “Rock of the 80s” radio stations.
[6] On January 17, yet another album by The Jam – Dig The New Breed – entered at #179, peaking at #131.
[7] They debuted, respectively, on February 12 (#115), February 19 (#131) and March 19 (#114), peaking at #68, #69 and #61. Only one charting single was released from these three albums – Ultravox’s “Reap the Wild Wind,” which peaked at #71 on April 30.
[8] Over the next two weeks, albums by Bow Wow Wow, Echo & the Bunnymen and The Jam entered the album chart, at #101, #163 and #180, respectively, though only the first one – When the Going Get Tough, the Tough Get Going reached the top 100 (#82), on the strength of “Do You Wanna Hold Me?,” which peaked at #77 on May 7.
[9] “New Year’s Day” and “I Melt With You” peaked at #53 and #78, respectively.
[10] That same week, Bananarama’s Deep Ski Skiving entered #136, buoyed by the video (featuring Fun Boy Three) for the non-charting single “He Was Really Sayin’ Something.” The second single, “Shy Boy (Don’t It Make You Feel Good)” peaked at #83 on July 16.
[11] Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s Dazzle Ships also entered this week at #185, peaking at #162 four weeks later.
[12] At least in 1983. Ministry found success in the United States starting in 1989.
Just Bear With Me... 
2 thoughts on “Charting the Second British Invasion: Overview, Part 1”