List of best-selling singles of the 1970s in the United Kingdom
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British band Wings had the biggest-selling hit of the 1970s with "Mull of Kintyre"/"Girls' School", the first single in the UK to sell more than two million copies.
Singles are a type of music release that typically have fewer tracks than an extended play or an album. Throughout the 1970s the UK Singles Chart was compiled by the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB)[1] from the sales data of a representative panel of record shops across the country, starting with about 250 shops at the beginning of the decade and increasing to around 450 stores by 1979. The "panel sales" data from each shop were then posted to the BMRB every week and a multiplication factor was then applied to obtain an estimate of total sales across the country.
This procedure led to several problems with the collection of accurate data: the ease with which the panel sales data could be tampered with resulted in repeated accusations of chart rigging or hyping (culminating in an investigation by the ITV current affairs programme World in Action broadcast in August 1980, which found evidence that the record label WEA had been guilty of chart manipulation);[2] some stores simply forgetting to return their data some weeks; postal strikes in the early 1970s meaning data could not be sent back to the BMRB; and every year only one set of data was collected over the two-week Christmas and New Year period each. As this was normally the busiest sales period of the year, it meant many records that were high in the charts over Christmas "lost" large numbers of sales. Some record companies also claimed higher sales figures for their records by quoting the amounts shipped to record shops instead, although these did not necessarily reflect the sales within those shops.
Producing an accurate list of the best-selling singles of the 1970s in the United Kingdom has therefore never been a simple task because of the difficulty in obtaining accurate sales data from the period. An official chart of the best-selling singles of the 1970s was produced by the BMRB and broadcast on the UK's national pop music radio station BBC Radio 1 on 31 December 1979. However, this chart is no longer considered accurate due to the method of data collection by the BMRB and has since been superseded.
The 19 September 2009 issue of the UK music trade magazine Music Week included a special supplement to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It included updated charts of the top twenty best-selling singles of each decade of the magazine's existence, based on the most recent information available from the Official Charts Company (OCC). The following chart is therefore the most up to date estimate of the top twenty best-selling singles of the 1970s, with sales figures for the top ten up until the end of 1979 as estimated by the OCC.[3][4]
Between 1970 and 1979, fourteen different singles sold more than one million copies each in the UK. The biggest-selling single of the decade was "Mull of Kintyre" by the British band Wings. Released in November 1977, the song became Christmas number one and the first single ever to sell more than two million copies in the UK.[5]
Best-selling singles
Boney M. released two of the top four biggest songs of the 1970s.
The first attempt to create a list of the best-selling singles of the decade was produced by Record Business and published in the BPI Year Book 1979.[6] Record Business was a short-lived chart statistics company – headed by Barry Lazell, its staff included Alan Jones, who would become the leading authority on UK chart statistics and sales for the next thirty years. The BPI Year Book chart was a list of the biggest-selling singles in the UK for the period 1960-79: although it was published midway through 1979, the list includes the year's two biggest selling singles, "Bright Eyes" by Art Garfunkel and "Heart of Glass" by Blondie. Stripping out the songs from the 1960s, the remaining 16 songs in the list, in order, were:
"Mull of Kintyre"/"Girls' School" – Wings
"Rivers of Babylon"/"Brown Girl in the Ring" – Boney M.
"You're the One That I Want" – John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
"Mary's Boy Child" – Boney M.
"Summer Nights" - John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
"Y.M.C.A." – Village People
"Bright Eyes" – Art Garfunkel
"Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
"Heart of Glass" – Blondie
"I Love You Love Me Love" – Gary Glitter
"Don't Give Up on Us" – David Soul
"Eye Level" – Simon Park Orchestra
"Save Your Kisses for Me" – Brotherhood of Man
"Long Haired Lover from Liverpool" – Little Jimmy Osmond
"Merry Xmas Everybody" – Slade
"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" – The New Seekers
BMRB official chart (December 1979)
In December 1979 the BMRB produced the official lists of the 100 biggest selling singles and albums of the 1970s. The lists were published in the issue of Music Week dated 22 December 1979[7] and the singles list was reproduced in The Guinness Book of Hits of the 70's the following year.[8] All 100 singles and a track from each of the top 100 albums were played on BBC Radio 1 on 31 December 1979 between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m.[9] As these lists were published before the end of 1979, it is assumed that the cut-off date was the week ending 8 December 1979, and consequently the lists are missing sales from the last three weeks of the decade. The single that lost out most as a result of this decision was "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" by Pink Floyd, which was the current number one in the singles chart and selling strongly: it would go on to pass one million sales the following month.[10]
Almost immediately chart followers began to point out the inconsistencies in the BMRB list, with Alan Jones describing it as "a farce" in his weekly column for the music magazine Record Mirror in the issue dated 9 February 1980.[10] The biggest surprise was the placing of Rod Stewart's "Sailing" at number four, ahead of several singles that had already been certified million sellers before the end of 1979 – "Sailing" itself was not certified to have sold a million copies until 2010, more than two decades later. Jones pointed out that the BMRB had calculated its chart based purely on the panel sales data, rather than actual sales data figures, and consequently sales for singles that had sold well over the Christmas period had been underestimated. The 1978 Christmas number one, "Mary's Boy Child", already certified to have sold over a million copies by the end of 1978, was at number 16, behind several songs that have still not reached the million sales mark as of 2022. Meanwhile, "Merry Xmas Everyone", which Jones calculated had sold 989,000 copies by the end of the 1970s[10] and which was certified a million seller just nine months after the chart was produced, was only at number 67. Although the BMRB list remains the only "official" chart of the decade, it has since been widely discredited as unreliable.
The BMRB top twenty for the 1970s was:
"Mull of Kintyre"/"Girls' School" – Wings
"Rivers of Babylon"/"Brown Girl in the Ring" – Boney M.
"You're the One That I Want" – John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
Record Business produced its own rival list of the best-selling singles of the 1970s for the BMRB's chief competitor, the Market Research Information Bureau (MRIB). This chart was broadcast on Capital Radio (the leading UK independent radio station of the time) on 1 January 1980, the day after the BMRB/Radio 1 chart. Although the chart was unsurprisingly similar to the Record Business list that had appeared in the BPI Year Book just a few months before, there were still some changes.
The Record Business/MRIB top twenty for the 1970s was:
"Mull of Kintyre"/"Girls' School" – Wings
"Rivers of Babylon"/"Brown Girl in the Ring" – Boney M.
"You're the One That I Want" – John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
"Mary's Boy Child" – Boney M.
"Summer Nights" – John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
"Y.M.C.A." – Village People
"Save Your Kisses for Me" – Brotherhood of Man
"Bohemian Rhapsody" – Queen
"Heart of Glass" – Blondie
"Don't Give Up on Us" – David Soul
"Bright Eyes" – Art Garfunkel
"I Love You Love Me Love" – Gary Glitter
"Long Haired Lover from Liverpool" – Little Jimmy Osmond
"Eye Level" – Simon Park Orchestra
"Don't Cry for Me Argentina" – Julie Covington
"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" – The New Seekers
"Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" – Dawn featuring Tony Orlando
Dame Olivia Newton-John was a British-born Australian singer, actress, and activist. She was a four-time Grammy Award winner whose music career included five number-one hits and many other Top Ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100, and two number-one albums on the Billboard 200: If You Love Me, Let Me Know (1974), and Have You Never Been Mellow (1975). Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). With global sales of more than 100 million records, Newton-John is one of the best-selling music artists from the second half of the 20th century to the present.
The UK Singles Chart was first compiled in 1969. However the records and statistics listed here date back to 1952 because the Official Charts Company counts a selected period of the New Musical Express chart and the Record Retailer chart from 1960 to 1969 as predecessors for the period prior to 11 February 1969, where multiples of competing charts coexisted side by side. For example, the BBC compiled its own chart based on an average of the music papers of the time; many songs announced as having reached number one on BBC Radio and Top of the Pops prior to 1969 may not be listed here as chart-toppers since they do not meet the legacy criteria of the Charts Company.
"You're the One That I Want" is a song performed by American actor and singer John Travolta and Anglo-Australian singer, songwriter and actress Olivia Newton-John for the 1978 film version of the musical Grease. It was written and produced by John Farrar, and released in May 1978 as the second single from Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture. The song is one of the best-selling singles in history to date, having sold over 4 million copies in the United States and the United Kingdom alone, with estimates of more than 15 million copies sold overall.
"Mull of Kintyre" is a song by the British-American rock band Wings written by Paul McCartney and Denny Laine. The song was written in tribute to the Kintyre peninsula in Scotland and its headland, the Mull of Kintyre, where McCartney has owned High Park Farm since 1966.
"The Grease Megamix" is a song that was released in 1990 to commemorate the video release of Grease. The single was credited to John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and released via Polydor Records. It was created by Phil Harding and Ian Curnow for PWL by the request of Polydor Records, who supplied copies of the original multi-track recordings. The megamix topped the charts of Australia and Spain and became a top-five hit in Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom.
"Summer Nights" is a popular song from the musical Grease. Written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, its best-known version was recorded by American actor and singer John Travolta and Australian singer, songwriter and actress Olivia Newton-John for the big-screen adaptation of the musical, and released as a single that same year. It was released in August 1978 as the fourth single from the movie's soundtrack album and became a massive hit worldwide during the summer of 1978. Parts of the song were introduced to a new audience when it was re-released in the 1990s as part of a megamix of several songs from the movie version.
The albums discography of British-Australian recording artist Olivia Newton-John consists of twenty-six studio albums, six live albums, fourteen compilations and six soundtracks. According to Billboard, Newton-John is the 44th most successful artist of all time. She is also listed as the 36th top female artist on the Billboard 200 all-time female list. To date, she has sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time.
Sing 20 Number One Hits is the tenth album by British pop group Brotherhood of Man. It was the first of two consecutive cover version albums by them. Released in 1980, it became the group's second biggest-selling album.
This Christmas is a Christmas album by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, released on November 9, 2012 by Universal Music Enterprises. The first time that Travolta and Newton-John worked together was on the musical film Grease (1978), in which they performed the songs "You're the One That I Want" and "Summer Nights". Both the film and the songs were a commercial phenomenon. This album is the first new artistic work they have done together since the 1983 film Two of a Kind. This Christmas is also the twenty-fifth studio album, following the 2008 release A Celebration in Song, and the third all-new Christmas album by Newton-John.
The singles discography of British-Australian recording artist Olivia Newton-John consists of sixty-seven singles, three as a featured artist and twenty-five promotional recordings. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five number-one and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles, seven Top Ten Billboard Hot Country singles, and two number-one Billboard 200 solo albums. Ten of her singles have topped Billboard's adult contemporary music singles chart. Eleven of her singles have been certified gold by the RIAA. She has sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time.
The Media Research Information Bureau (MRIB) was a music chart research company that operated in the United Kingdom from 1981 to 2008. It was best known for compiling the chart data for The Network Chart Show which was broadcast by many TV and radio shows, as well as being published in many music newspapers and magazines. MRIB also compiled other genre charts for the United Kingdom.
1 2 "Top 20 Singles of the Seventies". Music Week. London, England: United Business Media. 19 September 2009. ("1959–2009: Anniversary Special" supplement, p. 18.)
↑ "Singles of the 70's". Music Week. London, England: Morgan-Grampian Publications: 18. 22 December 1979.
↑ Rice, Jo; Rice, Tim; Gambaccini, Paul; Read, Mike (1980). "Top 100 Singles of the Decade". The Guinness Book of Hits of the 70's. Enfield, Middlesex, England: Guinness Superlatives Ltd. pp.238–39. ISBN0-85112-217-5.
↑ "Records of the Decade". Music Week. London, England: Morgan-Grampian Publications: 1. 22 December 1979.
1 2 3 Jones, Alan (9 February 1980). "Chart File". Record Mirror. London, England: Spotlight Publications.
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