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Welcome. It's out with the old and in with the new as the clock turns to 1984. The fifth year of the 1980s has arrived and the year that has been immortalised in the title of George Orwell's famous book is now upon us. Will the charts turn out to be as nightmarish as society is in Orwell's famous book? Or will there be a pop version of Winston and Julia to save us from a modern nightmare? All will be revealed in this thread...
Before I start to post the charts (the first new chart based on sales from 1984 will be posted on Monday) I'd like to explain how the charts you see in this thread are put together. Not in the "compiled by Gallup" sense, but in the "posted by Robbie" sense. In the 1983 thread, in my opening post, I posted the following:
To expand on the above and how the charts I post are put together: John (the poster kobyhadrian) has paper copies of all the Gallup Top 200 Singles charts from January 1983 to February 1994. As he doesn't hold them in a database, he is typing up each chart (I can vouch that he is a very proficient, fast and accurate typist!) and is sending the charts to me in batches of 6 months of charts at a time. The information he provides to me is the top 200 for each week by current position, title, artist and panel sales. I could have posted them in this format but wasn't sure if that would do justice to such a wealth of information. I contacted Lonnie (kingofskiffle) and between John, Lonnie and myself decided that Lonnie would add each chart to the excellent chart database that he has which, for the purpose of this thread, would add a "last week" position and a weeks on chart figure. Lonnie additionally adds in other information such as the catalogue number (usually of the 7" version) and then sends an excel spreadsheet to me which I then adapt for posting the charts in this thread. I've kept to the basic chart format of TW-LW-Woc-Title-Artist-PanelSales in order to be able to post the charts within the constraints of the forum software. I could have added in, for example, the catalogue number of each title, but there isn't enough space to do so, the width of the posting area being the restricting factor here.
As I mentioned above, the first chart will be posted on Monday (16 May) and there are a total of 52 weekly charts and an end of year chart to be posted. 53 charts in all. That should keep me busy posting them. It has certainly kept John busy typing them all up and is keeping Lonnie busy adding them to his chart database. Hopefully it will keep everyone else busy reading the thread (and posting in it too, hopefully!). There's an added bonus too: in 1983 Gallup compiled an end of year top 500 best selling singles list. In 1984 Gallup expanded this to a top 1,000 and that list will be posted in full in this thread. Most likely around early to mid July if I follow the posting schedule of 1983, which is one chart per weekday and two on a Saturday.
Finally, if anyone has any questions or comments in general please feel free to ask / make them. Either Lonnie or myself will do our best to answer them.
Let 1984 begin...
Before I start to post the charts (the first new chart based on sales from 1984 will be posted on Monday) I'd like to explain how the charts you see in this thread are put together. Not in the "compiled by Gallup" sense, but in the "posted by Robbie" sense. In the 1983 thread, in my opening post, I posted the following:
A few weeks ago I was contacted by a UKMIx member who informed me that he had also visited the library but had been able to obtain all the weekly sales information for the UK singles charts during the whole of this period. This was the full top 200 chart for each week too. The member suggested that I share the information with anyone who was interested in seeing the full top 200 charts with sales (along with the various titles that were starred out each week, some weeks this is quite a large amount) and agreed that I could post these charts on the forum. With a massive thanks to UKMix member kobyhadrian, who has literally provided a jaw-dropping amount of information that I had thought we would never be able to see, here are the Gallup charts from this era, along with the sales index for each title. These are better known as their chart panel sales, the hypothetical amount that each title was calculated to have sold in a 250 strong panel of record shops (a throwback to the early days of the BMRB chart when the chart panel was 250 shops). I would also like to thank kingofskiffle for his help too.
As I mentioned above, the first chart will be posted on Monday (16 May) and there are a total of 52 weekly charts and an end of year chart to be posted. 53 charts in all. That should keep me busy posting them. It has certainly kept John busy typing them all up and is keeping Lonnie busy adding them to his chart database. Hopefully it will keep everyone else busy reading the thread (and posting in it too, hopefully!). There's an added bonus too: in 1983 Gallup compiled an end of year top 500 best selling singles list. In 1984 Gallup expanded this to a top 1,000 and that list will be posted in full in this thread. Most likely around early to mid July if I follow the posting schedule of 1983, which is one chart per weekday and two on a Saturday.
Finally, if anyone has any questions or comments in general please feel free to ask / make them. Either Lonnie or myself will do our best to answer them.
Let 1984 begin...
The Chart Of All Charts For This Era 
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