I would be interested to hear why you think that, Boz.

Popular music from 1981-83 was very much in transition, where the major labels increasingly took special note of the importance placed on MTV (including the visuals), and gradually the artistic aspirations within pop, was more comprehensively replaced by the bigger corporate incentives. For me, i really don't see a renaissance, as such, in the years that followed, only perhaps more of fracture, between those major labels, and those artists who wanted to buck the trend somewhat, and record a different style, signing with the independants. There were pockets of interesting music throughout the eighties, but i would say, the regular chart sounds went from bad to worse.

1984, proved an interesting year, which perhaps had less to do with the singles chart, than the album releases. Lloyd Cole And The Commotions 'Rattlesnakes', was a very enjoyable album release, in addition to The Style Council's 'Cafe Bleu'. Lou Reed also released an interesting more contemporary sounding album, in 'New Sensations', where he adopted some of the latest technology, to good effect, i may add, and not least with ''New Sensations'', the title track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxn_B_2XWMs

Indeed it is! Enjoy the show!

It's just that I can remember far more really good singles from 1985 than I can from 1982, plus we've had / are going to have a truly dreadful run of Number 1 singles in 1982 (Tight Fit, Goombay, Paul & Stevie, Nicole, only broken by one good week with Buck's Fizz) the like of which we didn't get in 1985. I know you don't like much after 1982, but for me 1983 was better than 1982, 1984 was better than 1983 and 1985 was best of the lot of these years. In fact I would say 1985 was the last great year for pop singles. 1986 was good, but not quite as good, and 1989 had a lot of excellent singles, but again not the same amount as 1985. Also some excellent singles in the 90s and 00s as well, but much more sparse and spread out.

I think in 1985 there were still some good songs and great artists about, but often the synthetic eighties productions were really not to my taste. That made several pretty reasonable songs, rather unpalatable to listen to, for me. From 1986 onwards, the emphasis seemed to give a little more to the manufactured acts, where it became questionable as to whether there was really any true talent lurking beneath it all. The productions seemed to become almost more important than the acts themselves at times, as the 'sound' became the important factor. I think 1986 was the year when a more formulaic type sound started to make its presence felt, in some part due to the success of SAW.

Back to 1982. Watching these episodes really does bring it home to me how the quality really did start to diminish around the 1982 period (and i'm not solely referring to the No 1s in saying that). 1981 proved better than i remembered at the time, i'm pleased to admit, but i did think 81 and 82, were much closer in terms of quality than they actually are. 1983 doesn't possess such obvious mediocrity hogging the number one spot, admittedly, but having said that David Bowie's ''Let's Dance'' is the only one i can genuinely say i have any affection for. I suppose Michael Jackson's ''Billie Jean'' deserves also to stand a little apart from the rest.

Loved your weekly review Andy 1302. More surreal than an anthology of Paul Eluard poetry.

I particularly loved your review of 'Instinction' and your in-depth analysis of the 'stealing cake to eat the moon' line. Its meaning had caused me all sorts of cerebral confusion for three decades plus but... no longer. Alles klar! Staring me in the face! Now ... why did i not pick up on Herr Kemp's lyrical gymnastics?

On another topic altogether ... could you help me with these lines from Plastic Bertrand's classic 'Ca plane pour moi'? The rest of the lyrics I've mastered but Plastic goes a bit Kempish in the lines below.

Yam! Bam! Mo chat "Splash"
Git sur mon lit
A bouffe sa langue

Yours Gratefully
Herr S Hit Stirrer.

I'll have a pint of what Plastic's been drinking Herr Stirrer if this translation's anything to go by!

'I am the King of the divan' sounds like something Fairbrass would say & the poor cat Splash didn't have a happy ending

http://lyricstranslate.com/en/%C3%A7...cruisy-me.html

Well I never: just discovered that Richard James Burgess, the person who produced Spandau Ballet's Diamond album and therefore the original version of Instinction, was the lead singer of Landscape who we saw earlier this year on Top of the Pops when their video for Einstein A Go-Go was shown a couple of times. (I don't know why they didn't appear in the studio to perform it).

They did perform the follow-up Norman Bates in the studio, but I think that was on a Yewtreed show.

In 1977 I was fortunate to have a Mauritian flatmate and one night over a few pints we played it continuously so he could translate it for me. His opinion was 'the man is talking rubbish'.

!!! Hello !!!

- Well - I'm back online just in time for this week's installment of TOTP! I can also go back & reread the last 7 days of comments without paining my eyes by trying to read off a '3 by 4' inch phone screen!

Croeso yn ol Ursula (Welcome back!) In the nick of time...

It took a Week to join two pieces of string together? That is how the internet works isn't it?

Believe me - I think technology worked better in 1982 than 2016 - at least they wouldn't take a week to fix the phone line! - Right I'm off to read your latest Capers...

Well spotted Scott.

On further investigation the first of those 3 is a repeat of tonights show as this one isn't getting a weekend repeat this time due to the Keith Richards takeover of beeb4.

So if you miss tonights late repeat you get another chance in the early hours of 1st Oct followed by both of next weeks eps. So yes 3 in a row!

I think tonight's show looks promising. Maybe like last week, one of the better ones!

Dave Bartram, the (now former) lead singer of Showaddywaddy almost sued a friend of mine a few years ago. He was all set to take him to court.

Looks like 2 edits from the early one. One I really want to see, the other could be consigned to the dustbin completely and wouldn't be missed.

Should be England World Cup Squad and Ph.D

Completely agree with you there. 1985 was a fantastic year. Tears For Fears Everybody Wants to Rule The World, A-Ha Take on Me, Fergal Sharkey A Good Heart, Simple Minds Don't You Forget.... but I think 1983 and 84 were equally as good. For three years there, the charts was golden. By 1986 some of the pop music was starting to sound very polished, a little too much, but there was still some real classics to come out of the rest of the 80s. Basically I love the 80s music. For me there were some quality 80s sounding tunes being made up to 1991. And then in 1992 the 80s was gone completely and more grunge and hip hop was taking over which I detested.

Music may have been better in the 80s but phones certainly were not! British Telecom had a monopoly and you could wait ages to have a line installed. Plus using a phone on the street was often not a pleasant experience with vandalised phone boxes, etc.

On the upside though Boz at least if you were caught short there was usually a 'vacant' outlet on a street corner, with the none-too-delicate or subtle aroma of 'Eau de toilette'

!!Hurray!!

Looks like iPlayer won't let me watch from Spain so I'll have to wait until tomorrow night to watch this episode. I can follow it vicariously through this thread though!

Bit of a mixed looking bag for me tonight. And shock horror! The artist who always seems to get edited from the early actually survives on this occasion. Which is probably due to his time slot for this particular show.

So what is edited from the early edition